Within the top 250 highest-grossing films in 2022, women accounted for 24% of directors, producers, and writers on set. Since the first Academy Awards were handed out in 1929, only three women — Kathryn Bigelow, Chloé Zhao, and most recently, Jane Campion in 2022 — have won “Best Director.” Most years, there are no women among the “Best Director” nominees. Despite this serious gender inequality, Jane Campion has flourished, not only winning accolades left and right but also charting new paths forward for women in the film industry.

Campion’s 1982 short “Peel” launched her into the critical spotlight. An uncomfortable examination of family dysfunction within the compact setting of a car, “Peel” demonstrated Campion’s expertise in nuance and style. Her manipulation of sound — for example, splicing loud violent noises into moments of complete silence — mirrors the seething tensions between father and son, and her circular narrative structure reflects the cycle of chaos within the family. Campion’s extreme attention to detail ultimately won her the Short Film Palme d’Or at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival.

When Campion made her feature debut with “Sweetie” in 1989, she revisited some of the themes from “Peel.” A sense of imminent collapse emanates from the film: two parents who have serious marital troubles, one daughter who cannot seem to get on the same page as her boyfriend and another daughter nicknamed “Sweetie,” whose delusional behavior and destructive tendencies cause enormous disruption within the family. With this piece, Campion once again demonstrated her bold approach towards choosing unconventional subjects of focus and making dark but realistic commentaries through her films. 

Perhaps her crowning achievement is “The Piano,” which won the main competition Palme d’Or at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival — the first for a female director. Though she was already critically acclaimed at this point, this win made Campion a true global sensation. It follows the plight of Ada McGrath, an intentionally mute young woman, who is sold into marriage by her father. Her new husband — a New Zealand frontiersman — separates Ada from her piano, which is the one item that brings her joy in life. Another man attempts to seduce Ada by promising her the piano, exchanging each key of the piano for a romantic advance. Later, in a flash of anger, Ada’s husband severs Ada’s index finger with an axe, thus depriving her of her piano-playing abilities. The most evocative image of the entire film appears when Ada and her husband leave their New Zealand island on a boat and Ada asks her husband to throw the piano overboard — which she is tethered to — and begins to drown with the piano. Despite all the trauma associated with the piano, she still feels deeply attached to the piano.

Campion’s most recent feature, “The Power of the Dog,” won her the Silver Lion, the Venice Film Festival’s top prize and the Oscar for Best Director. Building on themes from her previous films, Campion spotlights a dysfunctional family on a remote Wyoming ranch as Phil Burbank, a rugged rancher, hides his sexual orientation behind toxic masculinity. He exhibits relentless brutality towards the rest of the family, especially his brother’s newlywed wife and her son from a previous marriage. Campion depicts the inner turbulence of each character with extraordinary subtlety, bringing them to life and tying them into complex relationships with one another.

In many ways, Campion’s films are strange and unsettling. She covers families, romance and women darkly, but simultaneously makes profound social commentary. Campion’s distinctive filmmaking lends her even more power as a female pioneer in a male-dominated industry. Campion is creative freedom at its best: eclectic, enigmatic and completely liberated — she refuses to conform to popular standards of what makes a film successful, instead letting her work do all the talking. Her example should serve as an inspiration for filmmakers of all backgrounds and experience levels, encouraging them to keep telling the stories that authentically reflect all the vicissitudes of life.