Shortly after the Golden Globes nominations were announced earlier this month, the advocacy group Women in Film took to social media, decrying the "shocking" omission of critically acclaimed female directors, citing Sarah Polley ("Women Talking"), Gina Prince-Bythewood ("The Woman King"), Chinonye Chukwu ("Till") and Maria Schrader ("She Said").
It might be more surprising that anyone is still taking anything the Hollywood Foreign Press Association does seriously these days after years of scandal and upheaval. But let's put that aside for now. The Women in Film List is fine but incomplete, overlooking the directorial work of several women behind the year's most acclaimed movies. Not all of these films have gone into wide release — most of them never will — but they should be available to Oscar voters as we enter the winter break, home-viewing discovery phase of the awards season.
So here's a list of 10 exceptional movies from women directors this year, all scoring higher on review aggregator Metacritic than the films from Golden Globe-nominated directors James Cameron ("Avatar: The Way of Water") and Baz Luhrmann ("Elvis").
