Winner of the Audience Award for Best Feature at the 2025 Berlinale, Eva Libertad's debut film portrays a Deaf woman on the cusp of motherhood.

Marina de Van’s deeply personal debut about a young woman's addiction to self-mutilation stretches the body horror genre in new ways.

Three young women explore love and sex in this spirited coming-of-age drama, which won the World Cinema Dramatic Audience Award at Sundance 2022.

Rose Byrne gives a mesmerising, Oscar-nominated performance as an overwhelmed mother, in Mary Bronstein’s nerve-shredding comedy-thriller-horror.

Rome, 1946. A woman finds the courage to challenge her violent marriage and seek out a different future in Cortellesi's extraordinary, magical debut.

Jessica Hynes’ directorial debut is a life-affirming lesson in the importance of learning to stand up for yourself.

Queer sisterhood and collective power lie at the heart of this arresting Brazilian debut, in which a promising volleyball player faces an unwanted pregnancy.

Emergency workers receive a call from five-year-old Hind Rajab. Using real-life audio recordings, this film recreates the desperate mission to save her.

Existence is laid bare in Kristen Johnson’s soul-stirring portrait of human life, told through the eyes of a filmmaker's trusty camera.

A woman battles addiction and abuse in Kristen Stewart’s uncompromising depiction of love, trauma and artistic self-expression.

Existence is laid bare in Kristen Johnson’s soul-stirring portrait of human life, told through the eyes of a filmmaker's trusty camera.

Tatiana Huezo’s poetic documentary captures a holistic view of the rhythms of life in a remote Mexican village.

1980s borstal drama – billed as the female Scum – featuring Amanda York and Kathy Burke as inmates in a ruthless women’s prison.

Two British teenagers attempt to travel to Syria in this compassionate and thought-provoking road film, inspired by a true story.

Gripping drama in which a nurse finds herself caught in a race against time during an unrelenting night shift.

A ferocious dystopian nightmare, this was the first film directed by a Black British woman to receive a UK theatrical release.

A cash-strapped student becomes an escort exposing the stark realities of economic exploitation in this uncompromising gritty French drama.

All We Imagine as Light director Payal Kapadia’s bold and distinctive feature debut explores the political climate of contemporary India.

Florence Pugh's first film teams her with Maisie Williams as teenage friends at a school cursed by mystery sickness.

Akerman’s debut feature, with its 10-minute lesbian sex scene, revealed its maker to be a radical and uncompromising force in cinema.

Samantha Morton plays the enigmatic title character in Lynne Ramsay’s dreamy and atmospheric road movie.

Claire Denis' fully formed debut offers a child’s-eye-view of racial and sexual tension that bubbles with unspoken desires.

Chantal Akerman's magnificent epic of experimental cinema offering a feminist perspective on recurrent events of everyday life.

A young girl experiences the turmoil of love and friendship in this nuanced coming-of-age tale with echoes of Céline Sciamma.

Unfolding against the stunning backdrop of a remote Italian village, Maura Delpero’s film is a hauntingly beautiful period tale of a family gradually torn apart.

Payal Kapadia’s Cannes Grand Prix-winning portrait of three women is a transcendent tale of love and sisterhood.

Sight and Sound's 2019 film of the year is the compelling, semi-autobiographical drama from acclaimed writer-director Joanna Hogg.

A housewife-turned-cop is sucked into a high-profile case that has polarised the local community in this taut, north India-set thriller.

Gripping account of repressed sexual desire in a masculine environment, with British newcomer Harris Dickinson as a virulently macho Brooklyn teen.

Saoirse Ronan gives a bracing performance as a young recovering alcoholic returning home to Orkney in this moving adaptation of Amy Liptrot’s memoir.

Three stage actresses starring in Aristophanes’ classic play Lysistrata start to draw parallels with their own lives in Mai Zetterling’s feminist comedy.

Clio Barnard's film about Bradford playwright Andrea Dunbar mixes reconstruction, interviews (performed by actors) and scenes from the plays.

BAFTA winner and coming-of-age story starring newcomer Katie Jarvis as disaffected teen Mia and Michael Fassbender in one of his earliest film roles.

You may never look at film the same way again after watching this illuminating journey, which deconstructs the male gaze in cinema.

From Cécile Ducrocq comes a bold, provocative drama starring an electric Laure Calamy as a single mother and sex worker in a desperate situation.

Céline Sciamma’s BAFTA-nominated film about the tentative love between a painter and her subject in 18th-century France.

Carine Adler’s sexy and dark debut, starring Samantha Morton in her first major feature film role.

Sacha Polak and Vicky Knight reunite for this daring drama about love, family and forgiveness, loosely inspired by Knight’s life.

Andrea Arnold’s highly acclaimed film, winner of top prizes at Cannes and the BFI London Film Festival, is a haunting drama about a woman confronting past demons.

Jessica Hausner’s cool, witty and unsettling sci-fi starring Emily Beecham and Ben Whishaw.

A lesbian couple arouse the interest of their new neighbour in this erotic tale of voyeurism, power dressing and fantasy.

A doctor in rural Georgia faces scrutiny after a baby dies during childbirth in this affecting and atmospheric abortion drama.

Sally El Hosaini's feature debut tells of the love and disenchantment of two British-Egyptian brothers as gangs, drugs and sexuality come between them.

Anna Friel and Michelle Williams star as two troubled girls whose tumultuous friendship takes many twists and turns.

A teenage Björk stars in this Brothers Grimm adaptation, which finds witchcraft thriving in the wilds of medieval Iceland.

Riotous urban comedy adapted from the hit Royal Court play, about a Peckham teen affronted by the arrival of his long-lost Nigerian sibling.

Robert Carlyle and Ray Winstone are members of a criminal gang that tears itself apart after a heist goes wrong, in Antonia Bird’s stylish thriller.

Ayoka Chenzira’s vital coming-of-age comedy about three Black women living in Brooklyn learning to embrace life and exercise their agency.

Shockingly explicit, Catherine Breillat’s critically acclaimed Romance is one of the most controversial films of modern cinema.

The passengers on an interstellar space-liner are thrown into turmoil when their mission goes off course, in this compassionate and thought-provoking sci-fi drama.

Jane Campion’s feminist erotic thriller starring Meg Ryan and Mark Ruffalo adds a frisson of dangerous sex to a murder investigation.

A director struggles to film a difficult sex scene with two actors who hate each other, in Catherine Breillat's exploration of intimacy coordination.

A frustrated stage mother exploits her star daughter’s coma for her own artistic gains, in this wickedly dark Australian comedy.

Hettie MacDonald’s 1996 comedy tells the story of two classmates and neighbours who fall in love over one summer in South East London.

Agnes Varda’s classic character study follows a pop singer as she wanders around Paris awaiting the results of serious medical tests.

A philosophy professor and an artist reach a crisis point in their marriage, in Kathleen Collins’ groundbreaking masterpiece.

A modern-day witch uses spells and magic to get men to fall in love with her, in Anna Biller's outrageous tribute to 1960s Technicolor melodramas.

Bridgett M. Davis’s comedy about an aspiring young Black actress who lands her first major role, but there’s a big problem: it requires a nude scene.

This powerful BAFTA recognised documentary explores the personal stories of those affected by the UK's ‘hostile environment’ policies.