30 Best Movies About Female Friendship (Including Barbie & Wicked)
March 16, 2026 | Film Chop
Female friendship films celebrate something that mainstream cinema spent decades underestimating: the relationships women have with each other. Not the love interest. Not the mentor. Not the rival. The friend — the one who shows up, tells you the truth, and makes life feel worth living.
The best movies about female friendship don’t treat these bonds as backstory. They put them center stage. From Céline Sciamma’s diamond-sharp character studies to the unbridled joy of Bridesmaids, these films prove that female friendship is one of cinema’s richest subjects — full of humor, grief, loyalty, and every complicated emotion in between.
This list has been updated to include the standout female friendship films of 2022–2024, because the years since our original list gave us Barbie, Wicked, and Past Lives — films that deserve to be part of this conversation permanently.
Here are the 30 best movies about female friendship, ranked.
30. Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar (2021)
Two lifelong best friends leave their small Midwestern town for the very first time, setting off an absolutely unhinged comedic adventure involving a supervillain, a spy, and a lot of matching culottes. Written by and starring Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo (the duo behind Bridesmaids), Barb and Star is a full-throated love letter to the warmth, absurdity, and unconditional loyalty of a decades-long friendship. It’s gloriously weird. It’s joyful. It commits completely.
Streaming: Hulu
29. Bottoms (2023)
Two unpopular high school best friends — played by Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri — start a self-defense club as an elaborate scheme to meet girls, and chaos ensues. Bottoms is brash, anarchic, and genuinely funny in a way that most studio comedies stopped being years ago. But underneath the mayhem, it’s a film about two friends who are completely ride-or-die for each other — and who are both, in their own disastrous ways, trying to figure out who they are. One of the sharpest female friendship comedies in years.
Streaming: Prime Video
28. Do Revenge (2022)
A darkly funny teen thriller about two very different girls — a fallen queen bee (Camila Mendes) and a socially awkward transfer student (Maya Hawke) — who team up to get revenge on each other’s tormentors. Do Revenge is Hitchcock filtered through the early-2000s teen movie aesthetic, and it works because the central dynamic is genuinely compelling: these two women aren’t exactly friends when they start, but they become something more interesting and more honest than that. Netflix’s best original film of 2022.
Streaming: Netflix
27. Mean Girls (2024)
The musical remake of the 2004 classic brings Tina Fey’s razor-sharp social satire into a new era, and it largely earns its existence. The friendship between Cady and Janis (Angourie Rice and Auli’i Cravalho) is given more emotional weight this time around, and the film is honest about how female social dynamics can be both cruel and deeply loving. It’s colorful, propulsive, and a worthy update to a film that was already about the complicated, sometimes toxic, sometimes tender nature of female relationships.
Streaming: Paramount+
26. Wicked (2024)
Glinda and Elphaba’s friendship is one of the great female friendships in stage history, and Jon M. Chu’s adaptation does it real justice. Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande bring extraordinary chemistry to a relationship built on initial antagonism, genuine admiration, and the pain of having to choose between what’s right and what’s safe. Wicked is a blockbuster that takes its female friendship seriously — the central bond isn’t a subplot, it’s the entire story. Watching two women build each other up, challenge each other, and ultimately break each other’s hearts is what this film is really about.
Streaming: Peacock
25. Past Lives (2023)
Celine Song’s debut film is technically a love story — but it’s also a film about how the people who shaped us in childhood become a kind of permanent companion, even when they’re absent. Greta Lee and Teo Yoo deliver performances of extraordinary delicacy. Past Lives belongs on this list because it understands something rare: that the most profound connections of our lives don’t always end in romance, and that’s not a tragedy. It’s just a different kind of love. The friendship between Na Young and Hae Sung, seen across decades, is one of the most moving relationship portraits in recent cinema.
Streaming: Paramount+, Prime Video
24. Girls Trip (2017)
Four lifelong friends — played by Tiffany Haddish, Regina Hall, Queen Latifah, and Jada Pinkett Smith — reunite for a long-overdue trip to the Essence Festival in New Orleans, and absolutely everything goes sideways. Girls Trip is raucously funny (Tiffany Haddish’s comedic timing here is a force of nature), but it earns its laughs from a foundation of real friendship dynamics: old grievances, evolving lives, and the question of whether four women who once knew each other perfectly still do. One of the funniest American comedies of the 2010s.
