10 Amazing Films Directed By Women
6. The House is Black
Forough Farrokhzad was a female filmmaker who should have had a long and illustrious career, but was unfortunately killed just a few short years after making The House is Black, her one and only film. In it, she sets her sights on a local leper colony in Iran, and launches an exploration into not only the suffering, but the beauty she finds there.
Although less than a half hour long, The House is Black is widely acknowledged as a landmark Iranian film, one that would pave the way for the Iranian New Wave genre of the late 1960s.
Her work here is striking with its juxtaposition of beauty and ugliness, with images of the leper colony intercut with excerpts from her own poetry (Farrokhzad was known as a feminist writer before her work behind the camera) and notable lines from the Quran.
The film was a deeply personal one for her, and during the short shooting schedule she became so attached to the young son of two patients with leprosy that she ended up later adopting him.