Festivals
Tribeca 2017 Women Directors: Meet Ellen Goldfarb— “Dare to be Different”
Ellen Goldfarb has produced and directed many projects. “Dare to Be Different” is her first feature film. “Dare to Be Different” will premiere at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival on...
Tribeca 2017 Women Directors: Meet Perri Peltz — “Warning: This Drug May Kill You”
Perri Peltz is a documentary filmmaker, journalist, and public health advocate whose latest film is the HBO documentary “Risky Drinking.” Peltz’s previous directing credits include...
Tribeca 2017 Women Directors: Meet Kimberly Senior — “Chris Gethard’s Career Suicide”
Kimberly Senior has had an extensive directorial career both on and off-Broadway. Her productions have garnered dozens of awards and nominations across the country, and she most recently earned the...
Tribeca 2017 Women Directors: Meet Sarah Adina Smith — “Buster’s Mal Heart”
Sarah Adina Smith’s first feature, “The Midnight Swim,” won six awards on the festival circuit, including the audience award from AFI FEST. She wrote and directed “Mother’s Day,” a...
Tribeca 2017 Women Directors: Meet Trish Adlesic and Geeta Gandbhir — “I Am Evidence”
“I Am Evidence” will premiere at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival on April 24. Trish Adlesic is an Oscar and Emmy nominated documentary producer for her work on “Gasland” and “Gasland Part...
Tribeca 2017 Women Directors: Meet Alexandra Dean — “Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story”
Alexandra Dean is an Emmy Award-winning journalist and producer. She produced news-magazine documentaries for PBS before becoming a series and documentary producer at Bloomberg television, producing...
Tribeca 2017 Women Directors: Meet Elvira Lind — “Bobbi Jene”
Elvira Lind has shot and directed documentaries of various lengths for TV, cinema, and the web on four different continents. Her first feature documentary, “Songs for Alexis,” competed at IDFA...
Tribeca 2017 Women Directors: Meet Sophie Brooks — “The Boy Downstairs”
Sophie Brooks’ first short film, “Malcolm,” won second place at NYU’s New Visions and Voices Festival. Her subsequent film, “Maple Leaves,” premiered at The Palm Springs International...
Tribeca 2017 Women Directors: Meet Julia Solomonoff — “Nobody’s Watching”
Julia Solomonoff is an Argentine director based in New York City. As both a director and producer, she has played a key role in the revitalization of Latin American cinema and her films have been...
Tribeca 2017 Women Directors: Meet Laurie Simmons — “My Art”
Laurie Simmons is an internationally recognized artist. Her work is included in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Whitney Museum, among...
Tribeca 2017 Women Directors: Meet Anna Chai and Nari Kye — “WASTED! The Story of Food Waste”
Anna Chai is an Emmy Award-winning director and producer known for her work on the James Beard Award-winning series “The Mind of a Chef” and “The Layover.” Nari Kye is an Emmy Award-winning...
Cannes 2017: Women Directors Represent 42% of Critics’ Week Main Competition
The 2017 lineup for Cannes’ Critics’ Week sidebar has been announced. Three of the main competition’s seven films — about 42 percent — are women-helmed. Only one film screened in...
Tribeca 2017 Women Directors: Meet Smriti Mundhra and Sarita Khurana— “A Suitable Girl”
Smriti Mundhra has been working in the film and television industry for over ten years. With partner Ben Rekhi, she produced “Bomb the System,” a 2004 Independent Spirit Award nominee for Best...
Tribeca 2017 Women Directors: Meet Sandy Chronopoulos — “House of Z”
Sandy Chronopoulos is a documentary filmmaker and television producer living in Toronto, Canada. “House of Z” is her feature directorial debut. She is the Supervising Producer of Lifestyle &...
Tribeca 2017 Women Directors: Meet Katie Green and Carlye Rubin — “The Family I Had”
Katie Green and Carlye Rubin made their directorial debut with “The (Dead Mothers) Club,” which broadcast on HBO in 2014. The documentary centers on three women who lost their mothers during...
Tribeca 2017 Women Directors: Meet Kate Brooks — “The Last Animals”
Kate Brooks is an American photojournalist who has chronicled conflict and human rights issues for nearly two decades. Her introspective collection of essays and photographs, “In the Light of...
Cannes 2017: Directors’ Fortnight Lineup Is 35% Women-Directed
Cannes has announced its 2017 Director’s Fortnight lineup, and seven of 20 films screening are helmed by women, amounting to 35 percent of the slate. This is a dramatic improvement from last year,...
