Interviews
Hot Docs 2020 Women Directors: Meet Ying Wang – “The World is Bright”
As a migrant navigating between multiple cultures, Ying Wang is fascinated by stories that reveal the geopolitical complexity of global migration. Inspired by her sister’s experiences, Wang wrote...
Hot Docs 2020 Women Directors: Meet Judith Helfand – “Love & Stuff”
Peabody award-winning filmmaker Judith Helfand tackles some of the most pressing issues of our time — from the climate crisis and systemic inequality to love, grief, and the transformative...
Hot Docs 2020 Women Directors: Meet Priscila Padilla – “Breaking the Silence”
Priscila Padilla is a Colombian documentarist and scriptwriter. With over 20 years of experience in the documentary field, her film work has always revolved around women’s issues and stories...
Hot Docs 2020 Women Directors: Meet Andrea Testa – “Mother-Child”
Andrea Testa is an Argentinian-born filmmaker. She made her feature documentary debut with 2016’s “Pibe Chorro.” Her 2016 feature film “The Long Night of Francisco Sanctis,” co-directed...
Hot Docs 2020 Women Directors: Meet Jennifer Maytorena Taylor – “For the Love of Rutland”
Jennifer Maytorena Taylor’s work has shown at venues like the Sundance, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Locarno Film Festivals, International Documentary Festival Amsterdam, and the New York...
Hot Docs 2020 Women Directors: Meet Sharon Liese – “Transhood”
Before completing “Pink Collar Crimes,” a true crime series for CBS, Sharon Liese’s short documentary “Fight for the First” premiered at Chuck Todd’s Meet the Press...
Hot Docs 2020 Women Directors: Meet Elizabeth St. Philip – “9/11 Kids”
Elizabeth St. Philip is a senior producer at CTV where she has traveled the globe covering a host of stories for both national news and the investigative show “W5.” She has a deep...
Hot Docs 2020 Women Directors: Meet Nathalie Bibeau – “The Walrus and the Whistleblower”
Nathalie Bibeau is a director and producer of international award-winning productions. She began her career at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, producing documentary projects such as “8th...
Hot Docs 2020 Women Directors: Meet Cecilia Aldarondo – “Landfall”
Cecilia Aldarondo is a documentary director and producer from the Puerto Rican diaspora who makes films at the intersection of poetry and politics. Her work has been supported by ITVS, HBO, A&E,...
Hot Docs 2020 Women Directors: Meet Deepti Gupta – “Shut Up Sona”
Deepti Gupta is a filmmaker and director of photography living in Mumbai, India. An alumna of the Film & TV Institute of India, she has shot many documentaries, narrative feature films, and music...
Hot Docs 2020 Women Directors: Meet Stefanía Thors – “The School of Housewives”
Stefanía Thors is a filmmaker from Reykjavík, Iceland. She studied theater in Prague, and graduated with a masters from the Academy of Performing Arts. While studying, Thors worked as an assistant...
Hot Docs 2020 Women Directors: Meet Maeve O’Boyle, Lucy Kennedy, and Aideen Kane – “The 8th”
Maeve O’Boyle is an Emmy-award winning editor and producer. She edited HBO’s “The Education of Mohammad Hussein,” which was shortlisted for an Academy Award. She co-produced and...
Hot Docs 2020 Women Directors: Meet Diana Neille – “Influence”
Diana Neille is an award-winning journalist and filmmaker from Johannesburg, South Africa. Neille co-founded two media startups with the intention of fostering long-form investigative storytelling...
Hot Docs 2020 Women Directors: Meet Suzanne Crocker – “First We Eat”
Suzanne Crocker’s first feature, “POV” documentary “All the Time in the World,” won 22 festival awards from around the world including nine audience choice awards, four...
Hot Docs 2020 Women Directors: Meet Lulu Wei – “There’s No Place Like This Place, Anyplace”
Lulu Wei is a Toronto based filmmaker and cinematographer whose work explores themes of urbanization and cultural identity. Wei’s short films and installations have been screened and exhibited...
Hot Docs 2020 Women Directors: Meet Mia Donovan – “Dope is Death”
Mia Donovan is an award-winning filmmaker based in Montreal. She was the recipient of the prestigious Don Haig Award for outstanding achievement as an emerging filmmaker in 2012. Her films have been...
Hot Docs 2020 Women Directors: Meet Maria Finitzo – “The Dilemma of Desire”
Maria Finitzo is a two-time Peabody Award-winning social issue documentary filmmaker. She has been producing and directing documentary films for network television, public broadcasting, cable TV, and...
