The world of cinema is happy to welcome back Jane Campion with her latest film on Netflix The Power of the Dog after a years-long hiatus from the craft. Or perhaps it's better to call her Dame Elizabeth Jane Campion, as the Oscar-winner was appointed a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2016. Campion is the second of seven women ever nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director and the first woman filmmaker to receive the Palme d'Or. She is, in other words, a force to be reckoned with. "Filmmaking set me free," Campion recently told The Guardian. "Before I found it, I had a lot of energy, but I was lost as to how to express it or even be in the world. I found the challenge of making a film so exciting, it was as if I had found myself."

Born in Wellington, New Zealand, Campion now lives in Sydney, Australia. Given the success of her films, we can't wait to see what she has in store for her next project. And as The Power of the Dog continues to attract Oscar buzz, here's a closer look at more of Campion's finest films to date.

5 Bright Star (2009)

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BBC Films; Screen Australia

It's 1818 in Hampstead Village on the outskirts of London. Campion's 2009 drama Bright Star is based on the last three years of the life of poet John Keats (Ben Whishaw) and his romantic relationship with Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish). As we discover in the film, their relationship is slow to develop, in part because of Keats' roommate, Charles Brown (Paul Schneider), who does whatever he can to keep the two apart. Other obstacles face the couple, including Keats' struggling career as well as health issues.

The film's title is a reference to a sonnet by Keats titled "Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art," which he wrote while he was with Brawne. The film garnered positive reviews from critics, who especially praised Campion's writing and direction.

Related: 2022 Golden Globe Nominations: Belfast and The Power of the Dog Lead the Pack With 7 Noms Each

4 An Angel At My Table (1990)

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Via Sharmill Films

The true introvert is an anomaly in a society that favors extroverts. One of Campion's earlier films, An Angel At My Table takes place in 1920s and '30s New Zealand, where a reserved Janet Frame (played by Alexia Keogh as a child, Karen Fergusson during adolescence, and a standout Kerry Fox as the adult version) grows up in a poor family with lots of brothers and sisters. Already at an early age, she is different from the other kids. She gets an education as a teacher, but since she is considered abnormal, she stays at a mental institution for eight years. Success comes when she starts to write novels.

The 1990 biographical film directed by Jane Campion is based on Frame's three autobiographies, To the Is-Land (1982), An Angel at My Table (1984) and The Envoy from Mirror City (1984). The film was very well received, winning multiple awards including at the New Zealand Film and Television Awards, the Toronto International Film Festival and Venice Film Festival. Fox's performance is effectively heartbreaking and magnetic, and we can't help but stand up and cheer for her every time she's onscreen.

3 Two Friends (1986)

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Via Milestone Films

The evolving relationship of two teenage girls in Sydney unfolds backwards through time, from estrangement to the height of their friendship a year earlier. Another acclaimed film, Irreversible by Gaspar Noé, also found success years later using a similarly backward-chronology format. Campion's 1986 TV movie centers on a pair of girls at age 15: Louise, in a prestigious girls' high school, and Kelly, who was admitted but forbidden by her father to attend. This is the end of their friendship, and from here the film progresses in a uniquely inverted fashion.

Two Friends was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival and currently holds a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Fearless and deeply felt, Campion’s first feature clocks in at just 79 minutes, but the modest film is an impressive debut that highlights Campion's consistently commanding direction — in this instance, of Helen Garner's powerful script.

2 The Piano (1993)

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Jan Chapman Productions

"We can't leave the piano!" Young Anna Paquin's iconic line is just one of the memorable moments in Campion's award-winning period piece. Also starring Holly Hunter, Harvey Keitel and Sam Neill, The Piano focuses on a mute Scottish woman who travels to a remote part of New Zealand with her young daughter after her arranged marriage to a frontiersman.

The Piano was a critical and commercial success, grossing $140 million worldwide against just a $7 million budget. In 1993, the film won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, making Campion the first female director to ever receive the award. It went on to win three Oscars: Best Actress for Hunter, Best Supporting Actress for Paquin and Best Original Screenplay for Campion. Paquin was 11 years old at the time and remains the second-youngest actor to win an Oscar in a competitive category. Meanwhile, for a character whose voice is only heard in voiceover, it was impressive that Hunter could still take home the trophy — and she certainly deserved it.

"I met a lot of women I think could have done interesting things, but Holly has a kind of interior world," Campion once told the late, great film critic Roger Ebert. "Actually, not a big interior world, not like you'd say was a universe, but a very definite one. In this role, she has to communicate with her eyes, her empathy and her vulnerability. And Ada, the character, can be very chilly."

Related: American Underdog Trailer Tells the Kurt Warner Story with Zachary Levi & Anna Paquin

1 The Power of the Dog (2021)

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Via Netflix

Phil Burbank is brutal in every sense of the word. Played with shocking intensity by Benedict Cumberbatch, the cowboy is a tour de force of emotion and hostility. He can castrate a bull with ease at one moment, swim naked in a river the next and cap it off by smearing his body with mud. Taking place in Montana 1925, The Power of the Dog follows the Burbank brothers (Jesse Plemons and Cumberbatch), wealthy ranchers who eventually meet a widowed proprietress Rose (Kirsten Dunst) and her impressionable son (Kodi Smit-McPhee). Phil behaves so cruelly that he drives them both to tears, revelling in their hurt. His brother George, however, comforts Rose and eventually marries her. Phil's cunning ways then kick into high gear, and the rest of the film plays out with cord-cutting tension.

This genre-mashing masterpiece is based on the 1967 novel of the same name by Thomas Savage and was beautifully filmed across rural Otago, New Zealand. And it's not just multiple genres covered here — the film also incorporates numerous themes, including love, grief, resentment, jealousy and sexuality.

While the film was criticized by PETA for what appears to be animal cruelty during filming, The Power of the Dog—whose title derives from the book of Psalm ("Deliver my soul from the sword; my darling from the power of the dog")—makes the top of our Campion list for its superb acting, writing, cinematography and, of course, directing.