Sixty of the Best Movies Directed by Women Available on Stream

A lonely widowed housewife does her daily chores, takes care of her apartment where she lives with her teenage son, and turns the occasional trick to make ends meet. Slowly, her ritualized daily routines begin to fall apart.

The film does require patience. It’s just under three and a half hours and the camera never moves.

This movie was named the best of all time in the British Film Insitute's 2022 “Sight and Sound” poll.

Rebbe Mendel is a single father who teaches the Talmud, a sacred text of Judaism, to the boys of his small Polish town. Behind closed doors, he also instructs his daughter, Yentl, despite the fact that girls are forbidden to study religious scripture. When Yentl’s father dies, she still has a strong desire to learn about her faith — so she disguises herself as a male, enrolls in a religious school, and unexpectedly finds love along the way.

In Los Angeles, a gang of bank robbers who call themselves The Ex-Presidents commit their crimes while wearing masks of Reagan, Carter, Nixon and Johnson. Believing that the members of the gang could be surfers, the F.B.I. sends young agent Johnny Utah to the beach undercover to mix with the surfers and gather information.

In 1902, an African-American family living on a sea island off the coast of South Carolina prepares to move to the North.

With their father away as a chaplain in the Civil War, Jo, Meg, Beth and Amy grow up with their mother in somewhat reduced circumstances. They are a close family who inevitably have their squabbles and tragedies. But the bond holds even when, later, male friends start to become a part of the household.

Waxing nostalgic about the bittersweet passage from childhood to puberty, four childhood girlfriends — Teeny, Chrissy, Samantha and Roberta — recall the magical summer of 1970. During their walk down memory lane, they reconcile experiences with boys, secrets, bullies and more.

Set in the 22nd century, The Matrix tells the story of a computer hacker who joins a group of underground insurgents fighting the vast and powerful computers who now rule the earth.

Diana Guzman begins to train as a boxer and achieves impressive success, blazing new trails for female boxers, all while keeping it a secret from her father.

Two lost souls visiting Tokyo — the young, neglected wife of a photographer and a washed-up movie star shooting a TV commercial — find an odd solace and pensive freedom to be real in each other’s company, away from their lives in America.

When young dockworker Jude leaves Liverpool to find his estranged father in the United States, he is swept up by the waves of change that are re-shaping the nation. Jude falls in love with Lucy, who joins the growing anti-war movement. As the body count in Vietnam rises, political tensions at home spiral out of control and the star-crossed lovers find themselves in a psychedelic world gone mad.

When Bella Swan moves to a small town in the Pacific Northwest, she falls in love with Edward Cullen, a mysterious classmate who reveals himself to be a 108-year-old vampire. Despite Edward’s repeated cautions, Bella can’t stay away from him, a fatal move that endangers her own life.

After discovering her father put their house up for his bail bond and then disappeared, 17-year-old Ree Dolly must confront the local criminal underworld and the harsh Ozark wilderness in order to to track down her father and save her family.

A Brooklyn teenager juggles conflicting identities and risks friendship, heartbreak, and family in a desperate search for sexual expression.

Canadian actress and filmmaker Sarah Polley investigates certain secrets related to her mother, interviewing a group of family members and friends whose reliability varies depending of their implication in the events, which are remembered in different ways; so a trail of questions remains to be answered, because memory is always changing and the discovery of truth often depends on who is telling the tale.

Minnie Goetze is a 15-year-old aspiring comic-book artist, coming of age in the haze of the 1970s in San Francisco. Insatiably curious about the world around her, Minnie is a pretty typical teenage girl. Oh, except that she’s sleeping with her mother’s boyfriend.

An Amazon princess comes to the world of Man in the grips of the First World War to confront the forces of evil and bring an end to human conflict.

Arranged to marry a rich man, young Ada is crushed when her true love goes missing at sea during a migration attempt — until a miracle reunites them.

At the end of the 18th century, a female painter is hired to paint a wedding portrait of a young woman. But there are a couple of problems: the woman doesn’t want to get married and she doesn’t want to pose for a painting. What follows is a masterpiece of cinema. The painter studies her subject and her subject studies back.

The film draws the two women closer and closer before the inevitable separation. And through the prism of art (paintings, music, and even mythological stories), we see the relationship change, even after it’s finished.

The movie will churn up your old lost loves and force you to reexamine them. “Do all lovers feel they’re inventing something?” one character asks. If there’s a better way to describe falling in love, we haven’t heard it.

Trust the critics and take the leap. This is one film you shouldn’t miss.

Years of carrying out death row executions have taken a toll on prison warden Bernadine Williams. As she prepares to execute another inmate, Bernadine must confront the psychological and emotional demons her job creates, ultimately connecting her to the man she is sanctioned to kill.

A crew of savvy former strip club employees band together to turn the tables on their Wall Street clients.

Natasha Romanoff, also known as Black Widow, confronts the darker parts of her ledger when a dangerous conspiracy with ties to her past arises. Pursued by a force that will stop at nothing to bring her down, Natasha must deal with her history as a spy and the broken relationships left in her wake long before she became an Avenger.

When the Emperor of China issues a decree that one man per family must serve in the Imperial Chinese Army to defend the country from Huns, Hua Mulan, the eldest daughter of an honored warrior, steps in to take the place of her ailing father. She is spirited, determined and quick on her feet. Disguised as a man by the name of Hua Jun, she is tested every step of the way and must harness her innermost strength and embrace her true potential.

A woman in her sixties (Frances McDormand) embarks on a journey through the western United States after losing everything in the Great Recession, living as a van-dwelling modern-day nomad.

The film won three Oscars: Best Picture, Best Director (Chloé Zhao), and Best Actress (McDormand).

In the aftermath of Cassius Clay’s defeat of Sonny Liston in 1964, the boxer meets with Malcolm X, Sam Cooke and Jim Brown to change the course of history in the segregated South.

A famous horror writer finds inspiration for her next book after she and her husband take in a young couple.

Jackie Justice is a mixed martial arts fighter who leaves the sport in disgrace. Down on her luck and simmering with rage and regret years after the fight, she’s coaxed into a brutal underground fight by her manager and boyfriend Desi and grabs the attention of a fight league promoter who promises Jackie a life back in the Octagon. But the road to redemption becomes unexpectedly personal when Manny - the son she gave up as an infant - shows up at her doorstep. A triumphant story of a fighter who reclaims her power, in and out of the ring, when everyone has counted her out

A domineering but charismatic rancher wages a war of intimidation on his brother’s new wife and her teen son, until long-hidden secrets come to light.

In 1920s New York City, a Black woman finds her world upended when her life becomes intertwined with a former childhood friend who’s passing as white.

The rise of Aretha Franklin’s career from a child singing in her father’s church’s choir to her international superstardom.