The most globally sensational film this year is undoubtedly The Substance, written and directed by French female director Coralie Fargeat. In the sluggish post-pandemic film market, this movie leveraged viral marketing through social media snippets to become an unexpected box office hit. It not only dominated European and American theaters upon release but also sparked massive global discourse in a short time. After its online leak, it became the most talked-about film on Chinese social media in October. More than just a viral phenomenon, it is a transitional work that shatters stereotypes about female directors. In November and December, we witnessed more outstanding films by female directors emerging as dark horses, igniting widespread discussion across themes and forms.

The Substance stars Demi Moore, the iconic actress of the 1980s, as Elizabeth, a once-celebrated Hollywood star unable to accept her aging appearance. Tempted by a black-market drug called "The Substance," she creates a younger, more beautiful version of herself. Initially, the two selves coexist peacefully, but as the allure of fame intensifies, a battle for bodily dominance erupts.

Puffy apple cheeks, plump lips, overfilled foreheads—Hollywood is both a hotspot for appearance anxiety and a goldmine for plastic surgeons. Their scalpels have mass-produced "monsters," with Demi Moore being one of the most infamous victims. Her million-dollar anti-aging transformation is widely known in the U.S. Once a top-tier star who ruled 1990s screens with her beauty, she is now a neglected older actress. Moore’s 40-year career and tumultuous personal life create an intertextual layer that fuels the film’s intrigue.

The Substance’s visceral intensity recalls Julia Ducournau’s 2021 Palme d’Or-winning Titane. Ducournau’s second feature after her 2016 debut Raw, Titane pushes body horror to new extremes. Audiences consistently describe it as a deeply unsettling experience.

We’ve never pigeonholed male directors. Whether it’s Spielberg’s precision, Cameron’s technical bravado, Zhang Yimou’s epic color palettes, or Ang Lee’s tenderness, male narratives have defined our cinematic expectations for a century.

For female directors, we face a paradox: their perspectives are often seen as inherently nuanced，their visual language restrained rather than flamboyant. But must they be confined to delicate, aesthetic imagery?

Fargeat (b. 1976) and Ducournau (b. 1983), though seven years apart, share similar genre and visual choices. Their high-impact, low-narrative, low-sentiment approach—centered on gore—shatters stereotypes about female directors and the genres that constrain them.

Compare this to pre-pandemic hits like Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019 Cannes Best Screenplay) or Mia Hansen-Løve’s Things to Come (2016 Berlin Best Director). These auteurs represent the 2010–2020 benchmark for "female cinema."

Céline Sciamma was born in 1978, while Mia Hansen-Løve was born in 1981. These two directors are of similar age to Coralie Fargeat and Julia Ducournau, and all serve as both directors and screenwriters. However, the former pair's explorations in visual and auditory language differ drastically from the latter's. Without a doubt, Céline Sciamma and Mia Hansen-Løve represent what we conventionally consider the quintessential style of female filmmaking.

As a director from the LGBTQ+ community, Sciamma's works consistently explore themes of female gender and identity fluidity. After graduating from La Fémis, she quickly adapted her graduation script, Water Lilies, into a film. This debut work was selected for the 2007 Cannes Film Festival's "Un Certain Regard" section and received three César Award nominations the following year. Her second film, Tomboy, gained even wider recognition—a coming-of-age story about a teenager grappling with gender confusion, its narrative imbued with tender, profound compassion for gender-fluid individuals that moved audiences deeply. Sciamma's most renowned film is undoubtedly Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), which not only competed at Cannes that year and won Best Screenplay but also became the first film directed by a woman to win the Queer Palm.

In Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Sciamma employs an exquisitely nuanced approach to tell the story of Marianne, a late-18th-century painter commissioned by a countess to create a wedding portrait of her daughter Héloïse, who has just left a convent. Unwilling to marry, Héloïse refuses to pose, forcing Marianne to paint her in secret. By day, Marianne observes Héloïse; by night, she paints her clandestinely. As their relationship grows increasingly intimate, they share fleeting moments of freedom—both the first and the last—until the portrait is finally completed. The entire narrative extends the ambiguous, drifting emotions between women that Sciamma began exploring in her debut Water Lilies, deepening it into an extraordinarily subtle and moving expression unique to the female perspective.

It is impossible to imagine a male director writing or directing female characters like those in Sciamma's films. This isn't solely due to gender issues or women's circumstances. We must confront the objective reality that, because of biological differences, men and women experience life in fundamentally distinct ways. Men are inherently incapable of writing authentically female roles to the same degree as women—yet our literary and cinematic histories are saturated with female characters penned by male authors. This is both an ironic reality and an infinite creative space for female creators to craft more genuine portrayals of women. Undoubtedly, the ambiguous, heart-stirring relationships between women in Sciamma's films stem from her lived experiences as a woman.

