TAGGED AS: movies, Netflix, women, Women's History Month
(Photo by Netflix/ courtesy Everett Collection)
35 Best Movies Directed by Women on Netflix
Discover and watch the best movies directed by women on Netflix: Everything featured on this list is Certified Fresh! Netflix has long courted women directors, using their streaming platform to curate and highlight artists who may have encountered roadblocks on the long, hard road to theatrical distribution. Among Netflix’s critically acclaimed original movies include Homecoming: A Film by Beyonce, Dee Rees’ Mudbound, Nahnatchka Khan’s Always Be My Maybe, Tamara Jenkins’ Private Life, and Gina Prince-Bythewood’s The Old Guard. Rounding out the collection are licensed movies like Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird.
Read on to find the best movies directed by women on Netflix! —Alex Vo
#35
Adjusted Score: 78086%
Critics Consensus: An English remake of Ang Lee's Eat Drink Man Woman, Tortilla Soup is as charming and flavorful as the dishes it features.
Synopsis: Three grown sisters, Maribel (Tamara Mello), Leticia (Elizabeth Peña) and Carmen (Jacqueline Obradors) try to cope and live with their...
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#34
Adjusted Score: 85934%
Critics Consensus: Boosted by Meryl Streep's charismatic performance as Julia Child, Julie and Julia is a light, but fairly entertaining culinary comedy.
Synopsis: Frustrated with a soul-killing job, New Yorker Julie Powell (Amy Adams) embarks on a daring project: she vows to prepare...
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#33
Adjusted Score: 88988%
Critics Consensus: American Honey offers a refreshingly unconventional take on the coming-of-age drama whose narrative risks add up to a rewarding experience even if they don't all pay off.
Synopsis: Star (Sasha Lane), an adolescent girl from a troubled home, runs away with a traveling sales crew that drives across...
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#32
Adjusted Score: 96683%
Critics Consensus: The Old Guard is occasionally restricted by genre conventions, but director Gina Prince-Bythewood brings a sophisticated vision to the superhero genre - and some knockout action sequences led by Charlize Theron.
Synopsis: A group of mercenaries, all centuries-old immortals with the ablity to heal themselves, discover someone is onto their secret, and...
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#31
Adjusted Score: 90119%
Critics Consensus: Elevated by a solid soundtrack and a terrific cast, Dumplin' offers sweetly uplifting drama that adds just enough new ingredients to a reliably comforting formula.
Synopsis: The plus-size, teenage daughter of a former beauty queen signs up for her mom's pageant as a protest that escalates...
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#30
Adjusted Score: 90648%
Critics Consensus: The Breaker Upperers brings the laughs early and often, thanks to the dry wit -- and effervescent chemistry -- of writer-director-star duo Jackie van Beek and Madeleine Sami.
Synopsis: Two cynical women create an agency that helps break up couples in an attempt to avoid moving on with their...
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#29
Adjusted Score: 93596%
Critics Consensus: Carried by the infectious charms of Ali Wong and Randall Park, Always Be My Maybe takes familiar rom-com beats and cleverly layers in smart social commentary to find its own sweet groove.
Synopsis: Childhood sweethearts have a falling out and don't speak for 15 years. They reconnect as adults when Sasha runs into...
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#28
Adjusted Score: 91683%
Critics Consensus: What Happened, Miss Simone? is a compelling -- albeit necessarily incomplete -- overview of its complex subject's singular artistic legacy and fascinating life.
Synopsis: Classically trained pianist, dive-bar chanteuse, black power icon and legendary recording artist Nina Simone lived a life of brutal honesty,...
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#27
Adjusted Score: 93597%
Critics Consensus: Tender performances and a strong sense of style combine to create an eccentric, dreamy portrait of love and loneliness in On Body and Soul.
Synopsis: When a man and woman who meet at work begin to know each other, they discover that they have the...
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#26
Adjusted Score: 95002%
Critics Consensus: Elevated by a bravura performance from Maggie Gyllenhaal, The Kindergarten Teacher is one American remake that retains its impact the second time around.
