TSPDT uses some pretty good criteria to ensure that the films on its Best of the 21st Century list represent all of world cinema, and not merely American cinema (even though American films, by virtue of the role Hollywood plays in the global film industry, do comprise a majority of films on the list). Nevertheless, the list really suffers when it comes to highlighting women filmmakers. On this year’s Top 250 list, only 21 films by women appear (listed below, with rank in parentheses and an * indicating the film was co-directed by a man):

• Lost in Translation (16)
• The Gleaners and I (21)
• The Hurt Locker (49)
• The Headless Woman (64)
• Leviathan* (102)
• The Intruder (110)
• La Ciénaga (118)
• 35 Shots of Rum (123)
• Winter’s Bone (126)
• The Holy Girl (127)
• White Material (134)
• Toni Erdmann (139)
• Zero Dark Thirty (143)
• Persepolis* (177)
• The Kids Are All Right (178)
• Wendy and Lucy (182)
• Fat Girl (188)
• Stories We Tell (201)
• Morvern Callar (212)
• Old Joy (221)
• The Arbor (242)

Part of the problem lies no doubt in the methodology TSPDT uses to determine its rankings, though I would place the primary blame on the industry and not this list’s maker. Nevertheless, we can learn a lot from this list itself. For one, there are only 14 unique directors between these 21 films; take away Lucrecia Martel, Kelly Reichardt, and Claire Denis and the list shrinks significantly. For another, these films don’t seem to follow any genre patterns. A pretty broad swath of cinema is represented here in microcosm—we have romantic comedies, documentaries, avant-garde experimental films, war movies, an animated movie, a surrealist comedy. (Notably absent: sci-fi/fantasy, superhero movies, and biopics—unless you count Zero Dark Thirty as a biopic, but that’s a stretch). Thus there’s no reason to believe, as Kathryn Bigelow’s sole Best Director Oscar among women might suggest, that women directors have to play by certain genre rules to get critical attention.

Having now brought all this to your attention, admittedly I don’t have any strong conclusions to draw from it! Clearly, though, the film industry as an international whole has a lot of work to do when it comes to giving women the same opportunities as men to make movies and then have those movies seen by audiences and critics alike. To do my part to try making things a little bit better, I leave you with 20 movies by women that will be released in 2017, for you to add to your watchlists:

• The Bad Batch (Ana Lily Amirpour)
• The Beguiled (Sofia Coppola)
• Berlin Syndrome (Cate Shortland)
• The Bookshop (Isabel Coixet)
• Casting JonBenet (Kitty Green)
• Dark River (Clio Barnard)
• Des lunettes noires (Claire Denis)
• The Graduation (Claire Simon)
• Kings (Deniz Gamze Ergüven)
• Maudie (Aisling Walsh)
• Mudbound (Dee Rees)
• Novitiate (Margaret Betts)
• On Body and Soul (Ildikó Enyedi – winner of Golden Bear at this year’s Berlin Film Festival)
• The Party (Sally Potter)
• Raw (Julia Ducournau)
• Untitled Detroit Project (Kathryn Bigelow)
• Wonder Woman (Patty Jenkins)
• You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay)
• Zama (Lucrecia Martel)
• The Zookeeper’s Wife (Niki Caro)

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Articles, News, and Interviews

It’s not all about the directors, though: producer Christine Vachon talks the difficulties she’s had as a female producer (and one who takes frequent chances on women-led or LGBT-friendly films, no less) and how the success of Still Alice is putting her daughter through college.

Barry Jenkins and Damien Chazelle sit down for an interview together the morning after the Oscars shocker: “It’s weird to be friendly with someone but to feel like there’s a mano-a-mano thing, which I guess is the nature of the Oscars. So it was nice to explode that myth a little bit on a big stage.”

What do Iranians think of Asghar Farhadi’s movies back home?

People on the internet were talking about a review of a new book about Casablanca last week as though the review said or did something egregiously dumb but I read the thing and couldn’t quite place the criticism; here, go read it and see if you can clue me in on what I’m missing.

A study ranks American actors’ British accents and vice versa. Earning top honors: Chiwetel Ejiofor in 12 Years a Slave and Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady. 

Roger Ebert gave out about 60 or so zero-star reviews in his lifetime of viewing several thousands of movies. Naturally, he had some choice words for all of them: “Pink Flamingos appeals to that part of our psyches in which we are horny teenagers at the county fair with fresh dollar bills in our pockets, and a desire to see the geek show with a bunch of buddies, so that we can brag about it at school on Monday.”

Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman is going to Netflix. He still wants you to see movies in theaters, though.