MOVIE OF THE WEEK May 30, 2025: Team MOTW’S Summer Watch List
If you’re looking forward to some summer cinema chilling with some hot movies, here’s AWFJ’s list of ten must see femme-directed femme-centric films for your June-July-August viewing pleasure. Each of the films on this watch list was featured on AWFJ.org as one of our previous 2025 Movies of the Week.
In case you’ve lost count, we’ve featured 21 Movies of the Week thus far this year, selected from the 142 femme-helmed, femme centric films that were submitted to us for MOTW consideration. If you’d like to keep tabs on the range of femme-helmed, femme centric that are opening in theaters and/or streaming each week, check out Margaret Barton-Fumo’s weekly OPENING column.
For our summer 2025 watch list, each member of Team MOTW selected her favorite of 2025’s featured MOTWs to recommend to you. Representing the diverse preferences and perspectives of Team MOTW members, the list includes titles ranging from romcoms to thrillers to documentaries, each with a compelling new story or a fascinating twist on a classic, a timely and relatably relevant theme, and exceptional artisanship by female creatives. We suggest that you read the original MOTW post for each (the links are included) to get the full array of Team MOTW’s takes on the film.
During the summer, while you are enjoying this watch list, we will continue to present our Movie of the Week feature, so please stay tuned for each edition and enjoy the new titles, too. Most importantly, support women in film by watching the femme-helmed, femme-centric films you find on our summer watch list and on AWFJ.org’s Movie of the Week feature. — Jennifer Merin
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BEING MARIA
Opened March 14, 2025
Selected by Loren King
The biting subtext to writer-director Jessica Palud’s Being Maria recreates the climate on film sets and within the echo chambers of the film world — press junkets, photo shoots, agent meetings — for a young aspiring actress before the #MeToo era. It takes the controversial but much lauded film Last Tango in Paris and recreates the on set experience from the point of view of Maria Schneider (played by Anamaria Vartolomei), just 19 and in her first major screen role. We now know something — after the lawsuits, news stories, documentaries and narrative films — about the exploitation, coercion and blatant workplace harassment that still rages, unchecked, on film sets, but Being Maria shows us what it looked like on a much ballyhooed 1972 Paris shoot, with an all-male crew and absolutely no internal or external support systems. The fallout, not surprisingly, was borne by Schneider alone and heavily impacted her life and career. Read the full MOTW post
JANE AUSTEN WRECKED MY LIFE
Opened May 16 2025
Selected by Cate Marquis
Jane Austen Wrecked My Life is a delight, even if you don’t love Jane Austen, but more so if you do. Writer/director Laura Piani concocts a clever, contemporary, bi-lingual comedy-romance centered on Agathe (Camille Rutherford), who works in a Parisian bookstore where her ease in French and English is a plus. Agathe adores Jane Austen. She, too, writes novels, but suffers from writer’s block. She is single, lives with her sister and nephew, has given up on romance and sees herself as resembling Anne in Persuasion. Her friend secretly signs her up for a writer’s retreat at the Jane Austen estate. When the invitation arrives, Agathe hopes the retreat will help her overcome her writer’s block. At the retreat, she’s greeted by Jane Austen’s great-great-great-great-great grandnephew, a brooding Darcy type. Plentiful Jane Austen parallels keep us guessing as to their referential origin, while director Laura Piani’s concept keeps us laughing and charmed. Romcom is often reputed as dull and formulaic, but Jane Austen Wrecked My Life‘s delightful burst of fresh air and literary fun is the entertaining exception. Read the full MOTW post
JAZZY
Opened February 7, 2025
Selected by Pam Grady
Jazzy (Jasmine Shangreaux) and Syriah (Syriah Fool Head Means) are in reality lifelong best friends in that space between childhood and adulthood sharing secrets, stuffed animals, and all of the most important parts of their lives. But a fight between their mothers forces one break on the friendship and then Syriah moves away altogether, forcing Jazzy to learn to live without her bestie. Fictional but inspired by the girls’ real friendship, Morissa Maltz’s follow up to her 2022 feature The Unknown Country unfolds like a lazy Saturday where nothing much seems to happen yet takes on gravity through the accumulation of seemingly minor moments. Shangreaux, Means, and the other young people playing their classmates and friends are charming in their emotional honesty, while Lily Gladstone in a reprise from her role in The Unknown Country adds an appealing cameo in this perceptive drama on the joys and trials of adolescence. Read full the MOTW post
PANGOLIN: KULU’S JOURNEY
Opened April 25, 2025
Selected by Leslie Combemale
Documentarian Pippa Ehrlich won an Oscar for My Octopus Teacher, a film about the connection between a human and a creature of a different species. Her new film Pangolin: Kulu’s Journey investigates another close tie, this time between a baby pangolin and his volunteer guardian Gareth Thomas. The stakes of their particular relationship are remarkably high. The film shows the strength of connection and power to heal that interactions between humans and creatures of other species can bring. It also considers the circle of life in a practical and enlightened way, with the inclusion of Dr Caswell Munyai, who is an expert in invertebrate biology (including ants and termites!). Kulu eats only those two bugs, and a lot of them, but Munyai knows pangolins are an important part of South African’s ecosystem. We learn all about that in this fascinating, thoroughly engaging film. Read the full MOTW post
STORY & PICTURES BY
Opened January 31, 2025
Selected by Nell Minow
Story & Pictures By is a heartwarming reminder of the books that enchanted and inspired me when I was a child and those my children loved, many still in battered but still readable condition in our house. I always say no one’s childhood is ever long enough to read all the wonderful children’s books we need and I’m glad to say I am still reading them for my own enjoyment. This lovely documentary takes us into the lives of three of today’s most significant author/illustrators and includes some archival material to show us how the children’s books field has expanded to include an overdue but welcome wider range of topics and perspectives. Read the full MOTW post.
