Films We Should All Watch at Least Once in Our Lives

Selected by International Film Critics

Spanish Version of this Article Here

Women’s Day is celebrated in different ways around the world. In some places, it’s about celebrating women and giving them flowers or presents. But in countries like Mexico, it often means taking to the streets, marching, raising our voices, and demanding our rights.

And beyond the fight to stay alive, a conversation we will have another day, we are also still fighting to be seen. To have our work recognized, our voices heard, and our contributions acknowledged across different industries, including cinema.

That’s why, in this collaboration between Femalematography and Lumbre Cinema, we wanted to open a small space for dialogue and discovery. We invited film critics from different parts of the world to share the films that have marked them the most.

The only conditions were simple: that the films be directed by women, and that at least one of them come from their own country.

Here are their three top choices:

Kathy Ou (China)

1. I Am Another You (EUA-China, dir. Nanfu Wang) 

Coming upon this quietly poetic and adventurous movie by the Chinese American documentary filmmaker Nanfu Wang during the cloistered, arbitrary time of the early pandemic as a foreign college student was everything I needed. Wang, most known for her unique brand of investigative and personal documentaries critical of authoritarian regimes, films herself as a 26-year-old fresh-off-the-boat international student going on a solo trip in Florida only to camp and pick leftover pizzas from dumpsters for food with a young and charming homeless guy. Wang’s yearning for freedom, her curiosity for the world, and the bond and understanding she shared with Dylan are so moving as well as thoughtfully presented. This is often the least known of Nanfu Wang’s oeuvre but the best and tenderest to my heart. 

2. A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (EUA, dir. Ana Lily Amirpour)

Like a good pensive young women with lots of pent-up feelings, I love watching women behaving badly on screen. Of them all, Ana Lily Amirpour’s vampire girl in A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night stands out and still haunts me to this day. For any girls out there afraid of the dark like myself, paranoid about being followed once alone out past midnight, recalling the girl gliding down the empty street, casually chewing an apple and dark hijab flying behind, never fails to soothe and convince that a girl can be so cool, so effortless, and so invincible.

3. The Absent (China, dir. Lu Dan) 

Set in the remote city called Tacheng in northwest China’s Uyghur region, the directorial debut of the young Xinjiang-born director Lu Dan is a subtle emotional drama with ample beautiful landscape and dynamic character relations. A young Han Chinese woman lands in Tacheng in search of her father; an estranged Russian photographer returns home after a long time away; a local Tatar hotel owner and accordionist sits at his room alone all day away from his family. The film’s naturalistic and unimposing frames underline the quiet connections these strangers share, their limited nature emphasizing the universal themes of leaving and returning that each deals in their own way. This is one of the best feature films I’ve watched from a new director in recent years, and I’d be thrilled to watch out for Lu’s  future works.

Fabiana Lima (Brasil)

1.Vida de mãe é assim mesmo? (Brasil, dir. Eunice Gutman)

One of Brazil’s most celebrated documentary filmmakers, Eunice Gutman reflects on motherhood and the struggle for safe and legal abortion. It’s from 1983, but it could just as easily be from 2026.

2. Os Homens Que Eu Tive (Brasil, dir. Tereza Trautman)

What draws me most to this witty work by Trautman is the courage to make a film celebrating a woman’s romantic and sexual freedom in the midst of Brazil’s military dictatorship.

3. A Entrevista (Brasil, dir. Helena Solberg)

Conservatism is a plague that perpetuates itself across all social classes, among both men and women. This short documentary shows it with striking clarity.

Kui Mwai (Kenia)

1. Rafiki (Kenya, dir. Wanuri Kahiu)

An intimate queer love story that was wildly ahead of its time. A refreshing and grounded story about two women who find love in what feels like a hopeless place. 

2. A Thousand And One (US, dir. A.V. Rockwell)

An electric and moving ode to New York City and its people. A worthy reintroduction to the many talents of Teyana Taylor. 

3. Rye Lane (UK, dir. Raine Allen-Miller)

A rom-com that breathes new life into the genre. Full of life and a feast for the eyes. A stunning debut for Raine Allen-Miller.

Mónica Delgado (Perú)

1. Suco de sábado (Argentina, Ana Poliak)

A perfect short film: a mother from a marginal neighborhood has a night job. Her young son also has his own nighttime routines with street kids. Poliak constructs a parallel narrative of filial tenderness from an Oedipal perspective, through careful direction and sound design (given the way the 21st century has unfolded, something like this could hardly even be filmed today). An idea of motherhood stripped of sublimation.

