I was inspired by a directing workshop I attended with Brady Corbet, who recently wrote and directed The Brutalist. Really interesting guy. He recommends the films of Larisa Shepitko, a prominent actress, screenwriter, and film director, who was central to the "new wave" of cinema that emerged during the Soviet "Thaw" of the 1960s, placing her alongside contemporaries like Andrei Tarkovsky. Her films were known for their intense naturalism, associative imagery, and profound emotional and thematic depth. Shepitko saw her gender as her strength:

“I’m giving you my word that there’s nothing, there’s no frame in my film, not a single one, that doesn’t come from me as a woman. […] A woman, as one half of the source of humankind, a woman can tell the world, reveal to the world some amazing things. No man can so intuitively discern some phenomena in the human psyche, in nature, as a woman can.”