Documentary
Tribeca 2016 Women Directors: Meet Kristi Jacobson — ‘Solitary’
Kristi Jacobson’s 2013 film “A Place at the Table” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. The film won the IDA’s prestigious Pare Lorentz Award and was nominated for Best Feature...
Tribeca 2016 Women Directors: Meet Alma Har’el — ‘LoveTrue’
Alma Har’el is a music video and film director, best known for her documentary “Bombay Beach,” which took the top prize at Tribeca Film Festival in 2011, received a nomination for a 2011...
Tribeca 2016 Women Directors: Meet Lydia Tenaglia — ‘Jeremiah Tower: The Last Magnificent’
Lydia Tenaglia is co-founder and executive producer of ZeroPoint Zero Production, Inc. (ZPZ), creators of the Emmy- and Peabody- Award winningseries, “Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown” and...
Meryl Goldsmith On Fighting a Medical Standard in ‘The Syndrome’
Meryl Goldsmith is a Los Angeles-based filmmaker who got her bachelor’s degree in Film and Video from the University of Michigan. Goldsmith teamed up with an investigative journalist on her...
Tribeca 2016 Women Directors: Meet Sonia Kennebeck — ‘National Bird’
Sonia Kennebeck is an independent documentary filmmaker and investigative journalist who has worked for CNN and German public television’s highest-rated and longest-running current affairs...
Tribeca 2016 Women Directors: Meet Dana Flor — ‘Check It’
Dana Flor wrote anddirected the Emmy award-winning documentary “Latinos in Beisbol,” and theEmmy-nominated documentary “Cesar Chavez” for NBC. Flor wrote and producedthe two-hour special...
Tribeca 2016 Women Directors: Meet Ester Gould — ‘Strike a Pose’
Ester Gould has been directing her own documentaries for Dutch public broadcasters since 2005. Her first feature-length documentary, “Shout,” jointly directed with Sabine Lubbe Bakker and shot...
Tribeca 2016 Women Directors: Meet Salima Koroma — ‘Bad Rap’
“Bad Rap” is Salima Koroma’s directorial debut. She’s a former video producer for Time Magazine, NowThis and Current TV. She is also a former hip-hop and K-pop news writer. Koroma is...
Tribeca 2016 Women Directors: Meet Amanda Micheli — ‘haveababy’
Amanda Micheli is an award-winning director and cinematographer. She earned an Oscar nomination for “La Corona,” which premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival before airing on HBO. In 2004,...
Trailer Watch: Gloria Steinem Brings the Revolution to Viceland with New Docuseries ‘Woman’
Feminist icon Gloria Steinem’s new weekly docuseries has a trailer and a premiere date. “Woman” will debut on Viceland May 10. The activist and author of “Outrageous Acts and Everyday...
Tribeca 2016 Women Directors: Meet Jenny Gage — ‘All This Panic’
Jenny Gage’s fine art work has appeared in gallery and museum shows throughout the world. Her commissioned work and portraits have been featured in publications including W, Vanity Fair and...
Tribeca 2016 Women Directors: Meet Deborah S. Esquenazi — ‘Southwest of Salem: The Story of the San Antonio Four’
Deborah S. Esquenazi is an Austin-based documentary filmmaker, radio producer, instructor and journalist. Her work explores the intersections of mythology and justice, identity and power. Esquenazi...
Win $20,000 to Finish Your Doc from Project Greenlight Digital Studios and Seed&Spark
Looking for finishing funds for your independent documentary? You just may be in luck. Project Greenlight Digital Studios (PGLDS) and Seed&Spark are teaming up to launch a 60-day crowdfunding...
Tribeca 2016 Women Directors: Meet Sara Taksler — ‘Tickling Giants’
A senior producer at “The Daily Show,” Sara Taksler has pitched stories and jokes, and researched footage for over a decade. Taksler directed and produced the feature documentary, “TWISTED: A...
Tribeca 2016 Women Directors: Meet Ellen Martinez and Steph Ching — ‘After Spring’
Ellen Martinez was the associate producer on “Tested,” a feature documentary about educational inequality in the NYC public school system. Steph Ching was the associate producer and additional...
Liz Garbus on Her Mother Son Doc ‘Nothing Left Unsaid: Gloria Vanderbilt & Anderson Cooper’
Liz Garbus’ films have been acclaimed worldwide and have garnered multiple Academy Award nominations and Emmy Award wins. Her previous film, “What Happened, Miss Simone?” was the Opening Night...
