BY Vicki A. Lee
Cannes 2021 Women Directors: Meet Sandrine Kiberlain – “A Radiant Girl”
Sandrine Kiberlain is a French actress and singer. She received the César for Best Actress for her role in “9-Month Stretch.” The short film “Smile” was her first film as a director....
Cannes 2021 Women Directors: Meet Mina Mileva and Vesela Kazakova – “Women Do Cry”
After two decades in the British animation industry, Mina Mileva created Activist38 with actress Vesela Kazakova, whose leading roles earned her the Silver George at the Moscow International Film...
Cannes 2021 Women Directors: Meet Anaïs Volpé – “The Braves”
Anaïs Volpé is a self-taught screenwriter, filmmaker, and editor. In 2016, she self-produced “Heis,” a cross-media project which has been screened at international festivals and won the Jury...
The Animated Imagination: Crowdfunding Picks
Animation gives storytellers the liberty to dream and mythologize without restriction, to turn fanciful reveries into alternative realities of experience, human or otherwise. The medium indulges the...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Corinne van der Borch and Tone Grøttjord-Glenne – “Sisters on Track”
Corinne van der Borch is a Dutch artist and award-winning documentary filmmaker based in Brooklyn. Her feature length documentary “Girl with Black Balloons,” about the oldest living resident of...
Costume Designer to Watch: Ayanna James-Kimani of “Insecure”
“Costume is prime real estate in television — whatever message you want out, you’re going to see it in the person’s wardrobe,” costume designer and stylist Ayanna James-Kimani observed in...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Chanel James and Taylor Garron – “As of Yet”
Chanel James, also known as Dinosaur Hawk, is a director, writer, editor, and pop archivist who aims to create stories that highlight gradients of the human experience, encourage understanding, and...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Lauren Hadaway – “The Novice”
Lauren Hadaway is an LGBTQ+ writer and director with a background in sound editing and mixing. She briefly worked as a Dallas-based reality TV editor before moving to Los Angeles in 2012 to pursue a...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Nana Mensah – “Queen of Glory”
Nana Mensah is a Ghanaian-American actor, writer, and director. This summer, she will appear in a series regular role opposite Sandra Oh and Bob Balaban in Netflix’s “The Chair” and this fall,...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Laura Fairrie – “Lady Boss: The Jackie Collins Story”
Laura Fairrie previously directed “The Battle for Barking,” an observational feature documentary about the far-right in Britain that screened at The Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Jessica Kingdon – “Ascension”
New York-based Jessica Kingdon is a Chinese-American director and producer. She was named one of the “25 New Faces of Independent Film” by Filmmaker Magazine and selected for the 2020 DOC NYC...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Geeta Malik – “India Sweets and Spices”
Geeta Malik is an award-winning writer and director whose accolades include the inaugural Academy Gold Fellowship for Women and the Academy Nicholl Fellowship. Her short film “Beast” played at...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Heather O’Neill – “No Ordinary Life”
Heather O’Neill is an Emmy and Peabody Award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker. She produced “Help Us Find Sunil Tripathi,” which screened at the Hot Docs International Film Festival...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Samantha Aldana – “Shapeless”
Samantha Aldana is a New Orleans-based director and writer. Her work is heavily influenced by the storytelling traditions of her multicultural upbringing in the American South and the Caribbean....
The Pleasure Is All Mine: VOD and Podcast Picks
Finger painting, DIY time, ménage à moi: these are a just handful of euphemisms for — you guessed it — female masturbation. As fun as some of these are to say, why must we refer to a natural,...
Human Rights Watch Film Fest 2021 Women Directors: Meet Jana Matthes and Andrea Schramm – “Tacheles – The Heart of the Matter”
Jana Matthes and Andrea Schramm work as directors and producers for arte, 3sat, ARD, and ZDF. After studying journalism in Leipzig and directing in Potsdam-Babelsberg, they founded Schramm Matthes...
Human Rights Watch Film Fest 2021 Women Directors: Meet Ashley O’Shay – “Unapologetic”
Ashley O’Shay is a Chicago-based DP and documentarian whose work focuses on illuminating marginalized voices. Most recently, she filmed the final episode of Dr. Martens’ “Tough As You”...
Composer to Watch: Aska Matsumiya of “I’m Your Woman”
A musical score is the heartbeat of a film. As the faithful heart pumps life with every pulsation, a composer likewise gives a film its feeling, texture, and humanity with every note. Each one of...
