7. Kelly Reichardt
Best Film: Meek's Cutoff (2010) Reichardt's films are at once bare-bones and white-knuckled; seen as quiet indies on the surface but showcasing a distinct knack for raw tension. Reichardt deals in realism, which leads many filmgoers to decry her work as banal and boring, but underneath the veneer of reality lies a deeply subversive voice. Her 2008 film Wendy and Lucy earned a significant amount of praise for lead actress Michelle Williams, and her 2010 follow-up with Williams Meek's Cutoff was an even better film. A deconstructionist Western, Meek's Cutoff is about a group of white people traveling the Oregon Trail in the 19th century being led by a Native American whose intentions are purposefully obscured. Brilliantly sending-up the traditionally masculine and testosterone fueled genre film, Reichardt showed that she has a knack for creating films that are as interesting to watch as they are to rewatch and think about.