Its only Three of the top 21 highest grossing films by females, but it was Black female filmmakers. Hopefully more to come, but this is a good thing.....Three of those 21 filmmakers are Amma Asante, Ava DuVernay, and Gina Prince-Bythewood, black filmmakers dynamically reframing the past and present, yielding three movies in which female characters are as vital (or more so) to the story as their male counterparts.
Amma Asante in "Belle"
Asante’s Belle - a surprise hit, earning $10.7 million from its release in May through a lengthy summer run — paints a glowing portrait of an 18th-century biracial woman (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) raised by her aristocratic great uncle, Lord Chief Justice (Tom Wilkinson). The great niece is credited for inspiring legal opinions that led to the outlaw of slavery in Britain.
David Oyelowo and director Ava DuVernay on the set of "Selma"
Meanwhile, DuVernay’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. biopic Selma refrains from canonizing one man, instead glorifying many civil rights activists — including Coretta Scott King and Annie Lee Cooper —who braved billy-clubs and gunfire during historic 1965 marches against voter discrimination. Their collective courage and tenacity ultimately led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act.
Gina Prince-Bythewood's film "Beyond the Lights"
And Prince-Bythewood’s Beyond the Lights, one of the best-reviewed films of the year, is the one fictional narrative in this trio. It casts a gimlet eye on the objectification of women in music (and, by extension, in film) who are little more than spectacles for male pleasure. When its heroine (Mbatha-Raw, again) puts distance between herself and her stage mother and quits exploiting her sexuality, she finds herself, a partner (Nate Parker) — and her authentic voice.