115 Films By and About Women of Color

Created by redpandacat.

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"To be clear, the list itself isn't comprehensive and doesn't claim to represent every woman-directed film about women of color; there would be too many to name. Rather, consider it a solid reflection of people's tastes. The original call was to "name three films you like with black, brown, native or Asian women leads" that were also directed by women. So the response online tells us a great deal about the films that general movie fans watch, like and remember.

You could say that the original list of 84 films reflects which movies had an impact on Hollywood and the US independent film scene, since the call came from a well-known US-based filmmaker. In order to come up with titles beyond the original 84, many of you looked to films made overseas, in nations where people of color are the majority.

It’s interesting to note which directors were listed multiple times; names like Mira Nair, Gina Prince-Bythewood and Gurinder Chadha came up more than once as women who have built careers on telling the stories of women of color, and whose films have made money over the years.

And of note, we’re looking only at feature-length, scripted films directed by women. Of course there are lots of important documentaries made by and about women of color, arguably many more than narrative features due to the cost and means of documentary production. So again, there would be too many documentaries to name here. There’s also the fact that many docs focus on groups of people, societal systems, or eras in history rather than individual protagonists, which makes it tougher to classify which documentaries are "led by women of color." But it may be worth a separate discussion on docs in the future."