For the second year in a row, a female director’s feature debut will open Venice Critics’ Week. The independently run Venice sidebar kicked off last year’s screenings with Alice Lowe’s “Prevenge,” a dark comedy about a pregnant woman on a killing spree. This year will launch with Deborah Haywood’s “Pin Cushion.” Described as “a gothic fairy tale set in the British working-class suburbs,” the pic centers on a 13-year-old girl and her dysfunctional relationship with her best friend. A press release has revealed the lineup for the sidebar, and while “Pin Cushion” isn’t screening in Competition, many women-directed films are.

Of seven films in the Critics’ Week Competition program, five are helmed or co-helmed by women, amounting to an impressive 71 percent of the slate. Among the movies screening are Helena Wittmann’s “Drift,” the story of two women who spend a life-changing weekend at the North Sea together, and Natalia Garagiola’s “Hunting Season,” a portrait of a teen boy who recently lost his mother and is put into his father’s custody after they’ve spent ten years apart.

This year’s numbers mark a major improvement from last year’s Critics’ Week, when just one of seven films screened in Competition was directed by a woman, Irene Dionisio’s “Le Ultime Cose.”

Critics’ Week runs during the Venice International Film Festival, which will be held from August 30-September 9 this year. Check out the women-helmed films screening during Critics’ Week below.

COMPETITION

IL CRATERE | CRATER

by Silvia Luzi (with Luca Bellino) (Italy)

DRIFT

by Helena Wittmann (Germany)

SARAH JOUE UN LOUP GAROU | SARAH PLAYS A WEREWOLF

by Katharina Wyss (Switzerland, Germany)

TEAM HURRICANE

by Annika Berg (Denmark)

TEMPORADA DE CAZA | HUNTING SEASON

by Natalia Garagiola (Argentina, USA, Germany, France, Qatar)

SPECIAL EVENTS — OUT OF COMPETITION

Opening Film

PIN CUSHION

by Deborah Haywood (United Kingdom)