Lilibet Foster on ‘Spartacus’ Star Andy Whitfield’s Battle with Cancer in Doc ‘Be Here Now’
Lilibet Foster is an award-winning director, producer and writer of feature documentaries, television programs and integrated brand campaigns. She received an Oscar nomination for producing the...
Gayle Kirschenbaum on Childhood Trauma and Forgiveness in ‘Look At Us Now, Mother!’
Gayle Kirschenbaum is an Emmy award-winning filmmaker, TV producer and personality. She is the producer and director of the documentary “My Nose,” based on Kirschenbaum’s experience with her...
IDFA Founder Ally Derks To Step Down from Post in 2017
Legendary International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) founder and director Ally Derks is set to step down from her post in 2017. Derks will spend most of next year as a fellow in...
Watch: Film Experts Explain Movie Jail for Women Directors in ‘The 4%: Film’s Gender Problem’
A new clip has been released from Caroline Suh’s EPIX docu-series “The 4%: Film’s Gender Problem.” The video features film experts, executives, directors, producers and behind-the-scenes crew...
Trailer Watch: Animal Rights Evolve in Chris Hegedus and D A Pennebaker’s ‘Unlocking the Cage’
A trailer has arrived for “Unlocking the Cage,” Chris Hegedus and D A Pennebaker’s eye-opening Sundance animal rights doc. “When you imprison a chimpanzee, the chimpanzee understands that...
Trailer Watch: Nancy Buirski Honors a Great in ‘By Sidney Lumet’
A trailer has arrived for “By Sidney Lumet,” a heartfelt tribute from one director to another. Emmy award-winner Nancy Buirski (“Afternoon of a Faun”) premiered her documentary about the...
BAMcinématek To Present Tribute to Chantal Akerman
BAMcinématek has announced it will present a tribute to filmmaker Chantal Akerman called Chantal Akerman: Images Between the Images. Akerman’s career began in the 1960s when she told intimate,...
Trailer Watch: Anderson Cooper and Gloria Vanderbilt Leave ‘Nothing Left Unsaid’
CNN anchor Anderson Cooper has made a name for himself outside of his famous Vanderbilt family, but now his relationship with his socialite mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, is being explored in Liz...
New Doc About Joan Rivers to Air on PBS
A new documentary about Joan Rivers is set to premiere on New York’s PBS WNET Thirteen. The late comedian was the subject of Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern’s 2010 critically acclaimed doc...
Record-Breaking Boxer Claressa ‘T-Rex’ Shields’ Life Rights Nabbed for Feature Film
It’s about time we had a female “Rocky,” and who better to base such a film on than an actual record-breaking female boxer? Universal and Michael De Luca Productions are teaming together to...
The Secret Lives of Women: March 2016’s Crowdfunding Picks
This month’s crowdfunding picks include a number of intriguing documentaries, plus two psychological thrillers. But what all these films have in common is their mission to bring to light the lives...
Fierce, Funny and Feminist: Nora Ephron in ‘Everything is Copy’
The new HBO documentary about the inimitable Nora Ephron is a lovely, wide-ranging portrait, with as many high-profile talking heads as you could possibly want (Meryl Streep analyzes her; Rob Reiner...
Showtime Will Produce a Whitney Houston Documentary
Showtime Documentary Films has announced the start of a project examining the life and career of legendary singer Whitney Houston. Deadline reports that production kicked off this week. Houston was...
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...
Eileen Meyer Awarded the 2016 Karen Schmeer Film Editing Fellowship
Eileen Meyer has been awarded the 2016 Karen Schmeer Film Editing Fellowship. Meyer edited the award-winning 2015 documentary “Best of Enemies,” an exploration of pundit politics. The editor...
Celebrate International Women’s Day With Films By and About Women
Happy International Women’s Day from the Women and Hollywood team. In honor of the occasion, we’ve asked our interns to highlight some of their favorite movies by and about women. They’ve...
Watch: Film Community Speaks Out About Hollywood’s Gender Problem
As we reported back in January, a new docu-series from director Caroline Suh will interrogate gender inequality in Hollywood. A video featuring interview clips with a host of high-profile names has...
Listen: Women and Hollywood Podcast #24: ‘Trapped’ Director Dawn Porter
Women and Hollywood talked to director Dawn Porter about her timely, high-profile new documentary “Trapped.” The film takes its name from the hundreds of “TRAP” (targeted regulation of...