Synopsis: A teacher sees such great promise in her 5-year-old student that she goes to unreasonable lengths to protect his talent....
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#25
Adjusted Score: 95413%
Critics Consensus: Happy as Lazzaro uses a friendship's ups and downs as a satisfyingly expansive canvas for a picture rich with thematic and cinematic depth.
Synopsis: Lazzaro, a good-hearted young peasant, and Tancredi, a young nobleman cursed by his imagination, form a life-altering bond when Tancredi...
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#24
Adjusted Score: 95934%
Critics Consensus: Miss Americana provides an engaging if somewhat deliberately opaque backstage look at a pop star turned cultural phenomenon.
Synopsis: Pop singer Taylor Swift reveals intimate details of her life while showcasing backstage and onstage concert footage....
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#23
Adjusted Score: 94648%
Critics Consensus: Set It Up follows the long-established outlines of the rom-com template -- and in the process, proves there's still substantial pleasure to be wrought from familiar formulas.
Synopsis: Two overworked and underpaid assistants come up with a plan to get their bosses off their backs by setting them...
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#22
Adjusted Score: 94157%
Critics Consensus: Sand Storm marks an impressive first feature for debuting writer-director Elite Zexer that offers a perceptive -- and crucial -- look at patriarchal traditions.
Synopsis: In Southern Israel, a teen's (Lamis Ammar) forbidden love affair challenges the traditions of her Bedouin mother and father....
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#21
Adjusted Score: 99237%
Critics Consensus: Private Life uses one couple's bumpy journey to take an affecting look at an easily identifiable - and too rarely dramatized - rite of adult passage.
Synopsis: A couple coping with infertility struggle to keep their marriage going as they navigate through the world of adoption and...
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#20
Adjusted Score: 98053%
Critics Consensus: Natalia Dyer's charming performance -- and writer-director Karen Maine's sensitive work -- will leave audiences saying Yes, God, Yes to this coming-of-age dramedy.
Synopsis: A Catholic girl finds herself having tempting thoughts after an AOL chat turns unexpectedly racy....
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#19
Adjusted Score: 97770%
Critics Consensus: Brilliantly brought to life by tenderly empathetic performances from Jay Duplass and Edie Falco, Outside In tells a sobering -- yet thoroughly absorbing -- story.
Synopsis: An ex-convict tries to readjust to life in his small town and forms an intense relationship with his former high...
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#18
Adjusted Score: 99119%
Critics Consensus: To All the Boys I've Loved Before plays by the teen rom-com rules, but relatable characters and a thoroughly charming cast more than make up for a lack of surprises.
Synopsis: A teenage girl's love letters are exposed and wreak havoc on her life....
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#17
Adjusted Score: 99204%
Critics Consensus: American Factory takes a thoughtful -- and troubling -- look at the dynamic between workers and employers in the 21st-century globalized economy.
Synopsis: In post-industrial Ohio, a Chinese billionaire opens a new factory in the husk of an abandoned General Motors plant. Early...
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#16
Adjusted Score: 103842%
Critics Consensus: An unpredictable supernatural drama rooted in real-world social commentary, Atlantique suggests a thrillingly bright future for debuting filmmaker Mati Diop.
Synopsis: Arranged to marry a rich man, young Ada is crushed when her true love goes missing at sea during a...
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#15
Adjusted Score: 102368%
Critics Consensus: For viewers in search of an uncommonly smart, tender, and funny coming-of-age story, The Half of It has everything.
Synopsis: A shy, introverted student helps the school jock woo a girl whom, secretly, they both want....
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#14
Adjusted Score: 99942%
Critics Consensus: Pick of the Litter has all the fluffy adorableness audiences expect from a puppy documentary, along with a story that's as edifying as it is heartwarming.
Synopsis: Following five spirited puppies from the moment they're born through their quest to become guide dogs for the blind....
