News
Clio Barnard’s latest, The Selfish Giant, has just released a UK trailer. The film, based on Oscar Wilde’s story of the same name, premiered at Cannes earlier this year and recently...
The first trailer for Grace of Monaco starring Nicole Kidman has been released. Kidman plays the former actress Grace Kelly, who married to Prince Rainier III of Monaco and left Hollywood and...
Tribeca Film has acquired the rights for Marion Vernoux’s Bright Days Ahead which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival last week. As far as we can tell, this is the first female...
Chicken & Egg Pictures will be honoring Cynthia Lopez during this year’s Independent Film Week. Lopez will receive the 2013 Good Egg Award which is annually given to a leader in the...
Wadjda, directed by Haifaa Al-Mansour, the first film directed by a woman from Saudi Arabia opened in limited release this past weekend. The film made $40,419 after screening in just three theaters...
Women directors took home the top audience awards in the documentary area at TIFF this year. Jehane Noujaim’s The Square took home the top audience prize. The film looks at the Egyptian...
Films About Women Opening This Weekend Wadjda – Haifaa Al-Mansour What Wadjda (Waad Mohammed) wants to do is simple – ride a bike. That shouldn’t be so...
Here’s some of the most notable TV news from the past week including Katherine Heigl’s return to television, Tina Gordon Chism developing a comedy series at HBO, Awkward’s Lauren...
Television
It’s September, which means it’s time for a new television season. But the plethora of new shows arriving this year can be equal parts gift and curse. Before you start setting your DVRs...
Features
Originally published on April 26. Wadjda is in theaters today. What Wadjda (Waad Mohammed) wants to do is simple – ride a bike. That shouldn’t be so difficult, but when you...
Vivian Qu was born in China. She has produced the features Night Train (07), Knitting (08), which screened at the Festival, and Longing for the Rain (13). Trap Street (13) is her directorial...
J.K. Rowling has teamed up with Warner Bros. to write a film series inspired by Rowling’s Harry Potter series. This will be her screenwriting debut. She will be adapting Fantastic Beasts and...
Alanis Obomsawin was born in New Hampshire and was raised near the Odanak Reserve at Trois-Rivieres, Quebec. She has produced over thirty documentaries on Aboriginal rights issues for the...
As I get ready to make my departure from Toronto after a whirlwind week there are a couple of things to mention as the festival winds down. First, even though there were a great many women directed...
Iram Haq studied art direction at Westerdals School of Communication in Oslo. She has acted in the features Import-Export (05), Fallen Angels (08), and Tomme tonner (10). She wrote and directed...
Features, Guest Posts
During the filming of my second feature film And While We Were Here, which hits theaters on September 13th, I was eight months pregnant with my second child. Despite my girth, my collapsed...
The Man Booker Prize, Britain’s most prestigious literary award, announced their shortlist earlier this week. Of the 6 nominated, 4 women and 2 men make up the list. Judges for the award have...
Dana Rotberg was born in Mexico City and graduated from Mexico’s Centro de Capacitacion Cinematografica. She has won numerous awards for her films, including Best Documentary from the...
August: Osage County premiered at TIFF garnering a ton of Oscar buzz. The film, based on Tracy Lett’s Pulitzer Prize winning play, follows the Weston daughters (Julia Roberts, Juliette Lewis...
Lara Zizic received her master’s degree in filmmaking at Columbia University. She directed the short film The Isabel Fish (06) and co-directed the feature Mission Congo (13). ...
Allison Berg was born in New York City. She received the Special Jury Award at SXSW for her debut feature documentary Witches in Exile (04). The Dog (13) is her latest film. The Dog is playing...
Telluride and Venice are fini. Toronto wraps this weekend. Time for some serious girl talk about how the lead and supporting actress categories have somewhat shifted now that the festival Oscar...
Ellen Page is in talks to star in Queen and Country based on the comic by Greg Rucka. Page would play Tara Chace, a British SOS operative, whose missions take her all over the world to protect the...
Dyana Gaye is a Franco-Senegalese filmmaker who graduated with a master’s degree in film studies from the University of Paris 8. She directed the short films Une femme pour Souleymane...
Even though Batwoman has proposed to long-time partner Maggie Sawyer twice, DC refused to allow the pair to finally marry in the comic in an upcoming issue. The writers behind Batwoman J.H. Williams...