In contrast to Céline Sciamma's several widely acclaimed works, Mia Hansen-Løve maintains a relatively lower profile, with her films bearing a strong autobiographical imprint. Eden (2014), set against the backdrop of Hansen-Løve's youth in the 1990s, follows a group of electronic music enthusiasts as they navigate inevitable interpersonal conflicts between ideals, love, family, and music, along with their bewilderment about the future and the disillusionment that follows faded dreams. Undoubtedly, this film serves as Hansen-Løve's retrospective glance at her own coming-of-age era.

Her 2016 film Things to Come, starring Isabelle Huppert, achieved remarkable success. The minutiae of a philosophy professor couple's late-life divorce in the story mirror the director's personal experiences—her father was a philosophy professor and translator at Sciences Po Paris. Bergman Island (2021), featuring Vicky Krieps and Tim Roth, unmistakably transplants the restrained yet unbalanced dynamic between Hansen-Løve and her husband, the renowned French filmmaker Olivier Assayas, onto the screen. Her most recent work, One Fine Morning (2022), starring Léa Seydoux, depicts the protagonist Sandra juggling care for her young daughter and ailing father—a narrative clearly drawn from the director's own experience of losing her father in 2020.

Two critically acclaimed films dominated this year's autumn season: Yang Yuanyuan's Women's World and Shao Yihui's Nice Things. These works by Chinese female directors present us with diverse female characters from all walks of life.Yang Yuanyuan's Women's World focuses on a dance troupe composed of Asian women over 70 years old. Coming from varied professions and mostly divorced or widowed, they gather to eat, drink, travel together, and embark on a performance tour that takes them from the United States and Cuba to eventually arrive in China. Through the elderly dancers' recollections, the film weaves together the history of Chinese-American dancers from San Francisco Chinatown's golden era. As Yang Yuanyuan states, "I reject grand narratives, believing history is composed of the intertwined migrations of overlooked individuals."The 92-year-old Coby, who features prominently in the film, was the last owner of San Francisco's Purple Gold City Club. Her presence undeniably captivates audiences - though her aged body moves heavily, on stage she remains as light as a gorgeous butterfly slowly unfurling its wings in dance. Through her wrinkled skin, we glimpse the radiant flow of time folded within.

During that era, nightclub dancers existed under the male gaze and exploitation, while Chinese occupied a far lower social status than whites in America. Chinese female dancers inevitably faced exoticization and double marginalization. Even today, overseas Chinese women remain an overlooked group. While recent hits like Crazy Rich Asians and Everything Everywhere All At Once featured Asian female leads, they often presented these characters through a lens of exotic fascination rather than authentic, objective representation.Yang Yuanyuan's Women's World precisely focuses on these fading historical vessels, bringing 20th century overseas Chinese women back to the silver screen and preserving these vivacious women eternally in film, their vitality forever remembered. In the movie's final moments, the image of Coby dancing her last dance will continue to move viewers through the play of light and shadow, as long as people keep discovering this film.

Shao Yihui's Nice Things undoubtedly emerged as the most delightful surprise in year-end theatrical releases. With its perfectly paced 123-minute runtime, the film guides audiences through life's vicissitudes via its female-led narrative. As a light comedy, Shao introduces us to Wang Tiemei and Xiao Ye - two strikingly different yet thoroughly modern urban women - alongside the utterly heartwarming child character Molly. Rarely does Chinese cinema present female figures like Wang Tiemei: efficient, free-spirited, and refreshingly free from emotional baggage.Forty years into China's reform and opening-up, just as contemporary female characters were regressing to feudal-era stereotypes, Shao Yihui has forcefully dragged them back into modernity. This autumn season finally gives us female protagonists truly synchronized with our times. The film's rejection of "feminine rivalry" in favor of celebrating sisterhood offers a poignant counterpoint to our era of involution and resignation.

Last summer's global phenomenon Barbie detonated like a pink sugar-coated nuclear bomb, not only igniting worldwide feminist discourse but propelling female directors beyond art-house confines into mainstream commercial cinema. From this year's The Substance (a female-directed, blood-soaked exploitation film) to Women's World and Nice Things, we witness female filmmakers flourishing across world cinema. Their audiences have long transcended gender boundaries to embrace global viewership.Whether through ethical complexity or visual-aural impact, these directors expand cinema's imaginative possibilities while creating vividly three-dimensional characters. In their mature audiovisual storytelling, we glimpse life's boundless potential - and by extension, cinema's too.