The 25 Best Movies Directed by Women

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If you look at the past five years, great strides have been made when it comes to women directors in the film industry . In that time, two women have won Best Director at the Academy Awards. In 2023, the highest grossing movie, Barbie , was helmed by Greta Gerwig . Women filmmakers also have more name recognition than ever—there’s Ava DuVernay , Chloé Zhao , and Sofia Coppola , to name just a few. But, while there has been some movement forward when it comes to acclaim, mainstream gigs, and box office success in recent years, this hasn’t always been the case, and there is still a long way to go. For example, before Zhao and Jane Campion won their Best Director Oscars in 2021 and 2022 for Nomadland and The Power of the Dog , respectively, only one woman had won the award before: Kathryn Bigelow The Hurt Locker in 2010, which was 81 years after the awards show began.

This is all to say, if you feel like you’ve been lacking when it comes to watching movies directed by women, you’ve come to the right place. Below you’ll find some of the most beloved and celebrated movies from female directors, including comedies, dramas, action movies, and sci-fi. But don’t stop here. Let this be a jumping off point, because 25 movies is hardly enough to recognize all of the best when it comes to women in film. (And note that some of the trailers below include adult content!)

RELATED: The 25 Best Classic Movies That Every Film Fan Needs to See .

The 25 Best Women-Directed Movies Ever

1995’s Clueless is one of the most quotable and re-watchable comedies of all time. Directed by Amy Heckerling , this updated take on Jane Austen’s Emma is about a Beverly Hills high schooler, Cher ( Alicia Silverstone ), who attempts to be a matchmaker for those around her while also dealing with her own romantic woes and other teenage struggles.

Also directed by Heckerling: Fast Times at Ridgemont High , Look Who’s Talking , National Lampoon’s European Vacation

As the daughter of Francis Ford Coppola , Sofia Coppola had the name recognition thing already going for her, but she’s more than proven herself as a director over the past few decades. For her 2003 film Lost in Translation , she won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and was nominated for Best Director—this made her only the third woman to be up for that award. The movie stars Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray as two Americans who cross paths and form a bond while they’re staying in Tokyo.

Also directed by Coppola: The Virgin Suicides , Marie Antoinette , Priscilla

The influential sci-fi movie The Matrix and its sequels were directed by sisters Lana and Lilly Wachowski . The 1999 film stars Keanu Reeves as a computer programmer, Neo, who learns that he and the rest of human society have been living in the Matrix, a simulation created by artificial intelligence. He then trains and joins the rebellion against the computers, along with other humans, including Carrie-Anne Moss’ Trinity and Laurence Fishburne’s Morpheus.

Also directed by the Wachowskis: Cloud Atlas , Jupiter Ascending

Celine Song made waves with 2023’s Past Lives , which she wrote and directed as her debut feature. The romance was nominated for Best Picture and for Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards and tells the story of two childhood friends, Nora ( Greta Lee ) and Hae Sung ( Teo Yoo ), who are separated when Nora moves with her family from South Korea to Canada. Years later, they reconnect virtually as college students, and years after that they connect again when Hae Sung visits Nora and her husband Arthur ( John Magaro ) in New York City. Throughout the film, there’s the question of whether Hae Sung and Nora’s lingering feelings for each other are an undeniable romance or that they will continue down separate paths.

Also directed by Song: The upcoming film Materialists

Portrait of a Lady on Fire is not just notable for being from a woman director, but for its near total lack of male characters, too. French filmmaker Céline Sciamma wrote and directed the 2019 drama, which is set 18th century France and is about a painter, Marianne ( Noémie Merlant ), who falls in love with her subject, an aristocratic woman named Héloïse ( Adèle Haenel ), while painting a portrait that will be sent to the man she is arranged to marry.

Also directed by Sciamma: Tomboy, Girlhood , Petite Maman

RELATED: The 25 Best Coming-of-Age Movies Ever Made .

Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win the Oscar for Best Director for her 2009 war film The Hurt Locker , which also won Best Picture. It follows a U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal team deployed in Iraq during the Iraq War and explores the psychology of soldiers who work with disarming explosives. Jeremy Renner and Anthony Mackie star.

