2. Lynne Ramsay
Lynne Ramsay has in fact been making feature length movies since 1999 but a prolonged battle in adapting The Lovely Bones which eventually failed led to a nine year break between her second and third films. Her debut feature was the marvelous festival favourite Ratcatcher which has sadly gone largely unseen as was her follow-up Morvern Callar, but that also received large amounts of acclaim. There were doubts Ramsay would continue making movies after the debacle of The Lovely Bones, but she rebounded with her greatest work yet - We Need to Talk About Kevin. We Need to Talk About Kevin is a haunting, visceral masterwork with three powerful performances from Tilda Swinton, Ezra Miller and John C Reilly. She specialises in making the viewer feel unsettled and her eye for style and ear for sound (the We Need to Talk About Kevin score by Jonny Greenwood is particularly poignant) make her a directorial beast and the finest female director currently working.