Tribeca Film Festival Announces 2016 Competition Lineup That’s 33% Female-Helmed
The competition slate for the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival has been announced. The 15th edition of the New York-based festival features three competition sections: U.S. Narrative, International...
Oscar-Winning Doc ‘A Girl in the River’ Shines a Light on Honor Killing
When Louis C.K. flawlessly introduced the Best Documentary, Short Subject category at the Oscars, he said it’s his favorite because “this is the one Academy Award that has the opportunity to...
Watch: John Oliver and ‘Trapped’ Set the Stage for Historic Supreme Court Case on Abortion
A recent episode of HBO’s “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” tackled insidious abortion laws and their devastating impact on women nationwide. In typical Oliver fashion, the segment was...
PBS’s ‘POV’ to Stream Groundbreaking Women Make Movies (WMM) Films for Women’s History Month
PBS series “POV” is spotlighting four influential Women Make Movies (WMM) films in honor of Women’s History Month: Judith Helfand’s “A Healthy Baby Girl,” Annie Goldson and Peter...
4 Women-Directed Gothenburg Film Fest Features to Put on Your Radar
This is the third of three dispatches from the 2016 Gothenburg International Film Festival. As the largest film festival in Scandinavia, the world’s leader in gender equality, the Gothenburg...
Desolate Towns and Sacred Spaces: February 2016’s Crowdfunding Picks
This week’s crowdfunding picks are tied together by a strong sense of place, conjuring images of faraway landscapes or fleshing out the complexities of America’s marginalized communities....
Elizabeth Wood’s ‘White Girl’ and Penny Lane’s ‘NUTS!’ Land at Streaming Sites
Two female-helmed features out of Sundance — Elizabeth Wood’s drug drama “White Girl” and Penny Lane’s animated medical documentary “NUTS!” — have found distribution....
Guest Post: How I Met the Subject of My Doc (Which Was Nominated for an Oscar 8 Years Later)
Watch: Journalist-Activists Film From Inside the Women’s Movement in ‘Here Come the Videofreex’
Full Frame to Honor Director/Cinematographer Kirsten Johnson With Award, Retrospective
Filmmaker Kirsten Johnson will be feted at the 2016 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. Johnson will receive this year’s Tribute Award and have her 27-year career behind the camera showcased in...
Trailer Watch: Reproductive Rights Are Under Attack in Sundance-Winning Abortion Doc ‘Trapped’
“Women are going to have abortions — it’s just that they’re not going to be safe and legal.” So begins the terrifying trailer for Dawn Porter’s timely new documentary “Trapped.”...
Watch: ‘Natural Woman’ Singer Carole King Revisits Her Breakthrough Album in New PBS Doc
Adele is currently lighting up the Billboard charts and setting records, but she’s far from the first songstress to dominate the airwaves. An upcoming episode of PBS’s “American Masters”...
Dawn Porter’s Abortion Doc ‘Trapped’ Gets Distribution Deal
Dawn Porter’s “Trapped” has landed a distribution deal. Trilogy Films, Big Mouth Productions, Cedar Creek Productions and Chicken & Egg Pictures have announced a partnership with Ro*Co...
Listen: Women & Hollywood Podcast #22: ‘What Happened, Miss Simone?’ Director Liz Garbus
Liz Garbus’s “What Happened, Miss Simone?” is the sole woman-helmed documentary in the running for this year’s Best Documentary Feature at the Academy Awards. The Netflix doc, which features...
SXSW Announces Most of Its 2016 Lineup: Competition Sections Are 40% Female-Helmed
South by Southwest has announced the bulk of its 2016 lineup, and eight of twenty films in competition are female-helmed or co-helmed: That amounts to a not-at-all shabby 40%. In 2015, only 25% of...
Trailer Watch: Festival Hit ‘Mavis!’ Tells Story of Legendary Singer and Activist Mavis Staples
HBO has released a trailer for highly-anticipated documentary feature “Mavis!,” which chronicles the life and times of legendary gospel and soul singer Mavis Staples. The trailer opens with...
Sundance Hit ‘The Eagle Huntress’ Acquired by Sony Pictures Classics
“The Eagle Huntress” has found a home at Sony Pictures Classics. The crowd-pleasing Sundance documentary chronicles a 13-year-old Mongolian girl’s attempt to challenge 2,000 years of tradition...