Also directed by Bigelow: Point Break , Zero Dark Thirty , Detroit

Following Bigelow’s Oscar win for Best Director, Chloé Zhao became the second woman to win the category 11 years later for her film Nomadland— it won the award for Best Picture, too. The drama stars Frances McDormand as Fern, a woman who lives as a nomad and travels around the United States in a van, joining up with a community of other people who share the lifestyle. The film co-stars David Strathairn , as well as a few real-life nomads, who play characters inspired by themselves.

Also directed by Zhao: Songs My Brother Taught Me , The Rider , Eternals

The 2000 film Love & Basketball has become a cult classic for fans who can’t get enough of its combination of sports and romance. From director Gina Prince-Bythewood , the movie is about childhood friends Monica ( Sanaa Lathan ) and Quincy ( Omar Epps ), who bond over their love of basketball and both set out on careers in the sport. There’s also a romance between them as they get older, but they just have to figure out how to get the timing right.

Also directed by Prince-Bythewood: The Secret Life of Bees , Beyond the Lights , The Woman King

2017’s Lady Bird landed Greta Gerwig an Oscar nomination for Best Director. The comedy-drama is inspired by Gerwig’s own experience growing up in Sacramento, California in the early ’00s and stars Saoirse Ronan as the titular character, a high school senior who longs to move to the east coast, as she juggles romance and friendship issues, plus a complicated relationship with her mother ( Laurie Metcalf ).

Also directed by Gerwig: Little Women , Barbie

French directer Justine Triet co-wrote and directed 2023’s Anatomy of a Fall , a courtroom drama about a woman ( Sandra Hüller ) attempting to prove that she did not kill her husband( Samuel Theis ), who was found dead in the snow outside of their home. The French filmmaker won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and was nominated for Best Director.

Also directed by Triet: Age of Panic , In Bed with Victoria , Sibyl

RELATED: 20 Cult Classic Movies With the Most Passionate Fans .

The 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning shines a light on the New York City ballroom scene in ’80s—an LGBTQ subculture that includes contests and parties but also serves as a support system for Black and Latino members of the community. The film from director Jennie Livingston is considered historically significant today and also inspired the TV series Pose .

Also directed by Livingston: short films Hotheads , Who’s the Top? , Through the Ice

Based on a New York magazine article, Lorene Scafaria’s 2019 crime dramedy Hustlers is about a group of strippers who begin drugging the men who come into their club in order to run up charges on their credit cards. Constance Wu and Jennifer Lopez star as Destiny and Ramona, two women at the center of the scheme, who have a mentor-mentee relationship that sours as their crimes continue. Hustlers is rare for being a crime movie about women, directed by a woman.

Also directed by Scafaria: Seeking a Friend for the End of the World , The Meddler

Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles made headlines in 2022 when it was named the greatest film of all time by Sight and Sound magazine, which releases a new list of top films every 10 years. Jeanne Dielman is the first movie by a woman director to top the list. The 1975 film by Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman is about the life of a widow and sex worker, Jeanne Dielman ( Delphine Seyrig ), and follows her over three days. The title isn’t the only thing about the film that’s lengthy—it clocks in at nearly 3.5 hours.

Also directed by Akerman: News from Home , Je Tu Il Elle

Atlantics from French director Mati Diop follows a couple in Senegal, Ada ( Mame Bineta Sane ) and Souleiman ( Ibrahima Traoré ), who are separated when he leaves with other men from their community to try to find work in Spain after they are not paid by the person who employed them at home. Soon, things turn supernatural as the spirits of Souleiman and the other men who left on a boat begin possessing other people’s bodies in an attempt to receive their rightful pay, and Souleiman attempts to reconnect with Ada while inhabiting another person’s body.

Also directed by Diop: Dahomey

Aftersun is the 2022 feature debut from Charlotte Wells . The drama is about an 11-year-old, Sophie ( Frankie Corio ), who is on vacation with her father, Calum ( Paul Mescal ), following her parents’ separation. The haunting film explores Sophie and Calum’s relationship as questions linger about Calum’s state of mind and mental health. Adding to the tension is the fact that the scenes of Sophie and Calum on their trip are interspersed with scenes of Sophie as an adult and surreal scenes of an adult Sophie and Calum at a rave.

Also directed by Wells: Short films Laps , Blue Christmas

RELATED: 15 Documentary Movies That Actually Changed the World .