2. Cidade; Campo (Brazil, Juliana Rojas)

In this feature film, Juliana Rojas develops two mirrored storylines that complement each other through their oppositions and differences. The weight of the countryside, of nature, of ancestors who live forever in that land, displaces the coldness and pragmatism of life in large cities. Another way of living among women.

3. Antuca (Peru, María Barea)

A film about the world of a domestic worker: she does not fall in love with the employer, she is not a substitute maternal figure, nor is she the sacrificial or clumsy woman. It is a film that borders on non-fiction and avoids the usual clichés of films about domestic workers. A valuable and historic work, recently restored, that speaks to labor struggles, the sense of community among women, and the importance of returning to one’s place of origin.

Ranjita Ganesan (India)

1. Bhaji on the Beach (Reino Unido, dir. Gurinder Chadha)

Early on in this movie, one of the characters declares “Let’s have a female fun time!”, and that’s precisely what director Gurinder Chadha and writer Meera Syal deliver. A group of British Indian women decide to take a jaunt to the beach, but they can't seem to catch a day’s break from sexism, racism, and cultural clashes. I first watched this dramedy while at university in London, 25 whole years after its release, and it still felt fresh then. Chadha makes you empathise with diaspora South Asians, warts and all.

2. Sparsh (India, dir. Sai Paranjpye)

Sai Paranjpye is among India’s pioneering female filmmakers and this one ranks among the strongest debuts I can think of. She tends to inform her characters, especially their moments of desire and insecurity, with enviable playfulness. Sparsh is as much a love story as it is a social drama. The protagonist, the visually impaired dean of a blind school, meets and eventually falls for a sighted singer. Where sound, scent, and touch draw him closer to her, we sense how this closeness also brings her the gift of feeling ‘seen’ rather than ‘gazed’ at.

3. The Hidden Half (Iran, Tahmineh Milani)

The Hidden Half is important, not least because Tahmineh Milani was arrested for making it. This quiet drama, which I first came aross during my masters in Iranian Studies, helped me appreciate how revolutions can devour their own: Specifically, how the Iranian revolution failed the generation of young women who helped bring it about. Through the many betrayals Milani’s protagonist experiences, emerges a picture of the multitudes women contain.

Daniela García Juárez (México)

1. Je Tu Il Elle (Belgium–France, dir. Chantal Akerman)

As a woman and a lesbian viewer, the cinema of Chantal Akerman has felt like a breath of fresh air for a body that has always felt blurred and disoriented within the margins that outline the world. The images in Je Tu Il Elle present queerness as an experience that exists beyond identity, but rather as an intimate experience of emotional disorder and bodily dissidence. Its images move through bodies that make a world from negation, misencounter, and desire that has not been institutionally legitimized. Her cinema reminds me that the languages of film are white and heterosexual, because Akerman’s images are not written in that code — they challenge it, twist it, and reinvent it, allowing queer bodies watching from their trenches to feel seen and named with aesthetic precision for the first time.

2. Apolonia, Apolonia (Denmark–Poland, dir. Lea Glob)

Lea Glob’s documentary looks at Apolonia’s story with extreme attention to what truly matters: her artistic career grows, advances, stalls, blurs, and reinvents itself, but what Lea is ultimately interested in is life itself. Affection. The transformations of character and ideas. Loss. Art as a mirror of life — that is what this documentary is. A perceptive portrait of what shapes our identities, articulated with the glue of time.

3. M. (Mexico, dir. Eva Villaseñor)

M. taught me that even the most sordid and painful experiences, such as a loved one’s addiction, can exceed their place as trauma when narrated through cinema: like a mosaic of lights and shadows that interweave and play with one another, asking permission to weave together ideas and gestures that are both gentle and daring. That it is possible to say nothing concrete while still exploring what hurts from a deeply acknowledged root. Eva Villaseñor’s cinema left a mark on me because it speaks of the deepest truth without even naming it, because it knows exactly where to place the camera to unravel what reality hides.

We discovered many filmmakers who are now firmly on our must-watch list, and we hope these recommendations help you discover them too.

And of course, take some time to explore the work of these wonderful critics who generously shared their lists with us.

You can read the Spanish version of this article on Lumbre Cinema.