Hot Docs 2021 Women Directors: Meet Shannon Walsh – “The Gig is Up”
Shannon Walsh has written and directed feature documentaries “The Gig is Up,” “Illusions of Control,” “Jeppe on a Friday,” “À St-Henri, le 26 Août,” and “H2Oil,” as well as...
Hot Docs 2021 Women Directors: Meet Svetlana Rodina – “Ostrov – Lost Island”
Svetlana Rodina has worked as a reporter and host for various television programs on the RTR channel. In 2011, she became the editor-in-chief of the documentary department of United Media Group, one...
Hot Docs 2021 Women Directors: Meet Luciana Kaplan – “The Spokeswoman”
Argentina-born, Mexico-based Luciana Kaplan has dedicated her career to documentary filmmaking and teaching. Her films have won support grants from the Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes,...
Hot Docs 2021 Women Directors: Meet Irene Vélez-Torres – “Bajo Fuego”
Irene Vélez-Torres is a professor at the University of Valle who specializes in socio-environmental conflicts and ethno-racial inequalities. While engaging in research, she frequently applies...
Hot Docs 2021 Women Directors: Meet Roser Corella – “Room Without a View”
Berlin-based independent filmmaker Roser Corella started her career as video-journalist for Catalan television, but her interest in the human stories behind global issues moved her to self-produce...
Hot Docs 2021 Women Directors: Meet Celina Escher – “Fly So Far”
Celina Escher is a Swiss-Salvadorean filmmaker telling stories about women as well their pursuits of empowerment, artistic processes, and their sociopolitical contexts. Her film “Verde Olivo” was...
Hot Docs 2021 Women Directors: Meet the Team Behind “Only the Ocean Between Us”
Khaldiya Amer Ali is Syrian filmmaker living in Za’atari Refugee Camp, Jordan. Her short film “Another Kind of Girl” premiered at Sundance; screened at Cannes and SXSW; was featured on The New...
Hot Docs 2021 Women Directors: Meet Annabel Verbeke – “Four Seasons in One Day”
Annabel Verbeke is a documentary filmmaker whose film “Les Enfants de la Mer/Mère” won eight international awards and was selected by over 20 global film festivals. “We Will Remember Them”...
Hot Docs 2021 Women Directors: Meet Maéva Ranaïvojaona – “Zaho Zay”
Maéva Ranaïvojaona is a French filmmaker with Malagasy origins, living and working in Paris and Vienna. She wrote, produced, and directed two short films that have been shown and awarded at several...
Hot Docs 2021 Women Directors: Meet Anaïs Taracena – “The Silence of the Mole”
Documentary filmmaker and producer Anaïs Taracena has directed short films “Los Médicos de la Montaña,” “Entre Voces,” and “Desenredar el Ser,” which have been screened at...
Hot Docs 2021 Women Directors: Meet Yasmine Mathurin – “One of Ours”
Yasmine Mathurin is a Haitian-Canadian writer, director, and award-winning podcast producer. She produced the audio-fiction podcast “The Shadows,” which won Gold in the fiction category at the...
Hot Docs 2021 Women Directors: Meet Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers – “Kímmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning of Empathy”
Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers is a writer, director, producer and actor. She’s a member of the Kainai First Nation — Blood Tribe, Blackfoot Confederacy — as well as Sámi from Norway. Her...
Hot Docs 2021 Women Directors: Meet Jennifer Ngo – “Faceless”
Jennifer Ngo is an award-winning journalist who believes that true stories will always matter. For over five years, she wrote for the South China Morning Post, where her reporting earned her a Human...
Rites and Wrongs of Passage: Crowdfunding Picks
Growing up, teenage life on the big screen was often too good – or too terrible – to be true. Like those as-seen-on-TV gimmicks, the selling point is enticing enough for you to buy in, but the...
Caught Between Two Worlds: Crowdfunding Picks
You don’t have to be a daredevil to feel the exhilarating danger of tightrope walking. In fact, life often forces us to occupy roles that are incompatible with our own desires, that sometimes...
SXSW 2021 Women Directors: Meet Manal Khaled – “Trapped”
Manal Khaled is an Egyptian filmmaker who studied Philosophy at the University of Alexandria. She worked at Misr International Films and has collaborated with award-winning directors such as Saad...
The ABCs of Being ABC: VOD and Podcast Picks
Among the countless grievances of the COVID-19 pandemic is the surge in anti-Asian racism and xenophobia around the world, with unprovoked hate crimes fomented by online conspiracy theories that...