Streaming: Hulu
23. Barbie (2023)
Greta Gerwig’s Barbie is many things — a meditation on femininity, a critique of patriarchy, an extremely funny comedy — but it’s also, at its core, a film about the relationship between Barbie and the other Barbies, between Barbie and Gloria, and between a woman and herself. The friendship between Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) and Gloria (America Ferrera) is the film’s emotional engine: two women from wildly different worlds who see each other clearly and help each other move forward. Barbie was the biggest film of 2023. It deserved to be.
Streaming: Max
22. Hustlers (2019)
Based on the true story of a group of former strip club workers who devised an elaborate scheme to drain the accounts of their Wall Street clients, Hustlers is a movie about loyalty, ambition, and how female friendships can be both sanctuary and liability. Jennifer Lopez’s performance as Ramona is one of the best of the decade. The bond between Ramona and Destiny (Constance Wu) is richly complicated — mentorship, friendship, manipulation, and love, often all at once. This is prestige filmmaking that happens to be endlessly watchable.
Streaming: Hulu
21. Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (2005)
Four best friends stay connected through a summer of diverging paths — college prep, family tragedy, first love, and self-discovery — by sharing a magical pair of jeans that somehow fits all of them. Sisterhood earns its place on this list not for being sophisticated but for being genuinely true: it captures the specific feeling of being young and afraid you’re going to lose the people who matter most to you. The four leads (Blake Lively, Alexis Bledel, America Ferrera, Amber Tamblyn) have real chemistry. The film still holds up.
Streaming: Max
20. The Virgin Suicides (1999)
Sofia Coppola’s debut is narrated from the outside — five mysterious sisters observed and mythologized by the neighborhood boys who were obsessed with them. The friendship between the Lisbon girls is largely inferred rather than shown, which is exactly the point: their inner lives are inaccessible, their bonds invisible to the men watching. The Virgin Suicides is a film about female friendship as resistance — what it means to have an inner world that the world around you cannot colonize.
Streaming: Hulu
19. Plan B (2021)
Two best friends have 24 hours to track down emergency contraception in America’s conservative heartland — a premise that sounds heavy but plays as a sharp, funny road trip comedy. Plan B is on this list because the friendship between Sunny and Lupe is the real story: these are two teenagers who would do anything for each other, and watching them scramble through a situation adults have failed to prepare them for is both infuriating and deeply charming.
Streaming: Hulu
18. Bridesmaids (2011)
Still the gold standard for female ensemble comedies. Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph are perfect together — Wiig as the crumbling Annie, Rudolph as the patient, loving Lillian who refuses to give up on her friend even when Annie is actively self-destructing. Bridesmaids works because the comedy comes from real places: jealousy, insecurity, grief over growing apart. Melissa McCarthy’s scene-stealing turn as Megan is the dessert, but the Wiig-Rudolph friendship is the meal.
Streaming: Peacock
17. Girl, Interrupted (1999)
Susanna Kaysen (Winona Ryder) enters a psychiatric hospital in the late 1960s and forms an intense bond with Lisa (Angelina Jolie) — a woman who is brilliant, manipulative, and completely magnetic. Girl, Interrupted is honest about how female friendships inside institutions can be both lifesaving and destructive, and Jolie’s Oscar-winning performance is so electrifying that it almost overwhelms the film. The friendship here is volatile and real.
Streaming: Netflix, Tubi
16. Hidden Figures (2016)
The true story of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson — three brilliant Black women whose mathematical work at NASA was essential to early American spaceflight and systematically unrecognized for decades. Hidden Figures is an extraordinary film for many reasons, but what stays with you is the friendship between these three women: how they protected each other, advocated for each other, and refused to let the institution diminish what they knew they were capable of.
Streaming: Disney+
15. Booksmart (2019)
Two overachieving best friends (Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever) realize the night before graduation that they spent four years studying while their classmates were having fun — and managed to get into good schools anyway. Their plan: cram a whole high school social life into one night. Olivia Wilde’s directorial debut is hilarious and achingly sweet, but the reason it works is the specificity of its central friendship. Molly and Amy know each other completely — and the film is as much about what happens when you realize that might not be enough as it is about their wild night out.
Streaming: Hulu
14. Frances Ha (2012)
Greta Gerwig co-wrote and stars in this luminous black-and-white film about a woman adrift in her late twenties, struggling to hold onto the friendship with her best friend Sophie (Mickey Sumner) as their lives move in different directions. Frances Ha captures something painfully true about adult female friendship: the specific grief of growing apart from someone who used to feel like the center of your world. Shot through with warmth and wit.
