BY Cassandra Nicholson
Production Designer to Watch: Beth Mickle of “The Suicide Squad” and “Drive”
As a production designer for dozens of projects representing a vast array of genres, Beth Mickle is no stranger to adapting her vision on the fly. Whether it’s joining an independent film with very...
July 2022 Television Preview
As networks and streamers return to nearly pre-pandemic levels of content, July offers a broad variety of summer popcorn dramas and light-hearted comedies, plus a few spin-offs and prequels to round...
Tribeca 2022 Women Directors: Meet Kyra Sedgwick – “Space Oddity”
Kyra Sedgwick is an award-winning actress, producer, and director. She is best known for her Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning role as Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson on the TNT crime drama “The...
Tribeca 2022 Women Directors: Meet Katie Holmes – “Alone Together”
Katie Holmes has appeared in several notable films, ranging from the action blockbuster “Batman Begins,” to critically acclaimed art house pictures such as “The Ice Storm” and...
Under the Radar: Alanna Brown Explores Love & Resilience in Rwandan Genocide Drama “Trees of Peace”
As has been well documented in the decades following the gruesome Rwandan civil war, the Tutsi minority ethnic group and moderate members of the Hutu ethnic group were subjected to unimaginable...
Tribeca 2022 Women Directors: Meet Alex Heller – “The Year Between”
In addition to being selected for the TFI Network, Alex Heller’s “The Year Between” was one of five projects selected for AT&T Presents: Untold Stories, the million-dollar pitch at the...
Tribeca 2022 Women Directors: Meet Kristy Guevara-Flanagan – “Body Parts”
Kristy Guevara-Flanagan has made award-winning documentary films focusing on gender and representation for two decades, including feature docs “Going on 13,” “Wonder Women! The...
Tribeca 2022 Women Directors: Meet Nadia Hellgren – “Civil”
Nadia Hallgren is an award-winning filmmaker from The Bronx, New York. She directed “Becoming,” the 2020 Netflix feature documentary about former First Lady Michelle Obama....
Tribeca 2022 Women Directors: Meet Geeta Gandbhir – “Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power”
Geeta Gandbhir is an award-winning director, producer, and editor with over 25 years of experience in the film industry across narrative and documentary. Her documentary short, “Call Center...
Tribeca 2022 Women Directors: Meet Ivete Lucas – “Naked Gardens”
Using precise and illustrative cinematic images, Ivete Lucas collaborates with Patrick Bresnan to make verité stories that counter the mythic concepts of America. Their short films have premiered at...
Tribeca 2022 Women Directors: Meet Lizzie Gottlieb – “Turn Every Page”
Lizzie Gottlieb has been directing theater and film in New York for 20 years. She founded an Off-Broadway theater company that developed and produced new plays. Her films include “Today’s...
Tribeca 2022 Women Directors: Meet Tessa Louise-Salomé – “The Wild One”
Tessa Louise-Salomé is a Paris-based director, writer, and producer whose work foregrounds visually poetic approaches to storytelling. Her films as a director include the Sundance Jury Prize nominee...
Tribeca 2022 Women Directors: Meet Nausheen Dadabhoy – “An Act of Worship”
Nausheen Dadabhoy is a Pakistani-American director and cinematographer whose work spans fiction and documentary. She lensed an Oscar-nominated live action short film, an Emmy-winning feature...
Tribeca 2022 Women Directors: Meet Hannah Marks – “Don’t Make Me Go”
Hannah Marks is an actress, writer, and director. She was previously named one of Rolling Stone’s 25 Artists Changing the World, and was also featured as one of Forbes magazine’s 30 Trailblazers...
Tribeca 2022 Women Directors: Meet Annette K. Olesen – “A Matter of Trust”
Annette K. Olesen is a screenwriter and director whose feature film debut came in 2002 with family drama “Minor Mishaps.” The film was selected to compete at the Berlin International Film...
Tribeca 2022 Women Directors: Meet Sarah Adina Smith – “The Drop”
Sarah Adina Smith’s first feature, “The Midnight Swim,” won six top prizes on the festival circuit. Her other features include “Buster’s Mal Heart” and...
June 2022 Film Preview
From first crushes to mature flings, coming-of-age stories set in the U.S. and abroad, and an Afrofuturist musical, June has plenty to offer everyone. Genre pics lead the pack. June 3 marks the...