Claire Blanchet studied animation at Concordia University. She has co-directed Trash and No Star! (08) and The Wobble Incident (09). The End of Pinky (13) is her latest short film. The End...
Just months after they opened their doors for business, Salon Pictures has announced a slate of films including three features to be directed by women: Eva Sorhaug (90 Minutes) helms Lenny,...
Marion Vernoux was born in Montreuil-sous-Bois, France. She wrote the screenplay for Bernard Schmitt’s Pacific Palisades (90). Her directorial credits include Personne ne m’aime...
Emma Watson is set to star in Francesca Gregorini’s Your Voice in My Head adapted from Emma Forrest’s memoir of the same title. The film, adapted by Forrest, follows a young woman who is...
Gita Pullapilly was born in South Bend, Indiana. She studied finance at University of Notre Dame and journalism at Northwestern University’s Medill School. She produced all of Aron...
Under the Skin, starring Scarlett Johansson, premiered last night at TIFF. The film follows an alien seductress who preys on men while drifting around Scotland. A24 acquired the U.S. rights to...
Sarah Spillane has been writing and directing film and television for the past decade. Among her work is the documentary short The Apology (08) and the fiction short This Life (09). Around...
Chicken & Egg Pictures has recently appointed Jenni Wolfson as their first executive director. Wolfson joins Chicken & Egg from WITNESS, an international human rights video advocacy...
Anne Weil has worked as an editor on such films as Seaside (02), Toi et moi (06), Actrices (07), and A Castle in Italy (12). She has directed the short film Une cuilleree pour papa (92) and...
On October 20th, Carol Burnett will receive the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, an award given to comedians and satirists who have had an “impact on American society in ways similar to...
Megan Griffiths was born in Athens, Ohio and received her MFA in film from Ohio University. She has written and directed the short films Moving (08), and Eros (09), and the features First...
Festivals
Ed. Note: There are spoilers for some of the films reviewed. This is my third Toronto Film Festival and I am starting to understand how to manage it. It is an endurance test. You need...
Ass Backwards, written by and starring Casey Wilson and June Diane Raphael, premiered earlier this year at Sundance. The first trailer for the film shows Kate (Wilson) and Chloe (Raphael) who are...
Pirjo Honkasalo was born in Helsinki, Finland. She co-directed several features with Pekka Lehto, including Flame Top (80). Her documentary directorial credits include Mysterion (91),...
Beeban Kidron was born in London. She studied at the National Film and Television School and co-founded the educational charity FILMCLUB. Her directing credits include the fiction features Used...
Judy Kibinge was born in Nairobi and studied at Manchester Polytechnic. She is the founder of DOCUBOX, a documentary film fund for East Africa. She has directed the features Dangerous...
Liza Johnson holds a Masters in visual art from the University of California, San Diego and has had her artwork exhibited in such galleries as MoMA and the National Gallery of Art. Her...
Caroline Link was born in Bad Nauheim, Germany. She studied at the University of Television and Film Munich (HFF). Her films include Beyond Silence (96), Punktchen und Anton (99), Nowhere in...
As the new TV season starts, we get the annual look Boxed In: Employment of Behind-the-Scenes and OnScreen Women in 2012-13 Prime-time Television from Dr. Martha Lauzen at San Diego...
Films About Women Opening This Weekend Touchy Feely – Lynn Shelton Touchy Feely is about about a brother a sister, one who touches for a living and one who makes a point of...
Women and Hollywood got the chance to interview Anne Fontaine about her new film, Adore, which she directed. Adore hits theaters today. Women and Hollywood: You say in the press notes...
As we previously reported, Alfonso Cuaron got flack from having a female lead in the upcoming Gravity. However with the great reviews of the film coming out of Venice and TIFF, it looks like those...
Leanne Pooley was born and raised in Canada, and now lives in New Zealand. She has directed over twenty features, including the documentaries Haunting Douglas (03), The Promise (05), Try...
Angelina Jolie and Angela Lansbury will be receiving awards at the Academy’s 5th Annual Governors Awards. Lansbury will receive an Honorary award. The Honorary Award is given to honor those...
Originally published on April 9. A Teacher is in theaters in New York and Los Angeles today and is available on VOD. A Teacher is a tense, unflinching piece of film that gets under your...
The second trailer for Kimberly Peirce’s upcoming remake of the horror classic, Carrie, gives a larger glimpse at how Peirce will interpret the classic scenes from the original. Based on...
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