Festivals
Sundance Women Directors: Meet Jean Carlomusto — ‘Larry Kramer in Love and Anger’
Jean Carlomusto’s documentaries have been exhibited internationally in festivals, museums, and on television. She produced, directed, and edited Sex in an Epidemic, which premiered on Showtime....
Sundance Women Directors: Meet Nikole Beckwith — ‘Stockholm, Pennsylvania’
Nikole Beckwith’s plays have been read and performed in Ensemble Studio Theater, LAByrinth Theater Company, The Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, Barrow Street Theater, 3LD, The Flea, Lesser...
Sundance Women Directors: Meet Liz Garbus — ‘What Happened, Miss Simone?’
Academy Award-nominated director/producer Liz Garbus co-founded Moxie Firecracker, Inc., an independent documentary production company, with filmmaker Rory Kennedy in 1998. Her directorial credits...
Sundance Women Directors: Meet Alanté Kavaïté — ‘The Summer of Sangaile’
Born in Lithuania, Alanté Kavaïté studied Beaux Arts in Avignon and in Paris, where she specialized in photography and video. Her first feature film, Ecoute le Temps (Fissures), was released in...
Isabel Coixet’s ‘Nobody Wants the Night’ to Open the 2015 Berlinale
Prolific Spanish director Isabel Coixet (My Life Without Me, Learning to Drive) will open the 65th Berlin International Film Festival (Feb. 5–15) with her latest film, Nobody Wants the Night. The...
The 2015 Athena Film Festival Trailer Is Here!
Jodie Foster to Receive Lifetime Achievement Award at 5th Athena Film Festival
In honor of Jodie Foster’s five decades behind and in front of the camera, the 5th annual Athena Film Festival (Feb. 5–8) will salute the Oscar-winning actress and director with its Laura Ziskin...
Athena Film Festival to Honor Gina Prince-Bythewood, Sheila Nevins, and Cathy Schulman
Director Gina Prince-Bythewood, HBO documentary president Sheila Nevins, and Oscar-winning producer and Women in Film president Cathy Shulman will be feted at the 2015 Athena Film Festival for their...
Leslye Headland, Amy Berg, Jennifer Siebel Newsom to Debut Films at Sundance 2015
Nine women-directed narrative and documentary features (out of a total of 29 premieres) will make their debuts at next year’s Sundance Film Festival. Among the much-anticipated first-time...
36% of 2015 Sundance Competition Films Directed by Women
In recent years, the Sundance Film Festival has come further than many other events of its kind in representing female directors. Sundance 2015 appears to be shaping up to its reputation as...
Atlanta Film Festival Announces Its First Ten Selections, All Directed by Women
The Atlanta Film Festival has chosen six narrative features and four documentaries — all directed by women — as its initial ten selections. ATLFF Director of Programming Kristy Breneman...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Michele Josue — ‘Matt Shepard is a Friend of Mine’
Michele Josueis a filmmaker born to Filipino immigrant parents and raised in Maryland. Aftergraduating from Emerson College, Michele relocated to Los Angeles and worked asa short-form video editor...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Cheryl Furjanic — ‘Back on Board: Greg Louganis’
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Lesley Chilcott — ‘A Small Section of the World’
ProducerLesley Chilcott partnered with Davis Guggenheim on the 2006 AcademyAward-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, the documentary feature It Might Get Loud (2009), the Barack Obama...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Geeta V. Patel — ‘Meet the Patels’
Geeta V. Patel is writer/director of the upcoming feature film Mouse. Patel made her directorial debut with the documentary war thriller Project Kashmir, which led to directing fellowships at...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Natasha Verma — ‘Hardy’
Natasha Vermawas born in New York City and raised in South Texas. She is a 20-year oldtelevision journalist, producer, and filmmaker. Her work has been featured onABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox News. Verma...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Yuki Kokubo — ‘Kasamayaki’
Yuki Kokubo is a documentary filmmaker and photographer based in NewYork City. Raised in an artists’ community in rural Japan, Kokubo and her familyrelocated to New York City in 1986. She began...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Jessica Solce — ‘No Control’
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Sara Newens & Mina T. Son — ‘Top Spin’
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Pamela Yates — ‘Disruption’
Pamela Yates is the co-founder of Skylight Pictures, a company dedicated to making films and advanced digital media abouthuman rights and the quest for justice. Her previous film Granito: How to...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Ursula Liang — ‘9-Man’
Ursula Liang is a journalist who has worked in a wide range of media, including posts at ESPN The Magazine, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, The New York Times Op-Docs, and StirTV. She is the...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Linda Hoaglund — ‘The Wound and The Gift’
Linda Hoaglund was born in Japan as the daughter of American missionaryparents and raised in rural Japan, where she attended Japanese public schools.A graduate of Yale University, she subtitled 200...
