Breakthrough Women of Color Film Directors of 2020

When people look back on how the movie industry changed in 2020, they’ll probably think about the COVID-19 pandemic and how streaming services had a growing influence on how people watch movies. Amid all of these massive changes was a noticeable industry reshaping that didn’t make as many headlines but was still important — the breakthrough of a number of film directors who are women of color. Whether it’s getting awards recognition or directing big-budget movies, more women of color directors are making an impact on the industry and audiences than ever before.

It’s part of an overall trend of female movie directors increasing their clout in the industry. According to the 23rd annual The Celluloid Ceiling report, a study conducted by San Diego State University’s Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film: “Women accounted for 16% of directors working on the top 100 grossing films in 2020, up from 12% in 2019 and 4% in 2018. Women comprised 18% of directors working on the top 250 films in 2020, up from 13% in 2019 and 8% in 2018. The percentages of women directing top 100 and top 250 films represent recent historic highs and also reflect two consecutive years of growth.”

When it comes to industry awards, Nomadland director Chloé Zhao has so far become the most-lauded director of a 2020 movie. She’s already won top prizes for Nomadland at several prestigious film events, including the Golden Lion at the 2020 Venice International Film Festival; the People’s Choice Award at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF); and Best Feature Film and Gotham Audience Award at the 2020 Gotham Awards. Searchlight Pictures’ Nomadland is a drama starring Frances McDormand (one of the film’s producers) as a transient widow who lives out of her van and travels to find work. Zhao is the screenwriter and one of the producers of Nomadland, which is based on Jessica Bruder’s 2017 nonfiction book of the same name.

For Nomadland, which is her third feature film, Zhao has been sweeping Best Director awards from film critics’ groups. In addition, Zhao is on track to become the first woman of color to be nominated for — and widely predicted to win — the Best Director prize at the Academy Awards.

And in 2020, for the first time in TIFF history, the top three vote-getters for the TIFF People’s Choice Award went to movies directed by women of color. Coming in second place after Nomadland was Regina King’s feature-film directorial debut, One Night in Miami…, while third place went to director Tracey Deer’s Beans. Amazon Studios’ One Night in Miami… is a drama based on the play about a 1964 social gathering of Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, Sam Cooke, and Jim Brown. The Canadian drama Beanstells the story of the Oka Crisis, the 1990 land dispute between Mohawk tribe members and the citizens of Oka, Quebec. One Night in Miami... also picked up prizes from the National Board of Review Awards (NBR Freedom of Expression Award) and the Film Independent Spirit Awards (Robert Altman Award).

Also getting awards appreciation and critical acclaim for their 2020 movies are first-time feature-film directors Garrett Bradley, for the Amazon Studios documentary Time; Radha Blank, for the Netflix comedy The Forty-Year-Old Version; and Channing Godfrey Peoples, for the Vertical Entertainment drama Miss Juneteenth.

Time chronicles the 21-year struggle of a Louisiana woman named Fox Rich to get her husband released from prison. Bradley (who is also one of the producers of Time) won documentary director awards for 2020 at the Sundance Film Festival, DOC NYC, and the International Documentary Association (IDA) Documentary Awards for Time. The movie also won Best Documentary at the Gotham Awards (in a tie with director Ramona S. Diaz’s A Thousand Cuts), as well as at the National Board of Review Awards. Timereceived nominations for Best Documentary Feature and Best Director at the Critics’ Choice Documentary Awards; Best Documentary at the Spirit Awards; and Best Feature nomination at the IDA Documentary Awards. Bradley was also the 2020 recipient of the IDA’s Emerging Documentary Filmmaker Award, which is a noncompetitive prize.

“Diversity is not for the sake of being politically correct,” Bradley comments to Women’s Media Center. “Filmmaking is an art form that’s about seeing, it’s about being seen, it’s about perspective, it’s about point of view. In order for us to push the medium, it’s our responsibility to expand that point of view and expand those perspectives.”

Blank is also the screenwriter and star of The Forty-Year-Old Version, which is about a New York City playwright who decides to become a rapper a few months before her 40th birthday. Blank’s awards for The Forty-Year-Old Version include the Best Director prize (in the U.S. Dramatic category) at the Sundance Film Festival; the National Board of Review’s NBR Spotlight Award; and Best Screenplay at the Gotham Awards. (The latter prize also went to Dan Sallitt’s Fourteen, in a tie.) In addition, Blank and Godfrey Peoples each received a Gotham nomination for the Bingham Ray Breakthrough Director Award, as well as a Spirit Award nod for Best First Feature.