Directed by Ava DuVernay, Selma tells the story of the marches that took place in Selma, Alabama in the fight for voting rights for Black Americans. A number of famous figures from the Civil Rights Movement are featured in the movie, including David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King Jr. , Carmen Ejogo as Coretta Scott King , Stephan James as John Lewis , and Common as James Bevel .

Also directed by DuVernay: 13th , A Wrinkle in Time , Origin

Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding is centered around a large Indian wedding that was arranged for Aditi Verma ( Vasundhara Das ) and Hemant Rai ( Parvin Dabas ). But while there is plenty of drama when it comes to the planning of the wedding, the film also explores other issues in the Verma family, as well as a second romantic relationship between the wedding planner ( Vijay Raaz ) and the Verma family’s maid ( Tillotama Shome ).

Also directed by Nair: Mississippi Masala , The Namesake , Vanity Fair

Jane Campion is the only woman to be nominated twice for the Academy Award for Best Director. First, she was nominated for 1993’s The Piano. Then, nearly 30 years later, she won the award for The Power of the Dog . The western film is based on the novel of the same name by Thomas Savage and is about brothers, Phil ( Benedict Cumberbatch ) and George ( Jesse Plemmons ), who own a ranch Montana in the 1920s and the way their lives change when one of them marries a woman, Rose ( Kirsten Dunst ), with a teenage son, Peter ( Kodi Smit-McPhee ), with whom Phil forms an unnerving bond.

Also directed by Campion: The Piano , Holy Smoke! , In the Cut

Cléo from 5 to 7 from director Agnès Varda shows a couple of hours of a woman’s life in real time. Singer Cléo Victoire ( Corrine Marchand ) waits on the results of a cancer screening, and the film shows how she keeps herself busy in the meantime, including getting a tarot card reading, going to a cafe, rehearsing her music, and facing a crisis over what the test result might be.

Also directed by Varda: Vagabond , Faces Places , Varda by Agnès

The 1992 comedy-drama A League of Their Own is about the Rockford Peaches, an all-women baseball team that was part of the real-life All-American Girls Professional Baseball League founded during World War II. The Penny Marshall -directed movie stars Geena Davis , Madonna , Tom Hanks , Rosie O’Donnell , and Lori Petty .

Also directed by Marshall: Jumpin’ Jack Flash , Big , Riding in Cars with Boys

RELATED: 30 Travel Movies to Help Inspire Your Next Trip .

Kelly Reichardt directed First Cow , based on the Jonathan Raymond book The Half-Life . The story follows two men, Cookie (John Magaro) and King-Lu ( Orion Lee ), who cross paths when traveling in the western United States in the early 1800s. They hatch a plan together to steal milk from a weather trader’s cow in order to sell baked gooda for money but struggle to keep their scheme going as they attempt to start new lives.

Also directed by Reichardt: Night Moves , Certain Women , Showing Up

In 1991, Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust became the first movie directed by a Black American woman to be released in theaters nationwide. It’s about a Gullah family, who live off the coast of the southern United States as they prepare to move to the mainland and tells the story of multiple generations of women in the family.

Also directed by Dash: Illusions , episodes of Queen Sugar

2002’s Real Women Have Curves , directed by Patricia Cardoso , follows a recent high school graduate, Ana ( America Ferrera ), who has a strained relationship with her controlling mother, Carmen ( Lupe Ontiveros ). Ana dreams of going to college and secretly applies to Columbia University, but Carmen wants her to remain in Los Angeles at work at the family business. With Real Women Have Curves , Cardoso became the first Latina director to have her film included in the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry.

Also directed by Cardoso: Lies in Plain Sight

Lulu Wang’s The Farewell stars Awkwafina as Billi, a woman who travels to China to visit her grandmother ( Zhao Shu-zhen ), who’s been diagnosed with a terminal illness. She also has to contend with the fact that her other family members have chosen not to disclose the diagnosis with the grandmother—a decision she doesn’t agree with. The Farewell is a a true dramedy, with drama coming from the family members’ grief and comedy coming into play as they go to great lengths to keep their secret.

Also directed by Wang: Posthumous

Mudbound from director Dee Rees , is about two World War II veterans, who return home to Mississippi and have to adjust to life back in the U.S. Jamie ( Garrett Hedlund ) struggles with PTSD, while Ronsel ( Jason Mitchell ) faces PTSD as well as racism in a different way than he did in the military. The two bond over their shared experience even though the relationship is not accepted by those in their hometown, including family members and the Ku Klux Klan.

