Of the 275 top-grossing films released this year, only 21 — a shameful 7.6 percent — have female directors. But behind that grim statistic is an encouraging piece of metadata: Three of those 21 filmmakers are Amma Asante, Ava DuVernay, and Gina Prince-Bythewood, black filmmakers dynamically reframing the past and present, yielding three movies in which female characters are as vital (or more so) to the story as their male counterparts.

You can read the rest of my piece for Yahoo Films here.

While watching the films of Asante, DuVernay and Prince-Bythewood I wondered whether this year marks  turning point for women filmmakers and especially black women filmmakers. Thoughts? Hopes?