Greta Gerwig

Greta Gerwig's first solo directing job, Lady Bird, follows a year running from the last class of a Catholic school in Sacramento into the first year of university; its form is a chain of scenes mostly shorter than a minute, advancing like a three-panel comic strip. That screenplay won her the Independent Spirit best screenplay award. Before it she had written Frances Ha and Mistress America with Noah Baumbach and performed in both, and in 2008 she is credited as a co-director on Joe Swanberg's Nights and Weekends. In Little Women she breaks the chronology of Alcott's novel and opens the narrative into layers of memory, the result holding sugared sentiment and sharp politics together. Barbie opens with a Barbie who has begun to think about death, and it dares to mock itself.