Also directed by Rees: Pariah , Bessie

30 Travel Movies to Help Inspire Your Next Trip

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One of the great things about movies is that they can take you places without you having to squeeze into an uncomfortable airplane seat or with all the other hassles that real-life travel entails. There are lots of great movies about people setting out to see the world , so let the big screen scratch your wanderlust by checking out these 31 films.

Some of the movies on this list are romantic, following two people as they come together in that special way that happens when you’re away from home. Others are about journeys of self-discovery, showing what can happen when you hit the road solo. Some movies are uproarious comedies that will transport you away from your troubles as you laugh along to the antics on screen. There are also movies that are less of a vacation than they are an adventure, sure to get your blood pumping. And there are some scary movies about travel—the sort that might make you think, “You know, actually, maybe let’s make this one a staycation.”

Don’t bother packing your bags. All you need to do is hit “play” to embark on any one of these 30 great travel movies.

RELATED: 24 Feel-Good Movies to Lift Your Spirits .

Romantic Travel Movies

Diane Lane stars in this charming 1996 movie as a recently divorced woman who travels to Italy in an attempt to break out of her post-divorce funk. (In her defense, her husband was cheating on her and he got to keep the house, so she’s right to be miffed.) Once in Tuscany, though, she somehow becomes the owner of a villa, and as she begins to make a new life for herself, the potential for new love emerges amidst some of the most beautiful scenery and delicious-looking wine ever put to film. It’s the type of movie that will have you looking up flights to Florence.

A destination wedding counts as travel, and the breakout comedy of 2023 was shot on location in Australia. Glenn Powell and Sydney Sweeney play two people who left on bad terms after a one-night stand only to have to make nice when their mutual friends get married. Anyone But You is enough to make you want to take a trip Down Under, although perhaps without all the rom-com shenanigans.

Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz play lovelorn women who swap homes so that they can get away from their respective heartbreaks over Christmastime. When Winslet’s Iris and Diaz’s Amanda get to Los Angeles and London, respectively, they find new love in Jack Black and Jude Law’s characters. The 2006 movie, from the great Nancy Meyers , works extra well as a travel movie because, thanks to the house-swapping premise, it’s a reminder that everyone’s home is somebody else’s trip.

The first of Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy introduces audiences to Ethan Hawke’s Jesse and Julie Delpy’s Céline as they meet on a train from Budapest and decide to spend the night together wandering Vienna. Widely regarded as one of the more romantic movies ever made, Before Sunrise will also make you want to explore Vienna with someone you’ve just met—someone who maybe you could see yourself spending the rest of your life with.

Technically, Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris is a travel movie (because Owen Wilson’s character is visiting Paris with his fiancee, played by Rachel McAdams ) and a time travel movie (because he goes back in time to 1920s). It’s a romantic movie both because of the relationship Wilson’s Gil strikes up with Marion Cotillard’s Adriana and because of how it romanticizes Paris and nostalgia—and deftly interrogates that romanticism.

RELATED: 20 Date Night Movies You and Your Partner Will Both Love .

Movies About Traveling Solo

Dev Patel stars in this 2016 film, which is based on the true story of Saroo Brierley , who was separated from his parents in India at a very young age and adopted by an Australian couple. Once he grew up, he went back to his birth country in an attempt to find his biological parents. Saroo’s trek through India and into his own forgotten past is a tear-jerking, emotional travel story, and Lion was rewarded with six Oscar nominations.

This 2014 adaptation of Cheryl Strayed’s memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail stars Reese Witherspoon as Strayed sets out to hike from Southern California to Washington State in an attempt to find herself. The tour of the West Coast’s trails is a tour-de-force for the actor as her character remakes her life one hiking boot-clad step at a time.

In 1977, Robyn Davidson set out on a nine-month journey across the unforgiving Australian Outback with her dog and four camels. She later wrote about her adventure in National Geographic and in her memoir Tracks . In 2013, her story was adapted into a film with the same name. Mia Wasikowska plays Davidson in the movie, which features stunning cinematography of the Australian desert in all its harsh beauty.

