It is thanks to the quota for women directors that films with women-specific, even feminist themes are increasingly being produced in the USA. "Call Jane" is a prime example of this. Directed by Phyllis Nagy, who won an Oscar in 2015 for her screenplay for "Carol", "Call Jane" tells of the dark times before the US Supreme Court declared abortion a fundamental legal right in 1973. A legal right that was revoked in June 2022, which makes this historical and exciting film a politically very topical one.

Sigourney Weaver

It is Sigourney Weaver's Ellen Ripley in Ridley Scott's "Alien" that makes a woman the heroine of an action film for the first time in 1979. Weaver repeated the role three more times between 1986 and '97, embodied the behavioural scientist Dian Fossey in 1988 in "Gorillas in the Mist" and, with the sci-fi comedies "Ghostbusters" and "Galaxy Quest" and the "Avatar" cinema series, finally made herself Hollywood's patron saint for strong female roles on the big screen. However, Susan Alexandra "Sigourney" Weaver, who was born in New York City in 1949, has so far been denied an Academy Award.

All it takes is a name, a face and a lot of courage. Good investigative journalism means finding that brave person and empowering him or her. This was the case with the Watergate scandal in the mid-1970s, and this is how Harvey Weinstein came down in 2017. Like the legendary reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the two journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey from the New York Times have written a book about their research. "She Said" describes the wall of silence surrounding sexual abuse and what it means to be the first to break through it.

Maria Schrader

With "She Said", director Maria Schrader presents her first US-produced feature film. But the Hanoverian, born in 1965, is no stranger to Hollywood. She has already made a name for herself as an actress, for example in "Aimee and Jaguar" (1999), "Rosenstraße" (2003) and the television series "Deutschland 83/86/89" and "The City & The City". But it was her last three directorial works in particular - "Before the Dawn" (2016), "I Am Your Man" (2018) and the Netflix four-parter "Unorthodox" (2020) - that helped Schrader achieve her breakthrough in the USA.

So this is what a film looks like that a two-time Oscar-winning director - "Birdman" (2014) and "The Revenant" (2015) - treats himself to when Netflix gives him free rein. Alejandro G. Iñárritu's "Bardo, the fictionalised chronicle of a handful of truths" is a visually stunning oxymoron that loosely follows the life of the fictional journalist Silverio. He is the first Mexican to be awarded a prestigious US prize, which is why Silverio is already working on his acceptance speech. Iñárritu has visually peppered this with grandiose self-doubt, surreal tragedy, historical Tex Mex and satirical punchlines à la Fellini's "8 1/2".