Jane’s directorial debut, the short film PEEL, won the Palme D’or at the Cannes Film Festival. She directed numerous award-winning short films before making her feature debut with SWEETIE, which premiered in competition at Cannes. The film won the George Seoul Prize in 1989 for Best Foreign Film, the Los Angeles Film Critics' New Generation Award, the American Spirit of Independence Award for Best Foreign Feature and the Australian Critics Award for Best Film, Best Director and Best Actress.

AN ANGEL AT MY TABLE premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 1990 where it won seven prizes, including The Silver Lion. It won the American Spirit of Independence Award, gathered prizes at the Toronto and Berlin Film Festivals and was voted most popular film at the 1990 Sydney Film Festival.

Jane wrote and directed THE PIANO which received more than 30 international awards including the Palme D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and nine Academy Award nominations winning three awards including Best Screenplay.  Other awards include Best Director from The New York Film Critics Circle, The Los Angeles Film Critics Association, Australian Film Critics and nominations as Best Director from the Directors Guild of America, BAFTA and Great Britain's Guild of Regional Film Writers. The film won Best Picture at the AFI Awards.

THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY closed the Venice Film Festival in 1996, was nominated for two Academy Awards and garnered the Francesco Pasinetti Award for Best Film by the National Union of Film Journalists.   Jane co-wrote, with her sister Anna, and directed HOLY SMOKE and directed and co-wrote, with Susanna Moore, IN THE CUT.  The film opened the London Film Festival. Jane wrote and directed BRIGHT STAR which screened in Official Competition in Cannes in 2009.  Jane  wrote and directed two short films, THE WATER DIARY (2005), developed with the United Nations Development Program in order to promote the Millennium Development Goals campaign launched by Kofi Annan in 2000 and THE LADY BUG (2006) commissioned by the Cannes Film Festival as a tribute to cinema for their 60^th anniversary.

Jane wrote, with Gerard Lee, directed and is EP on TOP OF THE LAKE, a 6 x 1 hour mini series for BBC TV and The Sundance Channel.