The upcoming slate of “Learning to Drive” director Isabel Coixet’s production company, Miss Wasabi Films, has been unveiled. Among the titles will be five female-helmed features, including Elena Trape’s “Waiting for Time to Stand Still,” Julia Solomonoff’s “Nobody’s Watching” and Liliana Torres’ “What Have We Done Wrong?”
The fact that all of these features are directed by women is no coincidence, but rather a concerted effort to bring women’s voices to the fore. “We’re in a time of speeches demanding equal rights, gender quotas and so on. I feel I am at a different level — the level of action, the best way I’ve found to allow women’s voices to be listened to,” Coixet told Variety.
Trape’s “Waiting for Time to Stand Still” reunites four friends who have spent years apart and, in the intervening years, whose lives have gone in entirely unexpected directions.
Solomonoff’s “Nobody’s Watching” follows an Argentine TV actor who immigrates to New York for an acting gig. Things don’t turn out quite as planned, so he resorts to odd jobs, nannying among them. “His good looks helps him navigate in a world of privilege, but his life is precarious. The baby he cares for becomes his only emotional anchor,” Solomonoff hinted.
Torres’ “What Have We Done Wrong?” is a documentary-fiction hybrid, inspired in part by the director’s own life. The experimental film is a meditation on why we cause relationships to fail.
The Barcelona-based Miss Wasabi Films will also produce Coixet’s documentary “With John,” a portrait of artist and critic John Berger.
Rounding out the five is Belen Funes’ “The Useless,” an award-winning short.
A mere 8% of films produced in Spain are directed by women. “In Spain, things are tough for everyone,” Coixet told Women and Hollywood. “It’s a very bad economic situation, so we’re doing less and less films, so women are having less and less opportunities.” As for what she thinks is the most important step in improving the situation, Coixet said, “We have to [have] a really radical change in our attitudes. We have to ask for higher paychecks. And not equal, I don’t want equal — why do I have to have the same paycheck as a guy who has much less experience than me? I want more. And we have to stop feeling ashamed for asking for more, and we have to begin to feel a little more entitled to things, to normal things. I’m not saying we have to have a woman president in every country, although I think that will help! Power has to be here, it has to be.”
[via Variety]