SXSW 2021 Women Directors: Mei Makino – “Inbetween Girl”
For three years, Mei Makino taught filmmaking to youth in the Austin area, inspiring her to tell honest stories about kids and teens. She’s written and directed short films that have played at The...
SXSW 2021 Women Directors: Mary Wharton – “Tom Petty, Somewhere You Feel Free”
Mary Wharton has dedicated her career to making documentaries about music. Her work includes “Joan Baez: How Sweet the Sound,” which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and...
SXSW 2021 Women Directors: Meet Emily Cohen Ibáñez – “Fruits of Labor”
Emily Cohen Ibañez is a Latinx Colombian-American filmmaker who earned her doctorate in Anthropology with a certificate in Culture and Media at New York University. Her film work pairs lyricism with...
SXSW 2021 Women Directors: Meet Danielle Kummer & Lucy Harvey – “Alien On Stage”
Danielle Kummer is a director, producer, and editor from London who studied film and media at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Producer and director Lucy Harvey spent 17 years as a stylist...
SXSW 2021 Women Directors: Meet Alba Sotorra Clua – “The Return: Life After ISIS”
Alba Sotorra Clua has worked in Syria, Afghanistan, Korea, Bosnia, Cuba, the US, Guatemala, England, Iran, Pakistan, Puerto Rico, and Qatar, and has lived long periods in the Middle East. Her films...
SXSW 2021 Women Directors: Meet Emily & Sarah Kunstler – “Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America”
Sisters Emily and Sarah Kunstler are the founders of Off Center Media, a documentary production company dedicated to racial justice and social change. Shortlisted for the Best Documentary Academy...
SXSW 2021 Women Directors: Meet Paola Calvo – “Luchadoras”
Paola Calvo is a Venezuelan director and cinematographer. In 2012, Calvo directed “A Tale of two Islands,” a two-channel video installation that was shown at Berlinale Forum Expanded. Wanting to...
SXSW 2021 Women Directors: Meet Yngvild Sve Flikke – “Ninjababy”
Yngvild Sve Flikke wrote and directed dramas and documentaries for the Norwegian National Broadcasting (NRK) for 17 years before making her feature film debut with “Women in Oversized Men’s...
See and Be Seen: Crowdfunding Picks
Self-perception is a two-way mirror. Self-perception is how we see ourselves: all our ambitions, all our anxieties reflected plainly in the looking glass. Self-perception is also how the person on...
Sundance 2021 Women Directors: Meet Kristina Lindström – “The Most Beautiful Boy in the World”
Kristina Lindström is a filmmaker, journalist, and author. She has directed highly acclaimed documentaries including “Astrid Lindgren;” “Palme” with Maud Nycander, awarded two Guldbagge...
Sundance 2021 Women Directors: Meet Marilyn Agrelo – “Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street”
Marilyn Agrelo’s directorial debut, “Mad Hot Ballroom,” enjoyed a theatrical run of 24 weeks and became the 25th highest-grossing documentary film. A Broadway version is currently in...
Sundance 2021 Directors: Meet Jane Schoenbrun – “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair”
Jane Schoenbrun is a non-binary filmmaker who co-created ongoing touring variety series “The Eyeslicer,” which has screened in hundreds of venues across the world, including MoMA, the Tribeca...
Sundance 2021 Women Directors: Meet Nikole Beckwith – “Together Together”
Writer and director Nikole Beckwith made her feature film debut at Sundance 2015 with “Stockholm, Pennsylvania,” which earned her a Nicholl Fellowship, Satellite Award, Women’s Image Award, and...
Sundance 2021 Women Directors: Meet Salomé Jashi – “Taming the Garden”
Salomé Jashi was born in Tbilisi, Georgia. Her documentary “The Dazzling Light of Sunset” was awarded the Main Prize at Visions du Réel’s Regard Neuf Competition as well as at ZagrebDox,...
Sundance 2021 Women Directors: Meet Siân Heder – “CODA”
Siân Heder is a writer, director, and showrunner. She wrote and produced three seasons of the acclaimed Netflix series “Orange Is the New Black,” receiving multiple WGA nominations for her work....
Sundance 2021 Women Directors: Meet Erin Vassilopoulos – “Superior”
Erin Vassilopoulos is a New York-based filmmaker whose short films have screened at Sundance, the Berlinale, BFI London Film Festival, and Tribeca. Her directorial feature debut, “Superior,”...