Hot Docs 2020 Women Directors: Meet Liz Marshall – “Meat the Future”
Liz Marshall is an award-winning Canadian filmmaker. Since the 1990s, she has written, produced, directed, and filmed diverse international and socially conscious documentaries. Marshall’s...
Hot Docs 2020 Women Directors: Meet Ali Weinstein – “#BLESSED”
Ali Weinstein is a documentary director and producer based in Toronto. Her directorial debut “Mermaids,” about a group of women who strongly identify with the powerful aquatic archetype,...
Hot Docs 2020 Women Directors: Meet Tamara Mariam Dawit – “Finding Sally”
Tamara Mariam Dawit is an Ethiopian-Canadian filmmaker based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia where she runs the production company GobezMedia. Dawit also manages the Creative Producers Training Program...
Hot Docs 2020 Women Directors: Meet Yoruba Richen – “The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte Hosts the Tonight Show”
Yoruba Richen is an award-winning documentary filmmaker whose work has been featured on PBS, New York Times Op Doc, Frontline Digital, New York Magazine’s The Cut, The Atlantic, and Field of...
Director Nadia Hallgren Talks About “Becoming” a Part of Michelle Obama’s Life
“Becoming” offers a personal and intimate view into the world of Michelle Obama. Nadia Hallgren’s new Netflix documentary takes viewers on an all-access journey alongside the former...
Lara Jean Gallagher Discusses “Clementine,” Her Unconventional Coming-of-Age Pic
Interview by Gabriela Rico Lara Jean Gallagher is a writer and director. Her shorts and music videos have screened at SXSW, Palm Springs Shortfest, Mill Valley, Portland International, DC Shorts, as...
“Mother’s Little Helpers'” Kestrin Pantera on Telling a Story About a Dysfunctional Family
Kestrin Pantera is an actress, writer, and director. She made her feature debut with 2014’s “Let’s Ruin It with Babies,” and has since directed TV series such as “Bad Parent Theater,”...
Tribeca 2020 Women Directors: Meet Sabrina Doyle – “Lorelei”
Sabrina Doyle is a British writer and director based in Los Angeles and London. The AFI alumna’s directing has been supported by Women in Film LA, the Chimaera Project, Google, Panavision, the...
Tribeca 2020 Women Directors: Meet Anna Kerrigan – “Cowboys”
Anna Kerrigan is a Los Angeles-based filmmaker with a background in independent film, digital storytelling, and theater. “Hot Seat,” which she wrote and directed, premiered at Sundance in...
Cristina Ibarra on Making a New Kind of Immigration Narrative in “The Infiltrators”
Cristina Ibarra has been making award-winning films that explore the U.S.-Mexico border for the past 16 years. Her PBS-broadcast documentary “Las Marthas” premiered on “Independent Lens” in...
Tribeca 2020 Women Directors: Meet Michèle Stephenson – “Stateless”
As co-founder of Rada Studio, Michèle Stephenson pulls from her Panamanian and Haitian roots and experience as a human rights attorney to tell provocative stories that speak to personal and systemic...
The Director & Stars of “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” Consider the Film a Classical Hero’s Journey
For her third feature, Eliza Hittman took on the painful, infuriating realities of seeking a legal abortion in the United States. “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” tells the story of Autumn, a...
“Bull” Director Annie Silverstein on Rodeo Culture and the Realities of On-Set Childcare
Interview by Becca Harrison Annie Silverstein won the Cinéfondation jury prize at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival for “Skunk,” a short about a 14-year-old girl whose pit bull is stolen by an...
Tribeca 2020 Women Directors: Meet Dea Gjinovci – “Wake Up on Mars”
Dea Gjinovci is a Swiss-Albanian director and producer. She is a 2019 Sundance Talent Forum alum and 2019 Film Independent Fellow. Her award-winning documentary short “Sans le Kosovo”...
Tribeca 2020 Women Directors: Meet Kristine Stolakis – “Pray Away”
Kristine Stolakis is a director whose films explore power, politics, and prejudice — and the way they unfold in real people’s lives. Stolakis’ directorial debut, “The Typist,”...
Tribeca 2020 Women Directors: Meet Jessica Earnshaw – “Jacinta”
Jessica Earnshaw is a documentary photographer and filmmaker whose work focuses on criminal justice and healthcare. In 2015, she received the Rita and Alex Hillman Foundation Fellowship and Grant to...
Tribeca 2020 Women Directors: Meet Brea Grant – “12 Hour Shift”
Brea Grant is a multi-hyphenate from Texas best known for acting in “Heroes” and “Dexter” and for writing and directing the apocalyptic feature “Best Friends...
