100 Best Films That Center Womens’ Experiences

100 Best Films That Center Womens’ Experiences

December 12, 2024

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It’s time to shine a spotlight on the stories that resonate with women from all walks of life. These ten extraordinary films not only put women front and center but also delve deep into their struggles, triumphs, and journeys of self-discovery. Get ready to be moved, inspired, and captivated as we explore the best films that beautifully capture the essence of women’s experiences. These powerful stories will leave an indelible mark on your heart and remind you of the incredible strength and resilience of women everywhere.

61. The Royal Hotel (2023)

best

8.1

Country

Australia, United Kingdom, United States of America

Director

Female director, Kitty Green

Actors

Alex Malone, Barbara Lowing, Baykali Ganambarr, Bree Bain

Moods

Character-driven, Discussion-sparking, Gripping

The Royal Hotel sees Hanna (Julia Garner) and Liv (Jessica Henwick) resorting to take up a dire live-in job behind the bar in a remote desert part of Western Australia. Although they’re warned that they’d “have to be okay with a little male attention” in the outcast mining town, their financial precarity overrides the potential fear. Curiously enough, the fiction film is based on a real story, already told in the 2016 documentary Hotel Coolgardie by Pete Gleeson, but The Assistant director Kitty Green pulls no punches when representing how suffocating it must feel to be encircled by such unmediated male aggression. The brawls, the spilled beer, the c-word as a greeting all form the unnerving paraphernalia of life then and there. For Australian independent film devotees, there is actor Toby Wallace, who reprises his bad boy role from Babyteeth, and he’s joined by the ranks of Herbert Nordrum (The Worst Person in the World) and an utterly terrifying Hugo Weaving (The Matrix).

62. Winter’s Bone (2010)

best

8.0

Country

Netherlands, United States of America

Director

Debra Granik, Female director

Actors

Ashlee Thompson, Casey MacLaren, Cody Brown, Dale Dickey

Moods

A-list actors, Character-driven, Dramatic

A young girl is looking for her father while struggling to care for her family. The film is bleak and slow but great performances from the cast, especially the lead, will keep you engaged throughout. The story has a very real, raw, and natural feeling to it, so natural in fact that at times, you will forget it is a movie. And in many ways, it feels that Winter’s Bone is to Jennifer Lawrence what The Believer was to Ryan Gosling, as her performance is nothing short of perfect.

63. The Edge of Seventeen (2016)

best

8.0

Country

China, United States of America

Director

Female director, Kelly Fremon Craig

Actors

Alexander Calvert, Ava Grace Cooper, Blake Jenner, Chris Shields

Moods

Feel-Good, Funny, Lovely

A wonderful, witty teen comedy—possibly the best the genre has known in a long time! In a powerhouse performance, Hailee Steinfeld plays Nadine, a high school junior at peak angst and awkwardness. Her roller coaster journey through family, friends, lovers, or lack thereof, gives her that all-too-common impression for people her age that life is unbearable. Things get more complicated when Nadine’s dad passes and her only friend hooks up with an unexpected person. Her temperament and humor will help her see past her demons to understand what’s important in life, putting you in privileged spectator mode to this highly smart and exciting coming-of-age story.

64. Burn Burn Burn (2015)

best

8.0

Country

UK, United Kingdom

Director

Chanya Button, Female director

Actors

Alice Lowe, Alison Steadman, Chloe Pirrie, Eleanor Matsuura

Moods

Funny, Grown-up Comedy, Touching

A razor-sharp script and beautiful scenery make this one of the best road movies in recent memory.

When their cynical best friend dies, Seph and Alex embark on a journey to scatter his ashes over four spots he wants to go back to. Tupperware of ashes in the glove-box, they start their big adventure.

Burn Burn Burn, an expression their friend quotes from Kerouac, is a chance for the two friends to escape their hectic city life and to discover themselves. It’s a beautiful movie.

65. 20th Century Women (2016)

best

8.0

Country

United States of America

Director

Mike Mills

Actors

Alex Wexo, Alia Shawkat, Alison Elliott, Annette Bening

Moods

A-list actors, Lighthearted, Lovely

Annette Bening, Greta Gerwig, and many other big names star in this comedy-drama directed by Mike Mills (Beginners, Thumbsucker.) The story spans multiple generations but starts in 1979, where Dorothea Fields (Bening) is finding it increasingly difficult to raise her son alone. She enlists the help of two other women, one her son’s age and the other a New Yorker in her twenties who is very active in the punk scene. The three women, of three different generations and personalities as well as takes on the concept of “only a man can raise a man,” play different roles in this kid’s life. 20th Century Women is based on director Mike Mill’s own upbringing in Southern California.

