I just am back from Germany where I attended the International Frauen Film Festival, a truly wonderful environment where you can hang out with women working in the film business that you otherwise would never meet. We also had a couple of great meetings of women who work at women’s film festivals (more on that later.)

The festival gave out a prize for debut feature and Turkish director, Belma Bas won for her film Zephyr about a girl on the cusp of adolescence and her struggle with missing her mother and living with her grandparents. It was a very beautiful film to watch -very naturalistic and heavily focused on the outdoors and the environment. Ms. Bas received 10,000 euros.

An honorable mention went to 17 Filles from the French sister team of Delphine and Muriel Coulin. That film is based on the story of the pregnancy pact that happened in the US.

The rest of the winners can be seen here.

I had the opportunity to speak with Belma and here is our interview. (Please excuse the ambient noise- the hotel was quite busy)