Under the Radar: Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers Seeks Empathy with “Kímmapiiyipitssini”
When Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, an award-winning writer, director, and actress, was developing her most recent feature documentary about substance-use disorders and harm reduction, she wasn’t sure...
Cannes 2022 Women Directors: Meet Charlotte Vandermeersch – “The Eight Mountains”
Charlotte Vandermeersch is an acclaimed Belgian stage and screen actress. She also sings and writes for film and theater. In 2011 she wrote a version of the screenplay of “The Broken Circle...
The People vs. Wendy Byrde: In Defense of the “Ozark” Antiheroine
There’s something inexplicable about a satisfying series coming to an end that evokes delightfully visceral responses from viewers, especially if that ending is controversial. “Ozark,” the...
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Meet Kathryn Ferguson – “Nothing Compares”
Belfast-born Kathryn Ferguson is an award-winning director whose innovative and boundary-pushing documentary work has screened globally. She was nominated for the Grand Prix award at Clermont-Ferrand...
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Meet Pauline Beugnies – “The End of Innocence” (“Petites”)
Pauline Beugnies is an author, photographer, and director from Belgium. For 10 years, she has been documenting the emancipation of youth in Egypt in multiple forms: photo exhibitions, 2012 web...
May 2022 Film Preview
Where one might expect a heavy slate of mom-centric films in honor of Mother’s Day, this month’s releases buck expectations, relying primarily on darker, sometimes more unsettling, themes —...
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Meet Zaynê Akyol – “Rojek”
Zaynê Akyol’s first feature documentary, “Gulîstan, Land of Roses,” was selected by 80 international film festivals, earning 50 nominations and winning 12 awards, including the...
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Meet Lina Rodriguez – “Mis Dos Voces” (“My Two Voices”)
Colombian/Canadian filmmaker Lina Rodriguez is the writer-director of narrative features “Señoritas” and “This Time Tomorrow,” which have been showcased in festivals and...
May 2022 Television Preview
Mysteries and action series abound this month, with intrepid protagonists navigating dangerous worlds and overcoming all odds to complete their respective missions. Whether it’s a Jewish...
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Meet Hanna Polak – “Angels of Sinjar”
A producer, director, and cinematographer, Polish filmmaker Hanna Polak received an Academy Award and a News and Documentary Emmy nomination for the documentary short “The Children of...
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Meet Jacquelyn Mills – “Geographies of Solitude”
Jacquelyn Mills is an award-winning filmmaker from Cape Breton Island and based in Montreal. Her film “In the Waves” premiered at Visions du Réel and was theatrically released at...
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Chloe Sosa-Sims – “Hunting in Packs”
Chloe Sosa-Sims is a Toronto-based director, producer, and writer. Her feature debut, “Dan and Margot,” illuminated the complicated truths of schizophrenia. Sosa-Sims has participated in...
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Jackie Torrens – “Bernie Langille Wants To Know What Happened To Bernie Langille”
Jackie Torrens is an actor, writer, and documentary filmmaker. In 2012, she co-founded Peep Media with producer Jessica Brown, and since then they have completed four television documentaries for the...
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Stacey Tenenbaum – “Scrap”
Stacey Tenenbaum is an award-winning producer and director. In 2014 she founded H2L Productions, a boutique documentary film production company specializing in crafting international character-driven...
Cinematographer to Watch: Kira Kelly of “13th” and “Queen Sugar”
Kira Kelly isn’t new to the cinematography game — not by a long shot. Having worked in the industry for more than 20 years, her film and TV credits include a versatile mix of documentary and...
Writer-Director to Watch: Fawzia Mirza of “Noor & Layla” and “Signature Move”
Activist. Actor. Director. Producer. Playwright. Screenwriter. Fawzia Mirza is the quintessential multi-hyphenate, multi-disciplinary artist. An award-winning Pakistani-Canadian-American...
Seeking Truth Through Self-Acceptance: Crowdfunding Picks
Documentary filmmakers are constantly on a journey – a journey to find the next compelling story and remarkable characters, a journey to find the truth in humanity, and, perhaps the most...
