Actor-screenwriter Zoe Kazan in Ruby Sparks

PHOTO BY MERRICK MORTON

That kind of outcry is a risk that women are increasingly willing to take, as they wrote themselves onto the big screen and told their own stories. They spun tales about their perhaps petty, perhaps big-deal concerns, and went there — to the not so deep, but sort of dirty little secrets in the Hidden World of Girls, to crib the title of that Fey-hosted NPR series.

And however you felt about her genre-defining rom-coms, there was a certain sad poetry to the fact that writer-director Nora Ephron quietly passed away amid this year's girlquake. She spent less time in front of the camera than many of these actress-writers do, but you know the woman who directed and co-wrote 1992's This Is My Life — the film that inspired Dunham to make movies — would have been eager to pass the baton.

KIMBERLY CHUN'S TOP 10 SHOTS IN THE DARK OF 2012

Attenberg (Athina Rachel Tsangari, Greece, 2010)

Crazy Horse (Frederick Wiseman, USA/France, 2011)

The Deep Blue Sea (Terence Davies, UK, 2011)

Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino, US)

Elena (Andrey Zvyagintsev, Russia)

Gerhard Richter Painting (Corinna Belz, Germany, 2011)

Gimme the Loot (Adam Leon, US)

I Wish (Hirokazu Kore-eda, Japan, 2011) Marina Abramovich: The Artist Is Present (Matthew Akers, Jeff Dupre, US) Searching for Sugar Man (Malik Bendjelloul, Sweden/UK)