Tribeca 2017 Women Directors: Meet Quinn Shephard — “Blame”
As an actress, Quinn Shephard is best known for Paul Feig’s “Unaccompanied Minors and “Hostages” on CBS. Her upcoming films include “Sweet, Sweet Lonely Girl” and Desiree Akhavan’s...
Tribeca 2017 Women Directors: Meet Elina Psykou — “Son of Sofia”
Elina Psykou’s first feature, “The Eternal Return of Antonis Paraskevas,” won the Works in Progress Award at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in 2012 and premiered at the Berlinale...
Tribeca 2017 Women Directors: Meet Sierra Pettengill — “The Reagan Show”
Sierra Pettengill is a Brooklyn-based filmmaker. “Town Hall,” her directorial debut (co-directed by Jamila Wignot), broadcast nationally on PBS in 2014. She produced the Academy Award-nominated...
Tribeca 2017 Women Directors: Meet Lana Wilson — “The Departure”
Lana Wilson is an Emmy-winning filmmaker based in New York. Her first film, “After Tiller,” co-directed by Martha Shane, went inside the lives of the four most-targeted abortion providers in...
Tribeca 2017 Women Directors: Meet Petra Volpe — “The Divine Order”
Petra Volpe’s feature debut, “Dreamland,” was nominated for four Swiss film awards and played both the festival and theatrical circuit. “The Divine Order” will premiere at the 2017 Tribeca...
Greenwich Film Festival to Honor Renée Zellweger and Christy Turlington Burns
Renée Zellweger and Christy Turlington Burns will be honored at the Greenwich International Film Festival’s third annual Changemaker Gala. The event, scheduled to be held June 1, celebrates...
Tribeca 2017 Women Directors: Meet Liz W. Garcia — “One Percent More Humid”
Liz W. Garcia’s directorial debut, “The Lifeguard,” starring Kristen Bell, premiered in competition at Sundance in 2013. She is currently writing “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 3” for...
Tribeca 2017 Women Directors: Meet Josephine Decker — “Flames”
Josephine Decker is an actor, writer, and director best known for “Collective Unconscious” and “Thou Wast Mild and Lovely.” In 2008, Decker co-directed a documentary on bisexuality called...
Tribeca 2017 Women Directors: Meet Rachel Israel — “Keep the Change”
Rachel Israel has directed short films that have screened worldwide. “Keep the Change” marks her feature debut. She is an adjunct professor at RISD. “Keep the Change” will premiere at the...
Tribeca 2017 Preview: Arranged Marriages, Endangered Animals, the Justice System, & More
“A Suitable Girl” Women directed nearly 40 percent of the films screening in Competition at this year’s edition of the Tribeca Film Festival, and there are plenty of women-centric projects in...
Sofia Coppola to Be Honored at Provincetown Film Festival
Sofia Coppola is having a helluva week. The writer-director’s next film, “The Beguiled,” was just announced as part of Canne’s 2017 lineup, and now comes word that the Oscar winner will be...
Cannes 2017 Lineup: Women Directors Represent 16% of Main Competition
Naomi Kawase’s “Radiance” A couple of weeks ago, the 70th anniversary poster for the Cannes Film Festival was unveiled. It featured a picture of a giddy, twirling Claudia Cardinale and received...
Cannes 2017: 33% of Shorts and 44% of Cinéfondation Picks Are Women-Directed
Cannes announced its selections for the Short Films Competition and Cinéfondation category today, and 33 percent of the shorts and 44 percent of the Cinéfondation films are directed by women....
Daisy Asquith’s “Queerama” to Open Sheffield Doc/Fest
Daisy Asquith’s “Queerama” will open the 2017 Sheffield Doc/Fest, Women in Film and Television UK reports. Created with material from the BFI National Archive, the doc was made to mark the 50...
Cannes 2017: Women in Motion Announces Young Talents Award Details & Names Isabelle Huppert as Face…
Cannes 2017: Women in Motion Announces Young Talents Award Details & Names Isabelle Huppert as Face of Program The film lineup for the 70th Cannes Film Festival will be announced in a couple...
Cannes 2017: Women-Directed Films We’re Tracking for This Year’s Festival
“The Beguiled” While many other high-profile festivals have made strides towards closing the gender gap in their programming, Cannes is infamous for lagging behind the times. Last year, just...
Tallgrass Film Festival to Launch Female-Helmed Doc Competition
The largest film festival in Kansas is getting more female-friendly. The Tallgrass Film Association (TFA) has announced the creation of DoXX Spotlight competition for women-directed feature-length...