A lot of solo travel stories are tales of self-discovery where the voyager has learned something by the time they reach their destination. Into the Wild offers no such catharsis, instead telling the true story of Christopher McCandless , a man who hiked across America and eventually ended up in the Alaskan wilderness—an environment he was not prepared for. It’s a poignant, tragic counterpart to the more common celebrations of wanderlust you tend to see in pop culture.

Julia Roberts stars as Elizabeth Gilbert in this 2010 adaptation of her memoir of post-divorce travel and self-discovery. Feeling her life is aimless and without purpose, Liz elects to travel around the world, stopping in Italy, India, and Bali where she eats, prays, and well, you can probably guess.

RELATED: The 15 Movies That Won the Most Oscars .

Travel Horror Movies

Ari Aster’s supremely disturbing folk horror movie stars Florence Pugh as a young woman who is begrudgingly invited by her not-great boyfriend and his friends to go to Sweden to observe a commune’s midsummer festival. Upon getting there, Pugh’s Dani soon learns that the Hårga are not all sunshine and flowers, and that there are dark rituals and sinister plots. It’s the type of movie that will make you think twice about a Nordic vacation, and you’ll never look at a taxidermied bear the same way.

This 2005 horror movie, from director Eli Roth , is one of the biggest examples of the so-called “torture porn” subgenre, but there’s more to Hostel than just blood and guts. (There are a lot of blood and guts, though.) The film follows some American backpackers who, while traveling in Eastern Europe, become the victims of a shadowy organization that lets the ultra-rich live out their most depraved fantasies by torturing and killing unsuspecting tourists. Let’s just say that Hostel is not exactly a great promotional tourism campaign for Slovakia—something that the country was actually pretty upset about .

This 2022 film, released by the horror-centric streaming service Shudder, follows a social media influencer who, when traveling in Thailand, meets and befriends a young woman. It’s the type of movie that lives or dies on its twists, but let’s just say that Influencer is what you would get if The Talented Mr. Ripley were set in the social media age and a full-on horror film instead of a thriller.

The Creator director Gareth Edward’s 2010 debut follows a photojournalist as he tries to escort a young woman through Mexico, which has been taken over by kaiju-sized alien monsters. There are moments of beauty and discovery along their journey, as well as high-stress moments of terror when they encounter these creatures, which Edwards brings to life on a shoestring budget—though you can’t tell that by watching.

It’s right there in the title: John Landis’ 1980 comedy horror is about an American in London, although he’s not a werewolf when he first arrives in the UK. No, that happens after he’s mauled by a strange beast in the moors of Yorkshire—and that same beast kills the friend he was backpacking with. When he recovers in London, things get gnarly in the light of a full moon.

RELATED: 27 Movies With Shocking Twist Endings You Won’t Recover From .

Comedy Movies About Traveling

If you like the misadventures of the Griswold family’s first vacation attempt, great news: There are five sequels to this 1983 Chevy Chase comedy. Before the European , Vegas , or Christmas Vacation , though, Clark Griswold tries to drive his family from Chicago to southern California. Their journey makes for some classic comedy, though it might hit a bit too close to home if you’ve had to endure a family vacation that went awry.

A lot of Wes Anderson’s movies are about travel, including his most recent film, Asteroid City , and The Grand Budapest Hotel . His ultimate travel movie, though, is 2007’s The Darjeeling Limited , which stars Owen Wilson , Adrien Brody , and Jason Schwartzman as three estranged brothers who agree to make a trip through India together in the hopes of reconnecting after their father’s death.

Lots of movies are about travel, but are they about a big adventure, the way Tim Burton’s directorial debut is? Paul Reubens stars as his Pee-wee Herman character, who hits the road in an attempt to recover his beloved bicycle, which has gone missing. Following a psychic’s totally legit vision of his bike in the basement of the Alamo, Pee-wee encounters a ghost trucker, biker gangs, and all the madness of a Hollywood backlot.

Netflix’s Oscar-nominated animated movie has a setup that’s not too dissimilar from that of National Lampoon’s Vacation . Aspiring filmmaker Katie Mitchell can’t wait to get away from her family and start film school. Her dad, voiced by Danny McBride , feels his daughter slipping away and opts to have the whole fam drive her across the country rather than take a plane to school. At the same time, an A.I. gone rogue has started a robot uprising. Oops!

