Contemporary films by women for women: Sister-action heroines

The thesis explores the formation of an emerging type of heroines in contemporary action and thriller films with female protagonists, produced after 2020, created by female directors. With a corpus of four such films, including The Old Guard, The Woman King, Lou and Promising Young Woman, we examine whether the female aspect of the creative team affects the representation of their main characters and the impact on their audiences. Based on the theories on gender studies and representation in film, such as by Karen Hollinger, Chris Holmlund, Noël Carroll and Corrin Columpar, we scrutinize the textual elements of the films under the prism of these publications, to discover the elements of the female gaze and notions of female friendship in the narratives. The study also attempts to introduce the “sister-action”, a new sub-genre that draws its attributes from the specific directorial gaze, the composition of the creative crew and the progression that such syntheses can bring to film narratives.