Miss Juneteenth, which was written by Godfrey Peoples, stars Nicole Beharie as a former Miss Juneteenth beauty pageant winner in Fort Worth, Texas, who pressures her teenage daughter to enter the same pageant. Godfrey Peoples won the South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival’s Louis Black Lone Star Award (a prize given for movies set in Texas) for Miss Juneteenth, a movie that draws on her own experiences growing up in Texas. (Although SXSW was canceled in 2020, the film festival still awarded jury-voted prizes.) She also won the National Board of Review prize for Best Directorial Debut, and received a Spirit Award nomination for Best First Screenplay.

Godfrey Peoples, like many women of color who break through as mainstream film directors, has committed to diversity in front of and behind the camera. And she believes that women of color should especially be fearless in telling their stories in a system that might not always be welcoming. Godfrey Peoples tells Women’s Media Center: “My mandate is to not only get more Black women in front of and behind the camera, but also show them in nuanced life — emotional, full-bodied roles in the way we live our lives … I didn’t have as much of an opportunity to see [that diversity], growing up in cinema. That’s what I want to be able to contribute, amongst other things.”

For many of these directors, making progress in the industry isn’t about waiting for people to offer jobs; it’s about creating opportunities for themselves. In the production notes for The Forty-Year-Old Version, Blank (who is one of the film’s producers) comments: “Very much like my character, I wanted to create something I was in complete control of so I wouldn’t be rejected by anyone.”

The COVID-19 pandemic negatively impacted movie box-office revenues in 2020 — according to media data company Comscore, there was a decrease of 80% in the United States and 71% worldwide, compared to 2019. However, director Cathy Yan had a major breakthrough with Warner Bros. Pictures’ superhero film Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn),which was released in February 2020, shortly before the pandemic shut down numerous theaters worldwide.

Birds of Prey (starring Margot Robbie, one of the film’s producers) was the highest-grossing female-directed movie of 2020. According to Box Office Mojo, Birds of Prey had $202 million in worldwide ticket sales, of which $84 million came from the United States. (DreamWorks Animation’s 2011 film Kung Fu Panda 2, directed by Jennifer Yuh Nelson, currently holds the record for the highest-grossing movie directed by a woman of color, with $666 million in worldwide ticket sales.)

Also breaking into the male-director-dominated genre of superhero action films was Gina Prince-Bythewood, director of Netflix’s The Old Guard, starring Charlize Theron, one of the producers of the film. Prince-Bythewood’s previous film directorial credits include 2000’s Love & Basketball, 2008’s The Secret Life of Bees, and 2014’s Beyond the Lights. According to Netflix, The Old Guard had 78 million views in 2020, making it one of the top 10 most-watched Netflix original movies of all time.

Horror movies have been a notoriously difficult genre to break into for women of color directors. However, writer/director Natalie Erika James made strides with her feature-film debut, Relic, starring Emily Mortimer in a story about three Australian women in the same family who are dealing with death-related issues. IFC Midnight (an IFC Films subsidiary) distributed Relic, which generated a little more than $2 million at the worldwide box office, despite the movie’s July 2020 release in theaters during the pandemic. Relic earned a Gotham nomination for Best Feature Film, a prize given to a movie’s director and producers.

In documentary filmmaking, women of color directors who made progress in 2020 with critically acclaimed movies included Dawn Porter (Magnolia Pictures’ John Lewis: Good Trouble and Focus Features’ The Way I See It); Melissa Haizlip (Shoes in the Bed Productions’ Mr. Soul!); and Lisa Cortés, who co-directed with Liz Garbus the Stacey Abrams-produced film All In: The Fight for Democracy. All of these movies received nominations or prizes at the 2020 Critics’ Choice Documentary awards.

It’s been proven that women of color can direct an impressive array of well-received movies. And as movie audiences become more diverse, it makes business sense for the industry to have filmmakers who bring unique perspectives to this diversity. Godfrey Peoples expresses the thoughts of many who think that this success will open up more opportunities for women of color directors. “It’s what I wanted to see when I was in film school,” she says. “I would love for that to happen.”