Awards, Documentary, News

Documentarian Liz Garbus in Talks to Direct Her First Narrative Feature

Fresh off of the Academy Awards, where she was nominated for Best Documentary Feature for “What Happened, Miss Simone?” director Liz Garbus may soon make the switch to narrative film making.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Garbus is in talks to direct the film adaptation of “Lost Girls” for Amazon Studios. With a number of documentaries under her belt, Garbus is greatly experienced, but “Lost Girls” would mark her first non-fiction film, even though, interestingly enough, it’s based on non-fiction events.

The story is based on Robert Kolker’s nonfiction book of the same name, which follows a mother searching for her missing daughter in Long Island. She makes a horrifying discovery in the woods, finding the dumped bodies of four murdered girls.

It’s notoriously difficult for women to break into narrative film directing, but perhaps even more so when they are coming from the world of documentary, where women have been know to achieve greater success than their feature film counterparts. Back in October, a USC Annenberg study revealed that women fare far better in the doc realm.

But that’s not to say it’s impossible. Garbus can look to Debra Granik, whose “Winter’s Bone” launched the career of Jennifer Lawrence. Granik started out on the documentary “Thunder in Guyana” before heading into the narrative world, and then transitioned back to docs with “Stray Dog.” It seems more common, however, for women to go the opposite direction, making narrative features before diving into docs. Claire Denis made her first feature, 1988’s “Chocolat,” before releasing three documentaries, while Canadian actress Sarah Polley got behind the camera first with “Away From Her” before making the much-acclaimed doc “Stories We Tell.”

[via The Hollywood Reporter]


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