“Lipstick Under My Burkha” to Open Indian Film Fests in LA and NY
“Lipstick Under My Burkha” has been subject to censorship in India, but the feminist film is being received warmly at festivals in the U.S. In fact, the Alankrita Shrivastava-directed movie will...
Bentonville Film Fest to Open with Gaby Dellal’s “3 Generations”
“3 Generations” The 2017 Bentonville Film Festival will open with Gaby Dellal’s controversial “3 Generations,” Indiewire reports. Written by Dellal and Nikole Beckwith, the drama, once...
Artemis Women in Action Film Festival Announces 2017 Honorees
The Artemis Women in Action Film Festival has announced the honorees for its 2017 edition. Ingrid Bolsø Berdal, Cynthia Rothrock, Gina Carano, and Luci Romberg will be celebrated in April, a press...
Hot Docs Special Presentations Lineup: Dance Teams, Indigenous Musicians, & Animal Rights Activists
Hot Docs has announced the lineup for their Special Presentations program. Nine of 26 films are directed or co-directed by women, amounting to about 35 percent of the high-profile slate. According...
Ana Asensio’s “Most Beautiful Island” Wins Top Prize at SXSW
Ana Asensio’s “Most Beautiful Island” has been named the winner of SXSW’s Grand Jury Award in the narrative feature competition, The Hollywood Reporter writes. Asensio’s film, which she...
Sarasota Film Festival to Open and Close with Women-Directed Films
This year’s Sarasota Film Festival will feature women-directed films on Opening and Closing Night. According to a press statement from the festival, Rory Kennedy’s “Take Every Wave: The Life...
Los Angeles Women’s International Film Festival Kicks Off March 23 with “The Drowning”
In LA next week and want to support films by and about women? Rather than checking out a single film at a multiplex, consider attending a female-led film fest. The 13th annual Los Angeles Women’s...
SXSW 2017 Women Directors: Meet Lysa Heslov — “Served Like a Girl”
Lysa Heslov is a director and producer who, along with her husband Grant Heslov, founded Children Mending Hearts, a non-profit organization dedicated to empowering disadvantaged youth in the U.S....
SXSW 2017 Women Directors: Meet Natalia Leite — “M.F.A.”
Natalia Leite is a writer/director/actress, born in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Her feature film debut, “Bare,” premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2015, starring Dianna Agron and Paz De La Huerta....
SXSW 2017 Women Directors: Meet Noël Wells — “Mr. Roosevelt”
Noël Wells is an actor, writer, and director based in LA. Her acting credits include “Happy Anniversary,” “F*cking People,” and “Master of None.” She is also currently developing a show...
SXSW 2017 Women Directors: Meet Ovidie— “Pornocracy”
Ovidie is an author and film director. Her explicitly feminist films like “Pulsion” and “Le baiser” depict an ethical and realistic take on sexuality. Today Ovidie is a journalist, blogger,...
SXSW 2017 Women Directors: Meet Anna Koch — “Win by Fall”
Anna Koch studied directing at the German Film & Television Academy Berlin (dffb). Her short film credits include “Sisters” and “Fata Morgana.” “Win by Fall” is her first feature...
SXSW 2017 Women Directors: Jessica M. Thompson— “The Light of the Moon”
Jessica M. Thompson is an Emmy-nominated Australian filmmaker who lives in New York City. She’s made several award-winning short films alongside Carlo Velayo, including “Hike,” “Percepio,”...
SXSW 2017 Women Directors: Meet Erin Lee Carr — “Mommy Dead and Dearest”
Erin Lee Carr is a New York-based filmmaker and writer. Her debut film, “Thought Crimes,” premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and Hot Docs Film Festival in 2015. Variety named her as one of...
SXSW 2017 Women Directors: Meet Emma Franz — “Bill Frisell, A Portrait”
Australian filmmaker Emma Franz began her professional creative life as a jazz singer and composer. Her first film, “Intangible Asset Number 82,” won Best Foreign Documentary at the Durban...
SXSW 2017 Women Directors: Meet Mónica Álvarez Franco — “The Cloud Forest”
After studying AV Media in Mexico and receiving a Master’s Degree in Creative Documentary in Madrid, Spain, Mónica Álvarez Franco wrote and directed several short documentaries. Her short...
SXSW 2017 Women Directors: Meet Ana Asensio — “Most Beautiful Island”
Ana Asensio is an actress, writer, and director from Spain. “Most Beautiful Island” is her feature directorial debut. Asensio has also appeared in “Planta 25” and “Zenith.” “Most...