Why Don’t Female Directors of Crime Dramas Get the Same Clout as Men?

This IMDb list is far from an outlier. Most listicles about directors in the crime drama genre tend to mimic this trend.

Crime is a boys’ club, and for far too long, the men have gotten all of the attention.

To combat this, here’s a list of five female directors—directors who already belong on the list or have the chops to earn a spot one day. And to sweeten the pot further, we've paired each director with with five un-adapted crime and thriller novels—also written by women—that they would be perfect to direct.

Liz Garbus is the directorial force behind Lost Girls, a 2020 mystery drama about a mother’s dedication to tracking down the Long Island Serial Killer who claimed her troubled daughter’s life.

Liz is also responsible for directing episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale, Yellowjackets, and two episodes of the HBO adaptation of Michelle McNamara’s book on the Golden State Killer, I’ll Be Gone in the Dark.

Her work proves she’s a voice for the voiceless, that she captures the light in women in the darkest of times, and that she has plenty of experience not letting their stories get lost under the weight of infamous killers.

For that reason, she would be perfect to adapt Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll, a heart-rending work of fiction about a young woman who survives a notorious serial killer, and how the encounter changes the course of her life.

Karyn Kusama’s claim to fame is her direction of the 2009 cult classic Jennifer’s Body, but her resume is so much deeper, including directorial credits on Yellowjackets and a hand in directing an episode of the television adaptation of the Dan Simmons novel The Terror.

Kusama should be on everyone’s crime radar for her 2018 crime-action flick Destroyer, featuring Nicole Kidman as a jaded detective who embarks on an obsessive journey of self-redemption, hoping to right wrongs from the beginning of her career.

Her work is dark and gritty, and it straddles the line of horror (you’ve probably seen and loved The Invitation from 2015, which she also directed).

As such, she's the perfect fit to direct A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G. Summers, a novel in which Dorothy Daniels, a now-incarcerated, former food critic, writes a memoir about how her frustrations with men and fascination with food drove her to cannibalism.

Issa López is getting some of her flowers lately after her fourth-season direction and total revival of HBO’s True Detective. However, she’s already proven herself in the film space, too.

In 2017, she directed Tigers Are Not Afraid, a story about a gang of orphans who band together to survive in the wake of horrific violence committed at the hands of a drug cartel.

Her portrayal of women in True Detective: Night Country is both honest and refreshing—a battle cry to remind the world that women aren’t always good.

What makes López special is her flair for magical realism, both present in Tigers and TD: NC. For this reason, she would be perfect to direct Sing Her Down by Ivy Pochoda, a cat-and-mouse thriller that’s something like the female version of No Country for Old Men.

It has grit and morally gray women, just like López’s work, and it has the faintest whiff of otherworldliness and a Greek chorus element that’d be fascinating to watch López attack.

Rose Glass released her debut feature film, Saint Maud,  in 2019. It's a surrealist spiral that follows a woman as her life unravels due to her obsession with her faith.

While Saint Maud skews a bit horror, Glass followed that up this year with the action-packed Love Lies Bleeding, a relentless narco-thriller about a female bodybuilder who loses her grasp on reality when she falls in love with a local drug dealer’s daughter.

This film firmly cements her place in the crime genre.

Everything about her work is loud and in your face. It's unexpected and borderline bizarre, much like Katherine Faw’s writing, which would make Glass the perfect fit to adapt Faw’s 2017 bestseller Ultraluminous.

This is a story about a sex worker who may or may not be a terrorist. You’ll have to read—or hopefully one day hopefully watch—to find out.

Lynne Ramsey is most well-known for We Need to Talk About Kevin, an unsettling film about a mother’s journey to reconcile with the fact that her son is deeply disturbed.

But Ramsey is also the director behind You Were Never Really Here, a quiet and surreal film about a traumatized veteran who makes a living tracking down girls who’ve gone missing.

Both films move at slower paces, but still produce unmatchable uneasiness and dread, evoking feelings of the old frog in boiling water metaphor.

Because of her ability to capture the nuances of untraditional motherhood, as well as her ability to produce work that simmers until it explodes, she’d be the perfect fit to direct an adaptation of Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage.

This tale is a slow but steady thriller about a mom who is reluctant to love her manipulative and dark-sided young daughter.

Here’s hoping for fast progress in gender equity in the crime genre. The list above is proof that it’s long overdue.