This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.
Film still from "Estiu 1993" directed by Carla Simón (Spain, 2017).
The Spanish film industry has historically been dominated by men and, perhaps unsurprisingly, by the Spanish language. The country doesn’t have a great track record for valuing minority languages, or the cultural outputs made in them.
Pioneering female directors including Icíar Bollaín and Isabel Coixet have paved the way for a new generation of female film-makers. Thanks to the influence of organizations such as CIMA (the Association of Women Filmmakers and Audiovisual Media in Spain), there is now increased support for women working across the industry.
In 2025, for the first time in the history of the Malaga Film Festival, there were more female than male directors nominated in the Official Selection. And many are bringing feminist themes and linguistic diversity to the big screen.
In building on the rich cinematic traditions of their homelands, these women have made some of the most exciting films in recent years in Basque, Catalan and Galician. Despite challenges such as limited financial support for cinema in non-state languages, their productions have achieved commercial and critical success.
International Women’s Day in Spain is known as 8M, in reference to the date of March 8, when many Spanish women take to the streets in purple, on strike from work and domestic labor. In the spirit of that defiant collective stance, here are five female film directors whose work is pushing boundaries.
Carla Simón
The Catalan film director Carla Simón is one of the most well-known film-makers working in Spain today—a leading light of what pundits have dubbed Catalonia’s New Wave. She has earned worldwide acclaim for her trilogy filmed mostly in Catalan. Estiu 1993 (Summer 1993), in 2017, was about a young girl orphaned by Aids. Alcarràs, in 2022, told the story of a family of peach farmers losing their traditional way of life. And in 2025, Simón released Romería, about a young Barcelona woman’s visit to her late father’s family in Vigo.
Simón’s auto-fictional works are characterized by strong female characters, intimate camerawork filmed as though through the eyes of a child, and non-professional actors bringing authenticity to the exploration of complex social issues.
Jaione Camborda
A director of Basque origin, Jaione Camborda has lived in Galicia for many years. She belongs to the wave of Novo Cinema Galego (New Galician Cinema), a group of film-makers creating experimental film that is rooted in the characteristic Atlantic landscape of Spain’s most north-westerly region.
Camborda’s second feature O Corno (The Rye Horn, released in 2023) was filmed in the Galician language with some dialogue in Portuguese. It tackles the timely issue of reproductive justice, following a healer’s clandestine journey to escape her tight-knit community on the Galician island of Arousa after she is exposed for engaging in the local practice of using ergot (a fungus that grows on rye) to induce abortions.
With O Corno, Camborda was the first female Spanish director in the history of the San Sebastián Film Festival to win the festival’s top prize, the Golden Shell for Best Film.
Sonia Méndez
In her first feature film, a 2024 thriller titled As Neves, Vigo-born director Sonia Méndez worked with non-professional actors, shooting entirely in the Galician language. Set in a remote village engulfed in a snowstorm, the film is a frank exposé of the potentially disastrous effects of social media on young people, as a group of teenagers try to come to terms with the disappearance of their friend after an intimate video of her circulated online.
A key player in Galician cinema, Méndez’s is a varied filmography. A poeta analfabeta, released in 2020, is a docu-film about the emblematic Galician poet and activist Luz Fandiño. Méndez has directed several short films, including Perversa Lola from 2007 and Conversa cunha muller morta from 2012.
Mar Coll
A graduate of Catalonia’s prestigious film school ESCAC, Mar Coll broke new ground in 2009 with the Catalan-language family drama, Tres dies amb la família (Three Days With the Family), which won her Goya and Gaudí Awards. She delved into a woman’s journey to self-realization following a car accident in the 2013 feature, Tots volem el millor per a ella (We All Want What’s Best for Her). Coll’s latest feature, Salve Maria, was released in 2024. It is a complex exploration of motherhood based on a Basque-language novel by Katixa Agirre.
Sara Fantova
The youngest of the lot, Sara Fantova, born in Bilbao, is a rising star with a number of productions to her name. Her debut feature film, Jone, batzuetan (Jone, Sometimes), which was released in 2025, only secured funding after shooting was completed. Set in the director’s hometown during its iconic summer festival, it is an evocative coming-of-age queer romance in Basque and Spanish. It tells the story of Jone, a young woman who is navigating the impact of her father’s rapidly deteriorating health when she falls in love with Olga.
Elena Martín
Barcelona-born director Elena Martín Gimeno also shoots primarily in the Catalan language. She is also an actor and screenwriter who has starred in her own films. Júlia Ist (from 2017) is a semi-autobiographical production about the experiences of a student from Barcelona who embarks on a journey of self-discovery while studying abroad in Berlin.
This was followed by Creatura (in 2023), which won multiple accolades: Best European Film at Directors’ Fortnight, three nominations for the Goya Awards and six Gaudí Awards. It documents a woman’s reckoning with her upbringing marked by sexual repression.
Martín has spoken about the strong sense of community she has felt among her peers: “I am so close to so many directors who were coming on to the scene around the same time as I was,” she told journalist Rafa Sales Ross in 2025. “Isabel Coixet and Icíar Bollaín might have a different view of this and maybe they have felt alone when they were starting, but I hope they feel less lonely now with all of us here.”
Catherine Barbour, Assistant Professor in Hispanic Studies, Trinity College Dublin
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