SXSW 2022 Women Directors: Meet Jessica Edwards – “Skate Dreams”
Jessica Edwards launched Film First in 2010 to produce documentary shorts and feature-length work. Her award-winning debut short, “Seltzer Works,” premiered at SXSW and was broadcast on...
SXSW 2022 Women Directors: Meet Vasilisa Kuzmina – “Nika”
Born in Moscow, Vasilisa Kuzmina is a young Russian filmmaker and scriptwriter. After getting a B.F.A. in acting at the Moscow Drama School, Kuzmina debuted as a film director with the web series...
SXSW 2022 Women Directors: Meet Gracie Otto – “Seriously Red”
Gracie Otto is currently set-up director on the Netflix Original series “Heartbreak High” and is set to direct the feminist-noir comedy drama “Deadloch” for Amazon Studios....
SXSW 2022 Women Directors: Meet Camille Hardman – “Still Working 9 to 5”
Camille Hardman has produced documentaries and reality TV series in both her native Australia and Los Angeles. She started in TV in Sydney over 15 years ago, making animal and travel documentaries...
SXSW 2022 Women Directors: Meet Allison Otto – “The Thief Collector”
Allison Otto is an Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker, cinematographer, and visual journalist. Her documentary short “The Love Bugs” was awarded Best Short Documentary in the 42nd Annual...
SXSW 2022 Women Directors: Meet Iliana Sosa – “What We Leave Behind”
Iliana Sosa is a documentary and narrative fiction filmmaker based in Austin, Texas. Her documentary short “An Uncertain Future,” co-directed with Chelsea Hernandez, premiered at the 2018...
SXSW 2022 Women Directors: Meet Amy Bandlien Storkel – “The Pez Outlaw”
Amy Bandlien Storkel is a documentary filmmaker best known for co-producing “The Legend of Cocaine Island” (Netflix, 2019) and the Emmy Award-winning documentary “Alabama...
Under the Radar: Iliana Sosa’s “What We Leave Behind” Is an Intimate Portrait of a Family’s Loyal Patriarch
“Life’s catching up with me.” Shirtless and laid bare in a symbolic display of openness and vulnerability, Julián Moreno speaks to his granddaughter as they so often have for several years –...
March 2022 Television Preview
From criminal masterminds and crime-solvers, to creative artists and competitive athletes, this Women’s History Month contains a strong slate of thought-provoking and downright shocking new...
March 2022 Film Preview
Women’s History Month is chock-full of suspenseful thrillers and dark dramas featuring characters either seeking truth from others or harboring deep secrets of their own. We’ll be welcoming...
Endurance Through Adversity: Short Film VOD Picks Honoring Black History Month
As yet another February rolls around, Black media consumers are faced with a choice: Fully embrace the content strategy efforts of major brands in both traditional and social media, or offer those...
February 2022 Film Preview
February brings a slate of films about and made by women centered on the theme of love, in all its follies. Kicking off the month is Oscar hopeful “The Worst Person in the World”...
Sundance 2022 Women Directors: Meet Tonya Lewis Lee and Paula Eiselt – “Aftershock”
Tonya Lewis Lee is a director, producer, and writer whose work through storytelling often explores the personal impact of social justice issues such as civil rights and criminal justice. Paula Eiselt...
Sundance 2022 Women Directors: Meet Abi Damaris Corbin – “892”
Abi Damaris Corbin is a Boston-bred writer and director based in Los Angeles. Corbin’s BAFTA shortlisted live-action short “The Suitcase” had its world premiere at the 2017 Tribeca Film...
Sundance 2022 Women Directors: Meet Eva Longoria Bastón – “La Guerra Civil”
As an award-winning actress, director, producer, entrepreneur, and activist, Eva Longoria Bastón has become one the most significant trailblazers behind the camera. For over a decade, she has been...
Sundance 2022 Women Directors: Meet Isabel Castro – “Mija”
Isabel Castro is a four-time Emmy-nominated, Mexican-American filmmaker who combines a practice in journalism and art to tell stories about immigration, civil rights, and identity. She splits her...
Sundance 2022 Women Directors: Meet Jamie Dack – “Palm Trees and Power Lines”
Jamie Dack is a filmmaker based in Brooklyn, NY. Her short film “Palm Trees and Power Lines” premiered at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival as a Cinéfondation selection. Her debut feature...