Streaming: Prime Video, AMC+
13. Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion (1997)
Two inseparable best friends who have accomplished basically nothing remarkable decide to reinvent themselves before attending their high school reunion. Romy and Michele is a comedy of delusions that slowly becomes a film about the only thing that actually matters: that these two women love each other unconditionally, have always loved each other, and will still love each other when every status game is over. Lisa Kudrow and Mira Sorvino are genuinely brilliant together.
Streaming: Hulu
12. Ghost World (2001)
Two alienated teenage best friends (Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson) graduate high school with no plans and a shared contempt for everything mainstream — until their paths start to diverge. Ghost World is funny and strange and a little heartbreaking, and it’s honest about the way adolescent female friendship can be a survival strategy that eventually has to be outgrown. One of the best adaptations of a graphic novel ever made.
Streaming: Prime Video, Vudu, Apple TV
11. Thoroughbreds (2017)
Two upper-class teenage girls in Connecticut — one sociopathic, one morally flexible — rekindle their dormant friendship and begin formulating a plan to solve a mutual problem. Thoroughbreds is tightly wound, darkly funny, and genuinely unnerving. Olivia Cooke and Anya Taylor-Joy are extraordinary together, and the film earns its place here because what develops between these two characters — whatever you want to call it — is absolutely a kind of friendship. Just not a comfortable one.
Streaming: Hulu
10. Pitch Perfect (2012)
An all-female college a cappella group finds its identity — and its members find each other — through music, competition, and the kind of aggressive banter that eventually becomes affection. Pitch Perfect isn’t subtle about what it’s doing, but it doesn’t need to be: the friendships that develop within the Bellas are genuinely warm, and the film’s enormous appeal comes from the sense that this group of very different women genuinely like being around each other. Sometimes that’s exactly what you want from a movie.
Streaming: Prime Video
9. The Help (2011)
Set in 1960s Jackson, Mississippi, The Help tells the story of the relationships between Black domestic workers and the white women who employ them — and the white woman (Emma Stone’s Skeeter) who decides to document those stories. The friendships in The Help are complicated by the racial power dynamics they exist within, and the film is not uncontroversial. But the bonds between Aibileen (Viola Davis) and Minny (Octavia Spencer) are the film’s beating heart, and both performances are extraordinary.
Streaming: Max
8. Heavenly Creatures (1994)
Peter Jackson directed this chilling true-crime drama about two teenage girls in 1950s New Zealand whose intense, all-consuming friendship spirals into catastrophe. Kate Winslet (in her film debut) and Melanie Lynskey are remarkable, and Heavenly Creatures is one of cinema’s most unflinching explorations of what happens when a female friendship becomes its own closed universe, sealed off from the rest of the world. Essential viewing.
Streaming: Check Prime Video / Tubi
7. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)
Howard Hawks’s dizzyingly fun musical comedy features one of cinema’s great female friendships: Lorelei Lee (Marilyn Monroe) and Dorothy Shaw (Jane Russell), two showgirls navigating Paris and a parade of potential suitors. What makes the Lorelei-Dorothy dynamic endure is how clearly these women prioritize each other over every man in their lives — they’re loyal, they’re strategic, and they’re absolutely on each other’s team. Ahead of its time in the best possible way.
Streaming: Prime Video, Apple TV
6. Set It Off (1996)
Four inner-city women — underpaid, undervalued, out of options — turn to bank robbery in an act of collective desperation. Set It Off is fierce and tragic and one of the defining films of 1990s American cinema. The friendship between Frankie, Cleo, Tisean, and Stony (Queen Latifah, Vivica A. Fox, Kimberly Elise, Jada Pinkett Smith) is the film’s foundation: these women trust each other when no one else will, and the film does not flinch from the cost of that loyalty. It sticks with you.
Streaming: Tubi
5. The Color Purple (1985)
Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Alice Walker’s novel follows Celie (Whoopi Goldberg) through decades of hardship, abuse, and survival — and the female friendships she forms are literally the forces that keep her alive. The bond between Celie and Shug Avery (Margaret Avery) is complicated, romantic, and deeply loving; the friendship with Sofia (Oprah Winfrey) is built on solidarity and stubborn dignity. The Color Purple remains one of cinema’s most powerful arguments for what female friendship can do in conditions designed to make it impossible.
Streaming: Tubi
4. Steel Magnolias (1989)
Six women in a Louisiana beauty salon — played by Sally Field, Dolly Parton, Olympia Dukakis, Daryl Hannah, Shirley MacLaine, and Julia Roberts — share gossip, crisis, and decades of friendship across the span of a few years. Steel Magnolias is the archetypical female ensemble film: funny, devastating, and so emotionally generous that it has been making audiences cry since 1989 without anyone complaining. The friendships here feel like the real deal.