In addition to featuring a hall-of-fame cameo from Matt Damon as the singer of “Scotty Doesn’t Know,” Eurotrip is a classic, if not especially intelligent, teen sex romp. It’s not the movie to watch if you want to get a feel for Europe, but it is what you put on when you want to enjoy some good, dumb laughs.

RELATED: 23 Movies Like Interstellar That Will Also Bend Your Brain .

Adventure Travel Movies

Ben Stiller directed and stars in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty , an imaginative adaptation of a 1939 short story about a mild-mannered man who gets lost in his daydreams. When circumstances force Walter to embark on a trip around the world, he starts living his daydreams for real, going to Greenland and the Himalayas. Featuring a fantastic soundtrack and gorgeous cinematography of some truly beautiful, off-the-beaten-path places, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is the type of movie that might make you stop just thinking about taking a trip and actually buy a ticket.

William Friedkin , best known for directing The Exorcist , also helmed this 1977 thriller about possibly the worst road trip of all time. When four people, all on the run from their various sordid pasts, find themselves trapped in a remote oil village in Colombia, they are desperate to get out by any means necessary. The opportunity presents itself when the bosses need people to drive boxes of dynamite that are extremely unstable and could blow at any minute across miles of rainforest. There is one sequence in Sorcerer that’s some of the most unbelievably tense filmmaking you’ll likely ever see. (Note that it’s a remake of another classic film, Wages of Fear , should you want another movie that’ll keep you on edge.)

Johnny Depp stars as an average man who finds himself smack in the middle of an international criminal incident when on vacation in Europe after a woman, played by Angelina Jolie , tries to trick the authorities into thinking Depp’s the fugitive they’re looking for. Thrills, laughs, and a little romance ensue.

Charlie Hunnam plays real explorer Percy Fawcett in this adaptation of the book by the same name from author David Grann , who also wrote Killers of the Flower Moon . The film follows the British explorer in the early 1900s as he tries, time and time again, to prove the existence of a mythical city deep in the jungles of Brazil. Think of it as a somber, reflective take on a real-life Indiana Jones, one whose obsession with traveling to hostile environments in search of knowledge may prove to be his undoing.

This gripping survival drama about the infamous 1996 Mount Everest Disaster, as documented by Jon Krakauer in the book Into Thin Air, is the type of film that will probably make you consider an all-inclusive beach resort for your next vacation rather than mountain-climbing.

RELATED: 25 Movies Like Knives Out That Will Bring Out Your Inner Detective .

Movies About Roadtrips

This biopic follows the man who would become the Che Guevara when he, as a young man in the early ‘50s, travels across South America with his friend Alberto Granado . The film, which is based on Guevara’s trip diary, is both a road movie and a coming-of-age film about an important historical figure, as we see him become radicalized by the poverty and inequality he sees on this journey.

Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan star in Ethan Coen’s romp from earlier this year, and it wouldn’t be inaccurate to call Drive-Away Dolls “ The Big Lebowski , but just the silly parts.” Set in the late ’90s, it follows two lesbian friends who learn that the car they’ve rented has a human head and a briefcase in the trunk—and that some shadowy types really, really want whatever’s in that case back.

Burt Reynolds stars in this 1977 classic, which was the second-highest-grossing movie of its release year after the original Star Wars . He plays a legendary bootlegger who accepts a job to smuggle 400 cases of Coors from Texarkana to Atlanta in under 28 hours. Along the way, he encounters a runaway bride played by Sally Field , and Sheriff Buford T. Justice, who wants to stop the Bandit. Smokey and the Bandit also features an incredible theme song, “ East Bound and Down ,” and while the lyrics describe the plot of the movie almost beat-for-beat, you’ll find that it’s a fitting song to blast on your own car stereo when you’re on the road.

Il Sorpasso , which is sometimes given the English title The Easy Life , is a masterpiece of 1960s Italian cinema. It follows a boisterous middle-aged man who decides to take a timid, bookish college student he meets under his wing for a good time out on the road—whether or not the younger man actually wants to tag along or not. Hilarious and poignant when you might not expect it, Il Sorpasso ’s well worth the watch.

This seminal adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson’s novel of the same name stars Johnny Depp and Benicio del Toro as they drive to Sin City under the influence of an absurd amount of drugs. In that way, it’s the ultimate travel movie. It’s about a trip, but it’s also about a trip .