Promising Young Woman

Emerald Fennell's Promising Young Woman was her feature debut as writer-director (she had previously been showrunner on the second season of Killing Eve), and its release was delayed by the early-pandemic shutdown of cinemas. It still went on to earn five Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, and won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay; it also won Outstanding British Film at the BAFTAs.

Carey Mulligan plays the lead and was nominated for Best Actress at both the Oscars and the BAFTAs. Fennell deliberately filled the supporting roles (Bo Burnham, Alison Brie, Connie Britton, Adam Brody, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Jennifer Coolidge) with comedy faces cast against type. Cinematography is by Benjamin Kračun (later known for Saltburn's look), and the production design works from a candy-pastel palette built around Mulligan's pink-and-blue costumes.

Its marketing, and the arguments it started about consent, accountability and the way genre cinema handles revenge, made it one of the most discussed releases of its year. Fennell followed it with the more divisive Saltburn in 2023, but Promising Young Woman is the film that made her a mainstream awards-stage figure. It also introduced a writer who likes to use genre as a place for moral argument, and who is in no hurry at all to hand the audience its catharsis.