The Best Female-Directed Movies Of The Decade

(This article is part of our Best of the Decade series.)

The 2010s were a banner decade for female directors. Despite the still abysmally low number of women working behind the camera, women directors have made significant strides in Hollywood and across the globe, earning as much or even more acclaim — and now, as much money — as their male counterparts.

In just the past decade, which came off of Kathryn Bigelow becoming the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Director, Greta Gerwig became the new generation's rising star, Patty Jenkins became the highest-paid female director working in Hollywood, and acclaimed indie filmmakers like Chloe Zhao and Ava DuVernay used their weight to land high-profile superhero jobs or boost other rising diverse directors. We still have a long way to go, but the glass ceiling has already started to accumulate plenty of cracks.

So without further ado, here are the best female directed movies of the decade, listed in alphabetical order.

In The Breadwinner, director Nora Twomey uses soft, gorgeous animation to mask a savagely harsh story about a young girl living under Taliban rule who must fend for her family after her father is arrested. Thrilling, horrifying, and enchanting by equal measure, The Breadwinner is both a fable and a portrait of a far-too-harsh reality.

Based on the wild but true story of director Lulu Wang's family's decision to hide a cancer diagnosis from her grandmother, The Farewell is a frank, funny, and emotionally uplifting tale of family grief. Led by Awkwafina's stunning turn as a Chinese-American caught between two worlds, The Farewell is one of the most nuanced depictions of that cultural clash between diasporic and homeland Asians put to the screen.

A comedy-drama film directed by Lisa Cholodenko, The Kids Are All Right was among the first mainstream movies to show a same-sex couple raising two teenagers. Julianne Moore and Annette Bening star as longtime lesbian couple whose adopted children surprise them with the revelation that they've found their biological father. A witty and warm exploration of found family, The Kids Are All Right is more than alright.

A quietly moving and profound portrait of the burdens we bear and the trauma we can't afford to share, Leave No Trace is a l0w-key survivalist film about a PTSD-suffering father (Ben Foster) who lives in the forest with his young daughter (Thomasin McKenzie). Debra Granik never sensationalizes her portrait of broken America, instead delivering a haunting, achingly beautiful father-daughter film.

A contemplative and dreamy take on the American Western, The Rider is a stunning achievement by director Chloe Zhao, whose acclaim eventually earned her the attention of Marvel Studios for their cosmic project The Eternals. But before she was headed to space, Zhao achieved a spectacular intimacy with The Rider, which follows a rising star of the rodeo circuit who is forced to retire after an accident leaves him brain-damaged.

The offbeat German-Austrian comedy is an absurd and oddly affecting character study smoothly directed by Maren Ade. Starring Peter Simonischek and Sandra Hüller, Toni Erdmann follows a divorced music teacher with a passion for pranks who visits his business consultant daughter and shakes up her life by taking on several bizarre personas. Toni Erdmann is a weird, wildly funny treat of a movie whose three-hour runtime flies by.

A lean, mean action film that withholds any sense of catharsis, You Were Never Really Here upends our expectations for the hitman thriller and instead delivers a haunting portrait of a man (Joaquin Phoenix) worn down by the violence of life. In her typically brutal directing style, Lynne Ramsay puts us on an edge that we never get down from, and teases a peace that will never come.