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Starring:
#13
Adjusted Score: 101544%
Critics Consensus: 13th strikes at the heart of America's tangled racial history, offering observations as incendiary as they are calmly controlled.
Synopsis: Filmmaker Ava DuVernay explores the history of racial inequality in the United States, focusing on the fact that the nation's...
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#12
Adjusted Score: 107905%
Critics Consensus: Mudbound offers a well-acted, finely detailed snapshot of American history whose scenes of rural class struggle resonate far beyond their period setting.
Synopsis: Set in the rural American South during World War II, Dee Rees' Mudbound is an epic story of two families...
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#11
Adjusted Score: 99694%
Critics Consensus: A fresh, funny coming-of-age story rooted in realistic characters and anchored with a meaningful message, Rocks is as solid as its title suggests.
Synopsis: A London teen takes care of her younger brother after their mother abruptly leaves....
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#10
Adjusted Score: 100078%
Critics Consensus: Beychella forever.
Synopsis: This intimate, in-depth look at Beyoncé's celebrated 2018 Coachella performance reveals the emotional road from creative concept to cultural movement....
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#9
Adjusted Score: 100246%
Critics Consensus: Like the cheekily named store at this documentary's center, Circus of Books proves there are countless stories below the surface if we're only willing to look.
Synopsis: In 1976 a couple take over an adult book store, and the store becomes the biggest distributor of gay porn...
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#8
Adjusted Score: 102068%
Critics Consensus: Whose Streets? takes a close-up look at the civil unrest that erupted after a shocking act of violence in Ferguson, Missouri - and the decades of simmering tension leading up to it.
Synopsis: An account of the Ferguson uprising as told by the people who lived it. The filmmakers look at how the...
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Starring:
#7
Adjusted Score: 106470%
Critics Consensus: The Forty-Year-Old Version opens a compelling window into the ebbs and flows of the artist's life -- and announces writer-director-star Radha Blank as a major filmmaking talent with her feature debut.
Synopsis: Radha, a down-on-her-luck NY playwright, is desperate for a breakthrough before 40. But when she foils what seems like her...
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#6
Adjusted Score: 104044%
Critics Consensus: A galvanizing glimpse behind the scenes of a pivotal election, Knock Down the House should prove engrossing for viewers of all political persuasions.
Synopsis: A young bartender in the Bronx, a coal miner's daughter in West Virginia, a grieving mother in Nevada, and a...
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#5
Adjusted Score: 121633%
Critics Consensus: Lady Bird delivers fresh insights about the turmoil of adolescence -- and reveals writer-director Greta Gerwig as a fully formed filmmaking talent.
Synopsis: A teenager (Saoirse Ronan) navigates a loving but turbulent relationship with her strong-willed mother (Laurie Metcalf) over the course of...
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#4
Adjusted Score: 102295%
Critics Consensus: Shirkers uses one woman's interrogation of a pivotal personal disappointment to offer affecting observations on creativity, lost opportunity, and coming to terms with the past.
Synopsis: In 1992 teenager Sandi Tan shoots Singapore's first road movie with her enigmatic American mentor, Georges, who then absconded with...
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Starring:
#3
Adjusted Score: 102507%
Critics Consensus: The Square offers an electrifying -- and edifying -- ground-level glimpse of life inside a real-life political revolution.
Synopsis: Egyptian revolutionaries battle their leaders and regime to build a new society....
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#2
Adjusted Score: 102711%
Critics Consensus: Harrowing yet essential viewing, Athlete A shines an unforgiving light on horrific abuses -- as well as the culture that allowed them to continue unabated for years.
Synopsis: Reporters from The Indianapolis Star expose Dr. Larry Nassar's sexual abuse of young gymnasts....
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#1
Adjusted Score: 105247%
Critics Consensus: As entertaining as it is inspiring, Crip Camp uses one group's remarkable story to highlight hope for the future and the power of community.
Synopsis: A groundbreaking summer camp galvanizes teens who have disabilities....
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76%
