Jane Campion is commonly thought of as an exceptional talent, winning numerous awards for her work, including some of the most prestigious both in Hollywood and in European film. Campion was only the second woman to be nominated for a best director Academy Award, eventually winning the Oscar for best original screenplay for The Piano (1993). In addition, until 2021 Campion was the only woman to win the Palme d’Or (twice), the first time for best short film for Peel –An Exercise in Discipline (1982) and latterly in the best film category for The Piano, with another nomination for the coveted Cannes prize for Bright Star (2009). Campion went on to be the first female director to preside over the jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 2014, while more recently she was awarded the 2021 Prix Lumière as part of the Lumière Festival. Her latest feature, The Power of the Dog (2021), received twelve Oscar nominations in 2022, winning her the award for best director, only the third woman to have won in ninety-four years.

With over thirty years standing as a director, Campion is renowned for creating complex female characters and is fêted for exploring the power dynamics of sexual and familial relationships, homing in on the often-troubled dialectic between her female protagonists’ internal desires and the external environment in which they operate. It is true to say that Campion's representation of women often focuses on those at the edges of society, from the misunderstood writer Janet Frame (Kerry Fox) in the made-for-television biopic An Angel at my Table (1989) to the masochistic Frannie Avery (Meg Ryan) in the erotic thriller In the Cut (2003). More recently, in Campion's return to the television format with Top of the Lake (2013), Detective Robin Griffin (Elisabeth Moss) undertakes an emotionally and psychologically traumatic return journey to her home to solve a case in which incest, sex-trafficking, and rape form the backdrop to the first season. In the second season, Top of the Lake: China Girl (2017), Griffin investigates another series of abuses against women and young girls in the Australian capital, Sydney.