Films Directed by Women

A look at the search for the fabled Northwest passage, the legendary path through the ice across the Canadian Arctic, and the attempts made by wealthy British explorer Sir John Franklin and penniless Norwegian Roald Amundsen.

"Pills Profits Protest" is a documentary about global AIDS treatment activism. It examines the national and international grass roots response to an epidemic that has already overshadowed the Black Death in terms of human lives lost.

Bill Goodman is a celebrated psychiatrist who leads a double life: he has a wife and daughter in New York; at the same time, the bigamist has another wife in London. Despite his long absences both families lived in domestic bliss, until one day the wives find out about each other and team up to turn on the man who so cunningly made everyone happy for so long...

After leaving his wife and his job to find happiness, Anders begins a clumsy, heartbreaking quest to reassemble the pieces of his fractured life.

Mohammad Javad Halimi is a simple government's employer who manages after years to buy a house for himself outside the city's limits. But in the second night in his new house a thief is coming to his house. He manages to catch the thief but delivering him to the authorities is another story.

A documentary about life and career of an eighty-year-old Iranian actress, Iran Daftari.

Drama and documentary are combined in this stylish and ambitious film, in which 3000 local people took part. The film delves into the complexities of rebuilding a city, showing frustrations along the way as well as vivid scenes of family life in trying circumstances.

A searing documentary about the homeless people and shantytown dwellers of Tehran that has been banned.

Aboard the top deck of a cruise ship, Baran, a young wealthy girl, notices a native boy who is dancing joyfully to beating drums. Baran arrives at a plush hotel on the mainland, however she seems somewhat disconsolate. Later she finds the native boy again and they begin to bond, playfully exploring the beach resort together. Later, the two go aboard a row-boat and the native dives down into the water to collect a pearl from the seabed for her. However, the ending leaves the audience to wonder if he was a figment of Baran's longing imagination all along. Well-shot and with a strong performance from Baran Kosari, this film perfectly captures the bittersweet pangs of young love.

Originally titled simply Decimo Clandestino, this Lina Wertmuller "miniature" began life as an Italian TV drama. Piera Degli Esposti plays the widowed, impoverished mother of a huge farm family. The woman moves her nine children to Bologna, where their living conditions are deplorable. To avoid a hike in rent, she tells her landlady (Dominique Sanda) that she is living alone. Also known as To Save Nine (a curiously brief English-language title for a Wertmuller film!), IL Decimo Clandestino was expanded from 60 to 90 minutes for its theatrical release.

The first uncensored documentary about the Soviet Union ever made by an outsider. The film takes viewers to 12 of the 15 states of the former USSR.

On his way out of a wedding, a young boy named Peachskin finds a jewel by chance. Bringing it back to its owner, she becomes his benefactress in the years that pass.

A 30-year-old bachelor who refuses to leave his house strikes up a relationship with a neurotic neighbor.

The film consists of continuous panning shots up a series of 367 human legs.

Sophie de Réan, an unruly mischievous little girl grows up under the thumb of Mademoiselle, her strict governess. Following her mother's death, she is entrusted to Mme de Fleurville, her aunt, who at the same time hires Mademoiselle to further Sophie's education. A few years later, the little girl has blossomed into a lovely young lady. She is now in love with Paul, her cousin, who, unlike her, used to be a model child. Unfortunately Mademoiselle will not hear of a union between them. Instead she wants Sophie to marry Armand, the conceited son of Prefect Hugon. To make matters worse, Paul, the good boy, unexpectedly turns into a revolutionary, who defends the Republic on the barricades against Louis Napoléon's coup. Not being one of the victors, Paul is forced into exile. Will Sophie finally yield and accept the established order or will she react in her usual rebellious way and follow the one she loves ?

A Parisian museum director believes his wife has lost interest in him and so places a poisoned cigarette in the box on his desk - thus allowing chance to decide the moment of his death.

Devotion investigates the extremely complex and heirarchical relationships among a committed group of Japanese filmmakers who dedicated up to 30 years of their lives making films for one man-Ogawa Shinsuke. Members of Ogawa Pro filmed the student movement of the late 60's; the fight by farmers to save their land from government confiscaton for the Narita airport at Sanrizuka; and the village life of a small farming community, Magino Village, in northern Japan. These heartbreaking and sometimes funny stories have never been told on film before. Rare footage, stills, and diaries with interviews with Oshima Nagisa, Hara Kazuo and Robert Kramer make this historical inquiry visually exciting as well as valuable.

Drama about a happily married career woman who falls victim to a management power play involving sexual harassment by her sports-equipment company's in-house lawyer.