DOC NYC Directors: Meet Andrea B. Scott — ‘Florence, Arizona’
Andrea B. Scott is a Brooklyn-based documentary filmmaker, editor, and writer. She was an editor and an associate producer on A Place at the Table, directed by Kristi Jacobson and Lori Silverbush,...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Sarah Teale & Lisa F. Jackson — ‘Grazers: A Cooperative Story’
Sarah Teale hasproduced a number of films for HBO, including the recent four-part series TheWeight of the Nation, which was nominated for a Primetime Emmy; Dealing Dogs(Emmy-nominated for Best...
DOC NYC Women Directors: Meet Victoria Campbell — ‘Monsieur Le Président’
I am a visual artist, performer, and filmmaker. My first film, House of Bones, is a personal memoir and meditation on family, past and present, and the way a house/space defines a person.The film...
DOC NYC to Honor ‘Citizenfour’ Director Laura Poitras with Inaugural Award
Filmmaker and “MacArthur Genius” grantee Laura Poitras (CitizenFour, The Oath, Flag Wars) will receive DOC NYC’s inaugural Robert and Anne Drew Award for Documentary Excellence in a ceremony...
43% of 2014 DOC NYC Features Directed by Women, But Where Are the Films About Women?
It’s generally not hard to find female-directed features at documentary film festivals, since women filmmakers face less obstacles in the nonfiction world. This year’s DOC NYC Film Festival...
Crosspost: Number of Women Directors of Shorts at London Film Festival Doubles From Last Year
The following is crossposted with the permission of the author. It was originally published here. Last year, I posted this analysis of the huge underrepresentation of women among directors of short...
Athena Film Festival: Igniting Conversation and Sparking Ideas — What Would You Like to Hear?
As we enter our 5th Year, the Athena Film Festival is proud to have offered a history of unique panels, conversations, and standalone events featuring powerful women leaders. To name a few: In...
Mill Valley Film Fest to Showcase 35 Women-Directed Films, Celebrate Elle Fanning and Laura Dern
Lynn Shelton’s Laggies, Doris Dorrie’s Que Caramba Es La Vida, and Ronit Elkabetz and Shlomi Elkabetz’s Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem are among the nearly three dozen women-directed films...
Women Directors Dominate the Competition at Abu Dhabi Film Festival
Seventy percent of the works in competition at the 2014 Abu Dhabi Film Festival (October 23 — November 1) will be directed by women. The ADFF will only showcase shorts (along with a Truffaut...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Mami Sunada — ‘The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness’
Mami Sunada was born in Tokyoand studied documentary filmmaking at Keio University. She broke into film by assisting director Hirokazu Kore-eda on StillWalking and Air Doll. She also wrote and...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Boo Ji-Young — ‘Cart’
Boo Ji-Young attended the Korean Academy of Film Arts. She directed the feature film Sisters on the Road (2009), as well as four shorts: Spark (1997), His Humming (2000), A Drop of Clear Salty...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Megha Ramaswamy — ‘Newborns’
MeghaRamaswamy is a Mumbai-based screenwriter and director. She wrote the screenplayfor the feature film Shaitan, and wroteand directed the fictional short Bunny. (TIFF official site) Her 8-minute...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Shahad Ameen — ‘Eye & Mermaid’
Shahad Ameen was born and raised in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Realizing at an early age that she could not make her dream of becoing a professional soccer player come true in Saudi Arabia, she turned to...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Carolina Markowicz and Fernanda Salloum — ‘Tatuapé Mahal Tower’
Carolina Markowicz is a director and screenwriter from São Paulo, Brazil. She has directed the short film 69-Luz Square, which won several awards in many festivals around the world, including Bst...
Hilary Swank to Receive Award from Hamptons Film Festival
Hilary Swank will be presented with Variety‘s Creative Impact in Acting Award at the Hamptons Film Festival (October 9–13) this fall. The two-time Oscar winner will also participate in a master...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Nanna Kristín Magnúsdóttir — ‘Playing with Balls’
Nanna Kristín Magnúsdóttir is an Icelandic actress,producer, and VFS (Vancouver Film School) graduate who has receivednumerous nominations and awards for her work both in Iceland...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Sarah Galea-Davis — ‘An Apartment’
Sarah Galea-Davis is an award-winning director, writerand producer. She works in both fiction and documentary filmmaking. Her last short film, Can You Wave Bye-Bye?, won Best Short Film at the...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Torill Kove — ‘Me and My Moulton’
Torill Kove is an award-winning director, animator, illustrator, and author. Born in Hamar, Norway, Kove lived in Kenya before moving to Montreal in 1982 to attend Concordia University. She went on...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Caroline Mailloux — ‘The Barnhouse’
The Barnhouse is the third short film written and directed by Caroline Mailloux. Her films Motel Pluton and Cher Dieu (Dear God) both enjoyed much success on the festival circuit, and Cher Dieu was...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Amanda Strong — ‘Indigo’
Amanda Strong is a filmmaker and media artist working in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. Making use of diverse media (film, photography and illustration) and artistic collaboration, her work seeks...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Johanne Ste-Marie — ‘Migration’
Johanne Ste-Marie is a Montreal native who dove head firstinto the burning ring of animation after graduating with a BFA in FilmAnimation from Concordia University. In 2002, she formed an art duo,...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Michelle Latimer — ‘The Underground’
Michelle Latimer, writer and director of the dramatic short The Underground, is an actor, filmmaker, and curator. Her award-winning documentary Aliaspremiered at the 2013 Hot Docs Film Festival...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Ruba Nadda — ‘October Gale’
Ruba Nadda is a Montreal-born, Toronto-based filmmaker. She attended York University and the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. She has written and directed several feature films, including Sabah...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Atsuko Hirayanagi — ‘Oh Lucy!’
Atsuko Hirayanagi wasborn in Nagano and raised in Chiba, Japan. She is a recent graduate of NYUTisch School of The Arts, Asia, with an MFA in Film Production. Her short films have played at numerous...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Isabel Coixet — ‘Learning to Drive’
Isabel Coixet was born in Barcelona.Since her debut feature, Too Oldto Die Young (1989), she has directedThings I Never Told You (1996), My LifeWithout Me (2003), The Secret Life of Words...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Sophie Barthes — ‘Madame Bovary’
A Columbia University graduate, Sophie Barthes was born in France and grew up in the Middle East and South America. Barthes has just completed an English adaptation of Gustave Flaubert’s Madame...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Yassmina Karajah — ‘Light’
Yassmina Karajah was born in Amman, Jordan, and is a graduate of the Bristol Law School. She studies film production at the University of British Columbia. In Light (2014), her directorial debut, a...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Marie-Ève Juste — ‘The Sands’
Based in Montreal, Marie-Ève Juste worked at the Cinémathèque Québécoise between 2003 and 2007, where she first got familiar with cinema history and practice. In 2011, she co-directed her first...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Elizabeth Lazebnik — ‘Liompa’
Elizabeth Lazebnik is quickly becoming a recognized name in the Canadian film industry. Her shorts have previously played at TIFF, the Montreal World Film Festival and received awards from WWSFF,...