Nancy Kelly on the Re-Release of “Thousand Pieces of Gold” and the Drama’s Continued Relevance
Nancy Kelly is a self-taught filmmaker who, having fallen in love with filmmaking, quit her job and moved from Massachusetts to the high desert on the California/Nevada border in the 1980s. Though...
“Unorthodox” Director Maria Schrader Talks Portraying Satmar Judaism and Berlin’s Complex History
Maria Schrader’s latest project is “Unorthodox,” the critically acclaimed Netflix miniseries based on Deborah Feldman’s memoir of the same name. The German multi-hyphenate...
“Circus of Books” Director Rachel Mason on Making a Doc About Her Parents’ Iconic LGBTQ Bookstore
Rachel Mason is a Los Angeles-based artist and director. Working across mediums as a songwriter, performer, sculptor, and multi-media artist, Mason’s work has appeared in shows at museums and...
Halina Dyrschka Gives a Brilliant Unknown Artist Her Due with “Beyond the Visible – Hilma af Klint”
Halina Dyrschka is a director and producer. After studying acting, classical singing, and film production, she founded the company Ambrosia Film. The first film she directed, the short...
Going Behind the Scenes of “Unorthodox” with Co-Creator and Exec Producer Anna Winger
Anna Winger is a Berlin-based American writer-producer whose new miniseries, “Unorthodox,” recently made its debut on Netflix. The show, in English and Yiddish, sees a young woman bravely leaving...
Robin Hauser Explores How Hidden Biases Affect Workplaces, Relationships, & Technology in “Bias” Doc
Robin Hauser is an award-winning director of documentary films at Finish Line Features. Her exploration into implicit gender and racial bias in artificial intelligence led her to introduce the...
Sonejuhi Sinha on Telling a Story About Outsiders in America in “Stray Dolls”
Sonejuhi Sinha has worked as a director and editor on acclaimed feature films, documentaries, and commercials. Her first narrative short, “Love Comes Later,” premiered at the 2015 Cannes Film...
Sally Potter Discusses “The Roads Not Taken” at the Inaugural Girls Club Event
Sally Potter is one of the world’s most interesting filmmakers. She’s made films with shoestring budgets, and some bigger movies as well — no matter their size, they are always intriguing....
Debra Eisenstadt on Tackling Motherhood, Identity, and Addiction in “Blush”
Debra Eisenstadt works as a writer, director, producer, and editor. She began her career as an actress, most notably starring in the theater and film versions of David Mamet’s “Oleanna.”...
“Sea Fever’s” Neasa Hardiman on Transforming a Female Scientist into a “Quasi-Mythological Hero”
Neasa Hardiman is a BAFTA-winning director and writer whose work spans film and television drama. Her short films have won numerous international prizes. Her recent credits include BBC’s...
“M for Magic’s” Alexis Manya Spraic on Hollywood’s Magic Castle and Women’s Unacknowledged Work
Filmmaker Alexis Manya Spraic is a fourth-generation Angeleno who is drawn to transformative stories of women and people of color languishing in the footnotes of history and culture. She has dual...
Eliza Hittman On Why Abortion Drama “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” Is Both Personal and Political
Writer-director Eliza Hittman’s latest film, “Never Rarely Sometimes Always,” is an unflinching story about reproductive rights in the United States. Facing an unplanned pregnancy...
Autumn de Wilde Talks Pivoting from Photography to Filmmaking with “Emma.”
Autumn de Wilde, a veteran photographer and music video director, is making her feature debut with an adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Emma.” On the heels of Greta Gerwig’s recent...
Sundance 2020 Women Directors: Meet Channing Godfrey Peoples – “Miss Juneteenth”
Channing Godfrey Peoples is an MFA graduate of the USC School of Cinematic Arts and one of Filmmaker magazine’s 2018 “25 new faces of independent film.” She wrote two episodes of “Queen...
Sundance 2020 Women Directors: Meet Susanne Regina Meures – “Saudi Runaway”
Susanne Regina Meures is a Swiss-German filmmaker. Her debut film, “Raving Iran,” premiered in 2016 and has been shown at over 130 film festivals worldwide, including Hot Docs and Visions...
Sundance 2020 Women Directors: Meet Zoé Wittock – “Jumbo”
Originally hailing from Belgium, Zoé Wittock grew up travelling the world. She attended the International Film School of Paris. Her shorts include “A demi-mot,” “Still,” and...
Sundance 2020 Women Directors: Meet Ramona S. Diaz – “A Thousand Cuts”
Ramona S. Diaz’s award-winning films include “Imelda,” “The Learning,” “Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey,” and...