Despite Hollywood’s reluctance to stop being such a boy’s club and every film bro insisting that the only directors to ever exist are Quentin Tarantino, David Fincher and Christopher Nolan, women have been making and directing films since the beginning of film itself. In fact, it was early innovators like Alice Guy-Blaché who created some of the very first narrative fiction flicks back in the late 1800s. We’ve picked out a few of our favourite movies directed by women down below, which you can add to your watchlist if you haven’t given these flicks a watch yet.

PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE Starting with something French, classy and that’ll break your heart into a million pieces – we guarantee – this Céline Sciamma-directed romance drama period piece follows a painter commissioned to paint the portrait of an 18th-century aristocratic woman and their subsequent and electrifying relationship. It’s always a bit of a gamble to watch something that will make you cry, but we promise that this beautiful story is well worth the tears, not to mention the stellar acting performances of both Noémie Merlant and Adèle Haenel that make this film great.

BODIES BODIES BODIES Now onto something a lot more fun, this 2022 horror comedy stars Rachel Sennott, Pete Davidson, Amandla Stenberg, Maria Bakalova and other famous folk. This movie follows a group of twenty-somethings having a party in a mansion to ride out a hurricane, where things quickly get bonkers and murder ensues – in the most ridiculous way possible. Directed by Halina Reijin, this satirical take on class and privilege reflects Gen-Z attitudes and culture and doesn’t take itself too seriously, and even features an original song made by hyper-pop queen Charli XCX as a bonus.

THE FAREWELL Directed and written by Lulu Wang, this 2019 comedy-drama stars Awkwafina in the starring role as Billi, a Chinese-American woman who is at odds with her family’s desire not to tell her grandmother she is dying of a fatal disease. The film follows Billi travelling alongside her family to China for a large family gathering, used as a disguise to give final goodbyes to the family’s matriarch. It navigates how Billi, who was born in China but spent the majority of her life in the States, is at odds with her family’s collectivist values against her individualistic ones, and it has a lot to say about the immigration experience.

A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT Bouncing quickly back into the horror genre, this 2014 Persian-language horror western (we bet you haven’t watched many of those before) was directed by Ana Lily Amirpour and depicts the life of a lonesome vampire living in the fictional ghost-town of Bad City. It’s shot in black-and-white to give it a mighty spooky feel and has all the markings of a stylish 1940s film noir but with added vampires, which we reckon that even more films should have more of these days.

AFTERSUN OK, we didn’t mean to include yet another heartbreaking film that will make you weep in this list, but it would be completely improper not to mention this 2022 coming-of-age drama that stars Paul Mescal as a young father wanting to hide his mental health struggles from his 11-year-old daughter, played by Francesca Corio. Aftersun is the directorial debut by Charlotte Wells and includes autobiographical elements relating to her relationship with her father, exploring how the rose-coloured glasses of childhood soon give way to complex realisations about the people we love as adults. It will devastate you, but it also has a killer soundtrack.