Interviews
Cannes 2017 Women Directors: Meet Natalia Santa — “La Defensa del Dragón”
“La Defensa del Dragón” is Natalia Santa’s directorial debut. The film will premiere at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival on May 24. W&H: Describe the film for us in your own words. NS:...
Cannes Interview: Kristen Stewart Explains Why Directing Shouldn’t Be About Correcting
Kristen Stewart is crafting a great career for herself. She shot to international stardom in “Twilight,” but it’s what she’s done after the vampire romance franchise that really makes her...
Cannes 2017 Women Directors: Meet Cecilia Atan and Valeria Pivato — “The Desert Bride”
Cecilia Atan’s documentary series “Madres de Plaza de Mayo, la Historia” was nominated for the International Emmy Awards. “The Sea,” her first short film, screened at the Cannes Short Film...
Cannes 2017 Women Directors: Meet Bonni Cohen — “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power”
Bonni Cohen is an award-winning producer and director. She co-directed “Audrie & Daisy,” which premiered in competition at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival and was picked up as a Netflix...
Cannes 2017 Women Directors: Meet Chloé Zhao — “The Rider”
Chloé Zhao is an award-winning director and producer. Her first feature-length doc, 2015’s “Songs My Brother Taught Me,” was nominated for the Golden Camera Award at Cannes, the Grand Jury...
“Wakefield” Writer-Director Robin Swicord on How She Got the Movie Made and Breaking into Directing
Robin Swicord’s many writing credits span from ’90s family favorite “Matilda” to Oscar-nominated drama “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” She made her directorial feature debut with...
Cannes 2017 Women Directors: Meet Marcela Said — “Los Perros”
Marcela Said has worked in both documentary and feature films. Her debut feature, “The Summer of Flying Fish,” premiered at the Director’s Fortnight in 2013. She wrote “Los Perros” at the...
Cannes 2017 Women Directors: Meet Léa Mysius — “Ava”
Léa Mysius has directed three award-winning short films selected for a number of festivals: “Cadavre exquis,” “Les Oiseaux-tonnerre,” selected for the Cannes Cinéfondation award, and...
Cannes 2017 Women Directors: Meet Valeska Grisebach — “Western”
Valeska Grisebach’s directorial debut, “Be My Star,” won the Critics’ Prize at the Toronto International Film Festival and the Torino Film Festival’s main prize. Her second feature film,...
Bette Gordon Talks Recognizing the Evil Within Ourselves in “The Drowning”
Bette Gordon’s films have been screened theatrically in the U.S. and abroad, as well as in all the major film festivals, including Cannes, Berlin, Toronto, and Sundance. Her films are in the...
Maria Schrader Talks Exile and Inner Turmoil in “Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe”
One of Germany’s most acclaimed actresses, Maria Schrader is a two-time winner of the German Film award and two-time winner of the Bavarian Film award. At the 1999 Berlinale she received the...
“Snatched” Writer Katie Dippold Talks Writing Roles for Women Over 40
Katie Dippold has been a screenwriter for about a decade. She made a splash with 2013’s “The Heat,” but became a household name last year with the premiere of “Ghostbusters” — the...
Listen: Podcast with President of HBO Documentary Films Sheila Nevins
Sheila Nevins has won dozens of Emmy Awards. When the powerhouse exec offers insight and advice, you’ll want to listen. We can all benefit from Nevin’s wisdom thanks to the release of her new...
“Mr. Chibbs” Director Jill Campbell on the Enduring Appeal of NBA Star Kenny Anderson
Jill Campbell has worked as a producer, director, and writer on myriad documentaries, including “Dancing Across Borders,” “Bernal’s Picasso: When Art Met Science,” and “Out of Print.”...
Hot Docs 2017 Women Directors: Meet Selma Vilhunen — “Hobbyhorse Revolution”
Selma Vilhunen is a director and screenwriter of both fiction and documentary films. She is also one of the co-founders of the production company Tuffi Films. Her fiction feature debut, “Little...
Hot Docs 2017 Women Directors: Meet Sofia Bohdanowicz — “Maison du bonheur”
Sofia Bohdanowicz is an experimental filmmaker from Toronto, Canada. Her most recent collection of shorts, “Last Poems,” explores the passing of her paternal grandmother through the poetry of...
“Commanding the Table” Director Leslie Iwerks on Culinary and Hospitality Pioneer Ella Brennan
Leslie Iwerks is an Academy Award and Emmy-nominated director and producer. For over a decade, she has produced, directed, and edited award-winning feature and short documentaries, television...
Hot Docs 2017 Women Directors: Meet Marie Clements— “The Road Forward”
Marie Clements (Métis/Dene) is an award-winning writer, director, and producer of film, television, radio, new media, and live performance. Her work as a filmmaker includes the 2015 docudrama...
Hot Docs 2017 Women Directors: Meet Tasha Hubbard — “Birth of a Family”
Tasha Hubbard is an award-winning filmmaker and an assistant professor at the University of Saskatchewan. