Festivals, News

Cannes Roundup: Few Women Directors at Directors’ Fortnight and Critics’ Week

As we’ve come to expect from Cannes, far too few women will be represented at the French festival — again.

Among the 19 features selected by delegate general Edouard Waintrop for Directors’ Fortnight, a parallel program to the official selection, only two are from female filmmakers, including Celine Sciamma’s program opener Girlhood.

Here are the two Fortnight features from women directors:

Girlhood (Celine Sciamma, France). With this drama about a group of teenage girl rebels, Sciamma completes a thematic trilogy of films centered around adolescent sexuality that began with her 2007 debut, Water Lilies (which screened in Un Certain Regard at Cannes), and continued with her 2011 Berlinale entry, Tomboy. (Sales: Films Distribution)

Gett: Le proces de Viviane Amsalem (Ronit and Shlomi Elkabetz, France-Israel-Germany). Viviane (Ronit Elkabetz), a key character from the sibling filmmakers’ first two films, To Take a Wife and 7 Days (which screened in Critics’ Week in 2008), fights to obtain a divorce from Israel’s rabbinical court in this trilogy-capping drama. (Sales: Films Distribution)

Among the 7 first and second features in competition at Critics’ Week (with a jury led by Andrea Arnold), only one is from a woman director:

Israeli actress and filmmaker Shira Geffen’s second film Self-Made (Boreg) about two woman — one Israeli and one Palestinian — who swap worlds. Geffen won the Cannes Camera d’Or for a first feature for Jellyfish in 2007.

Critics’ Week will also host a special screening of French actress Melanie Laurent’s second directorial effort, Breathe.

Last but not least, French actress, director, and screenwriter Nicole Garcia will head the Camera d’or jury, which will honor the best debut film at the festival. She has 80 acting credits to her name and is the director of seven features, including Every Other Weekend (1990), The Favorite Son (1994), and Going Away (2014).

Previously: Cannes 2014 Lineup Revealed; Only Two Women Directors in the Main Competition


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