THE ASSESSMENT
Opened March 16. 2025
Selected by Sandie Angulo Chen
With its stellar cast and unconventional premise, The Assessment presents a gripping sci-fi dystopia. In a future where the State tightly controls population, a privileged, high-achieving couple—both accomplished scientists—apply for a rigorous seven-day evaluation by a state-appointed assessor for the opportunity to become parents. Played by Himesh Patel and Elizabeth Olsen, the couple is cautiously optimistic—after all, they rank among the top 0.1% of citizens! But their assessor, Virginia (Alicia Vikander), is no mere bureaucrat with probing questions. Instead, she methodically dismantles their sense of control, embodying the erratic stages of early childhood—from infantile helplessness to toddler tantrums—in a series of increasingly invasive and humiliating interactions. French visual artist-turned-filmmaker Fleur Fortuné makes an assured feature directorial debut with this unsettling, thought-provoking drama. Vikander delivers a marvelously unnerving performance, while Patel and Olsen captivate as a brilliant couple whose bond is tested to its limits. Though the script skimps on the worldbuilding, The Assessment remains a chilling and unforgettable character study. Read the full MOTW post
THE PRESIDENT’S WIFE
Opened April 18, 2025
Selected by Sherin Nicole
When Madame Bernadette Chirac is feed up with being the French President’s dutiful wife, she transforms herself into a media sensation and feminist icon. Directed by Léa Domenach and originally titled Bernadette, The President’s Wife is a sharp and stylish bio-com (ooh hello, Karl Lagerfeld) that frolics in the undeniable tangibility of French comedy—commanding and cuttingly witty. Catherine Deneuve embodies Bernadette Chirac with that same blend of hauteur and heart, capturing the transformation from First Lady to indominable politician. Domenach’s lens peels back the layers of power, privilege, and reinvention, crafting a narrative that amuses as much as it informs. And just like that, she proves second acts often steal the show. Read the full MOTW post
THERE’S STILL TOMORROW
Opened March 7, 2025
Selected by Jennifer Merin
There’s Still Tomorrow is a droll and marvelously inspiring Italian dramady about a totally put-upon working class wife, mother and laborer who learns to say NO to ongoing abuse and YES! to her own beliefs and needs — and a brighter future for her daughter. The action takes place in post WWII Italy, at the time when women were first allowed to vote — a monumental event that gave women unprecedented political and social power. The way the voting is presented makes you want to stand up and cheer! There’s Still Tomorrow is the creation and directorial debut of Paola Cortellesi, who directed and co-wrote the script, and also stars. As a director, Cortellesi draws on classic Italian cinema’s evocative style to intensify the film’s atmosphere and authenticity. As screenwriter, she keeps verbiage spare and let’s image convey the story. As an actress, she presents a poker face that speaks volumes about her inner feelings. And, when she laughs, her smile lights up the screen. Kudos to Cortellesi on all fronts. Read the full MOTW post
TIMESTALKER
Opened February 14, 2025
Selected by Liz Whittemore
Alice Lowe’s latest film, Timestalker, is a commentary on the complexity of love and a raunchy female quantum leap of sorts. The same spectacular cast moves through the centuries, following Agnes, a woman who finds her presumptive soulmate and then immediately dies a horrible death. Can she learn from past mistakes and change her future? The cast is committed to the slapstick comedy and Lowe’s laugh-out-loud dialogue. Alice Lowe grounds Agnes, while Nick Frost is deliciously unhinged. Jacob Anderson’s character possesses a prophetic ability, acting as a strong anchor for Agnes’ wistful shenanigans. A perfectly cast Aneurin Barnard oozes charm, beautifully countering Lowe’s assured/desperate enthusiasm. Speaking of our leading lady, Alice brilliantly embodies the irrationality of love, bringing fierce chemistry to every scene. Lowe’s femme-centric comedy writing has continued to be a force of nature since her 2016 film Prevenge. Timestalker solidifies that dark edge. Timestalker repeats the neon and candy heart color palette of Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette. The editing is simply fantastic. The structure allows Lowe to run through every period romance genre out there. Timestalker is a clever take on love, fate, delusion, and self-actualization. Read the full MOTW post
WE WERE DANGEROUS
Opened March 30, 2025
Selected by Betsy Bozdech
Forced against their will to “Christianize, civilize, and assimilate” in a strict New Zealand reform school in the 1950s, three teenage girls refuse to accept a fate that’s been pre-determined for them in director Josephine Stewart-Te Whiu’s rousing feature debut We Were Dangerous. The girls’ stirring story — and the movie’s strong themes of friendship, hope, and self-determination — ensure that the 2024 SXSW Special Jury Award winner resonates powerfully. The movie reveals the girls’ backstories in flashbacks, showing that all of them are, rather than “incorrigible delinquents,” simply young people who defied society’s expectations by daring to follow their hearts or doing whatever they needed to do to get by. All are perfectly capable of making their own choices, but because they’re not White, prosperous, or men, the system has decided they can’t — so they make it their job to undermine that system. Because if we can’t choose our own path, then are we truly living? Read the full MOTW post