66. Invisible Life (2019)

best

8.0

Country

Brazil, Germany

Director

Karim Aïnouz

Actors

António Fonseca, Carol Duarte, Cláudio Gabriel, Cristina Pereira

Moods

Dramatic

This 140-minute Brazilian drama is an epic and touching tale of two sisters torn apart. In 1950s Rio de Janeiro, Eurídice, 18, and Guida, 20, are inseparable, but their dreams soon take them away from each other, from their conservative family, and from Brazil.

After they are separated, each one of them believes the other is achieving her dreams when often the opposite was happening. Family betrayal, silence, and a suffocating social climate shatter the aspiration of the sisters but also highlight their strength.

67. Motherland (2017)

best

8.0

Country

Philippines, UK, United States of America

Director

Female director, Ramona S. Diaz

Actors

Anna Maxwell Martin, Diane Morgan, Ellie Haddington, Lucy Punch

Moods

Heart-warming, Touching

The Fabella Hospital in the Philippines is clearly overburdened and understaffed, and though it offers some of the lowest pregnancy delivery rates in the country, it remains unaffordable to most of its patients. It has been dubbed the world’s busiest maternity hospital because of this, and its boundless flurry of activity is what Ramona Diaz tries to capture in her cinéma-vérité film Motherland. 

What’s interesting and ultimately heartening about the documentary is that despite the difficulties the subjects face, they are always presented with warmth and humanity. We don’t observe them from a strict or stylized distance, but rather, we move with them when they laugh, befriend each other, worry about their babies, curse their partners, and eventually leave. Indeed, the film is a land of mothers, filled with their authentic stories before anything else.

68. The Falls (2021)

best

8.0

Country

Taiwan, United States of America

Director

Chung Mong-hong

Actors

Alyssa Chia, Chen Yi-wen, Chen Yiwen, Gingle Wang

Moods

Dramatic, Emotional, Slow

All the synopses going around the internet won’t fail to let you know that The Falls takes place at the height of the COVID-19 crisis. The film is certainly marketed that way, with commercial posters featuring the leads in ubiquitous face masks, socially distanced from the blurred crowd. 

But interestingly, The Falls is not just a situational, pandemic-era story. More than anything else, it tells the story of Pin-wen and Xiao Jing, mother and daughter who, despite previously living a life of comfort, are now dealt with unfavorable circumstances (exacerbated but not entirely caused by the pandemic). Now, they are forced to navigate life with only each other, and it’s in the isolation they instate from the rest of the world do they forge a genuine and heartwrenching bond any and all family members will immediately recognize and perhaps even sympathize with. 

69. She Said (2022)

best

8.0

Country

United States of America

Director

Female director, Maria Schrader

Actors

Adam Shapiro, Alex Hurt, Anastasia Barzee, Andre Braugher

Moods

A-list actors, Discussion-sparking, Dramatic

In 2017, the New York Times published a groundbreaking report by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey that detailed, for the first time, Harvey Weinstein’s atrocious history of sexual abuse. The New Yorker would release Ronan Farrow’s report five days after, prompting multiple survivors to share their own stories—and the rest, as you know, is history. Following Kantor and Twohey (played by Zoe Kazan and Carey Mulligan, respectively), She Said sheds light on how this pivotal moment in the establishment of the #MeToo movement came to be.

Based on Kantor and Twohey’s book of the same name, the film reveals the specific journalistic processes involved in writing this expose—a seemingly impossible feat, considering Weinstein’s hold over multiple industries, including the press. Because it’s a newsroom drama, there’s a lot of talking, but there’s also a lot of listening. Gripping, empathetic, and (even now) necessary, She Said makes for a thrilling watch.

70. Holy Spider (2022)

best

8.0

Country

Denmark, France, Germany

Director

Ali Abbasi

Actors

Alice Rahimi, Arash Ashtiani, Ariane Naziri, Majd Eid

Moods

Challenging, Depressing, Discussion-sparking

As a crime thriller, Holy Spider is taut and terrifying, a modern noir that manages to unnerve despite the familiar moves it employs. The cat and mouse chase between serial killer and investigative reporter, for instance, is a classic tale, but that doesn’t make Holy Spider any less gripping. The film benefits from artful camerawork, considered acting (as the daring journalist Rahimi, Zar Amir Ebrahimi nabbed the Best Actress award at Cannes), and most of all a nuanced take on the situation in Iran. 

Despite having a clear stance against violence and corruption, nothing in Holy Spider is black and white. Contradictions abound, and even when presented with brief moments of justice, we’re left scratching our heads looking for more. Such is the case when the system, and not just an individual, is the true pest. 

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