Streaming: Starz
3. Lady Bird (2017)
Greta Gerwig’s directorial debut is about many things — ambition, Sacramento, the terror of becoming yourself — but one of its central relationships is the friendship between Lady Bird (Saoirse Ronan) and Julie (Beanie Feldstein). Their bond is tender, slightly competitive, and completely recognizable: these are two girls who are, for a moment, everything to each other. Lady Bird also features some of the best female performances in recent memory across every role. It’s nearly perfect.
For more films with great female performances, see our list of famous female monologues in cinema.
Streaming: Netflix
2. Beaches (1988)
One of cinema’s great love stories — between two women who are nothing alike and absolutely meant for each other. C.C. Bloom (Bette Midler) and Hillary Whitney (Barbara Hershey) meet as children and stay bound across thirty years of diverging lives, artistic ambition, jealousy, and ultimately illness. Beaches earns every tear it asks for because the friendship is specific, complicated, and real. Bette Midler’s performance (and “Wind Beneath My Wings,” yes) is iconic.
Streaming: Hulu
1. Girlhood (2014)
Céline Sciamma’s masterpiece follows Marieme, a young Black woman in the Paris banlieues, who finds herself when she joins a group of girls who become her chosen family. The friendship at the film’s center is exhilarating, dangerous, and transformative — these girls protect each other, perform for each other, and teach each other what it means to take up space in a world that would rather they didn’t. The centerpiece scene — four girls dancing to Rihanna’s “Diamonds” in a hotel room — is one of cinema’s all-time great celebrations of female joy. Girlhood is the best film on this list, and it isn’t particularly close.
Streaming: Showtime, MUBI
FAQs About Female Friendship Movies
What is the best movie about female friendship?
Girlhood (2014), directed by Céline Sciamma, is the best film about female friendship ever made. It captures the exhilaration, danger, and deep love of female bonds among young Black women in Paris with extraordinary authenticity. Beaches, Lady Bird, and Bridesmaids are close runners-up depending on what you’re looking for — tragedy, coming-of-age, or comedy.
What are the best movies about female friendship on Netflix?
The best female friendship films currently on Netflix include:
- Lady Bird (2017) — Greta Gerwig’s Oscar-winning debut
- Girl, Interrupted (1999) — Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie
- Do Revenge (2022) — Netflix’s own darkly funny teen thriller
Netflix’s library rotates, so also check Girlhood on MUBI and Barbie on Max if you’ve exhausted the Netflix options.
What are the best female friendship movies to watch with friends?
For a group movie night, the best picks are:
- Bridesmaids — everyone laughs, no one argues about it
- Girls Trip — high energy, hilarious, perfect for a group
- Pitch Perfect — fun, funny, easy to rewatch
- Barbie — crowd-pleasing and genuinely has something to say
For a smaller, more emotional night in, go with Beaches or Steel Magnolias — just have tissues ready.
Are there good female friendship movies from 2023 or 2024?
Yes — several excellent ones came out recently:
- Wicked (2024) — Glinda and Elphaba’s friendship is the emotional core
- Bottoms (2023) — one of the funniest female friendship comedies in years
- Mean Girls (2024) — the musical remake adds emotional depth to Janis and Cady’s bond
- Past Lives (2023) — if you want something quieter and more devastating
What are the most realistic movies about female friendship?
Frances Ha, Lady Bird, and Booksmart are widely cited for their authentic portrayal of female friendship dynamics — particularly the fear of growing apart, the competitiveness that coexists with love, and the specific way women communicate with their closest friends. Girlhood is arguably the most viscerally honest of all.
What female friendship movies are worth watching with my daughter?
Family-appropriate films on this list include:
- Hidden Figures (PG) — inspirational true story, excellent for all ages
- Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (PG) — designed for this exact purpose
- Pitch Perfect (PG-13) — funny and appropriate for teens
- Lady Bird (PG-13) — honest but not graphic; great conversation-starter
More From Film Chop
If you loved this list, here’s where to go next:
- Famous Female Monologues: The Most Iconic Scenes in Cinema — if the performances in these films are what drew you in, these monologues belong on your watchlist
- Best Chick Flicks to Watch on Movie Night — lighter picks for a no-pressure evening in
- Best Feel-Good Movies That Will Raise Your Spirits — when you want female friendship movies with a guaranteed happy ending
Updated March 2026. Streaming availability is accurate as of publication and subject to change.