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25 Greatest Working Film Directors (Who Also Happen to be Female)

Entertainment Weekly loves their lists just as much as we do. Most of the time, they get most of their choices right (or right enough). But their new list of the 25 Greatest Working Film Directors left a lot to be desired, especially considering they had only one female director and it also happened to be the only one that has ever won an Oscar: Kathryn Bigelow.

Surely winning an Academy Award cannot be the only criteria for being a “great” director, and there are several working women in the film industry. To us, great means creating films with substance, integrity and a talent for all facets of filmmaking, from the cinematography to the casting, to the added bonuses of being well-reviewed and award-winning.

In no particular order, we have compiled our own list of 25 Greatest Working Film Directors (Who Also Happen to be Female).

The out Canadian director was behind the lesbian-themed films I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing and When Night is Falling, but has since moved on to bigger-budget mainstream works like Mansfield Park and Kit Kittredge: An American Girl. She also won several awards for her writing work on HBO’s Grey Gardens, starring Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange. You can see her as a talking head this month in Unauthorized: The Harvey Weinstein Project.

In between films like But I’m a Cheerleader, The Quiet and Itty Bitty Titty Committee, Jamie keeps busy directing episodes of shows like United States of Tara and Pretty Little Liars. Next up: Breaking the Girl, a thriller written by Guinevere Turner.

Her first feature film was Boys Don’t Cry, which means she had a ton of pressure on her to perform thereafter. She followed up with Stop Loss (starring Ryan Phillipe and Joseph-Gordon Levitt and was just announced as the director of Universal Pictures’ The Knife.

The bisexual filmmaker/artist wowed viewers with her indie debut Me and You and Everyone We Know, and it seems that her follow-up, The Future, should be just as pleasing and eccentric. It recently debuted at Sundance, and was instantly purchased for distribution by The Match Factory.

The legendary director of Desert Hearts has been lending her talents to TV shows like Off the Map and Law & Order: SVU, but she is still working on the sequel to her pivotal lesbian film.

The openly lesbian Swiss director was behind Lost and Delirious, but went on to do something completely different in her 2010 French langauge film, La dernière fugue. The director of Thirteen, Twilight and Red Riding Hood has us really excited for her next project: the feature adaptation of Freeheld, starring Ellen Page. It looks like her own version of Hamlet is on the docket first. The bisexual woman at the helm of the hilarious sexual comedy Humpday directed an episode of Mad Men this year. Her upcoming film has no title as of now, but stars Emily Blunt and Rosemarie DeWitt, so it’s obviously going to be worth seeing.

The D.E.B.S. director keeps busy doing production and writing work on shows like Hung, but she’s also workign with her partner, Alexandra Kondracke, on the 2012 sci-fi female-butt kicking film Jenbot.

The out director’s Mississippi Damned made its television premiere on Showtime this month, and she’s also been awarded a $50,000 grant from United States Artists for her new film, Country Line. She wants Don Cheadle to star in the movie about drugs and sex in a down-and-out city in the South.

The success of Pariah has made her a director to watch. She’s still riding out the wave of having Focus Films pick up distribution for the movie about a young black butch lesbian, but there will surely be more great stories from her in the future.

It might seem odd that the director of Better Than Chocolate is making a film with Stone Cold Steve Austin, but she is. Knockout is a family movie coming out this year. In the meantime, Anne directs episodes of the Canadian series Endgame.

The director has established a relationshpi with Michelle Williams, who starred in her 2008 film Wendy & Lucy. Their new one together, Meek’s Cutoff, is like a film adaptation of Oregon Trail and hits theaters this spring.

The documentarian brought us the story of Lauren Hester and Stacee Andre, the one that Catherine Hardwicke will be adapting into a feature-length film. Freeheld won the Oscar for best documentary short in 2007, and Cynthia produced two more shorts in 2010, Born Sweet and Forget Me Nots.

The lesbian director brought us Love is Love, a short starring Jane Lynch in 2007, and now she’s working on Perfect Family, with Emily Deschanel as a lesbian and Kathleen Turner as her overbearing mother. It’s poised for a 2012 release.

Most famous for her 1996 film The Watermelon Woman, Cheryl’s collaborative 2010 film The Owls gave views a glimpse not only at a lesbian film noir, but how the cast and crew view themselves (and their characters) in terms of sexuality and personal identity.

The Oscar-winning director of Lost in Translation has continued to prove she has a knack for the on-screen narrative, as she also writes her own scripts. Marie Antoinette and 2010’s Somewhere helped show she isn’t restricted to genres, time periods or comfortability.

The Parisian filmmaker is incredibly prolific, having made a film almost every single year since she began in 1975. She takes on taboo topics in movies like A Real Young Girl, Fat Girl and The Last Mistress. Last year, she remade Sleeping Beauty for French TV.

The director behind Friends With Money and last year’s Please Give has just signed on to direct the pilot episode of the new NBC lesbian-themed pilot I Hate That I Love You. She’s got plenty of TV experience, having worked on Sex and the City, Gilmore Girls and Six Feet Under, as well as the lesbianish episode of Bored to Death (“The Case of the Stolen Sperm”).

Though first known for her acting work, Chen has since been recognized for Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl (winner of several film fest awards) and Autumn in New York, starring Richard Gere and Winona Rider. Her 2011 film, Seeing Red is in post-production, but she continues to act and recently did a guest spot on Fringe.

The out director may have gotten the most accolades from critics and most moviegoers this year with The Kids Are All Right, but her earlier work on High Art and Laurel Canyon is what had lesbians tuned in. Next up: an adaptation of Tom Perotta‘s The Abstinence Teacher.

The woman who gave us Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Clueless is working on Vamps for later this year. It’s got a killer cast, including Alicia Silverstone, Sigourney Weaver and Marilu Henner and will no doubt cash in on the latest vampire craze.

The out director released her debut feature Amreeka in 2009 and was nominated for Best First Screenplay at the Indie Spirt Awards, as well as the Grand Jury Prize at Sundnace. While it didn’t win, the film got major props from reviewers, and her next script, May in the Summer, has gotten picked up by Memento Films for production this year. The best part? It’s a lesbian love story, starring Dabis and Hiam Abbas.

Where do you go from the musical movie Mamma Mia? Well, you go back to Meryl Streep again. The out director is working with Streep on The Iron Lady, a film about former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

While her work might not be seen on the big screen, it’s just as important as the kind of work that makes it into theaters. The lesbian director is behind educational LGBT films like Choosing Children, Let’s Get Real and 2009’s Straightlaced. With Groundspark films, Chasnoff and co. aim to ignite change through film. It’s no surprise she’s won several awards, including an Oscar for Best Documentary Short Subject for Deadly Deception.

And there’s more where that came from. Who would you add to this list?

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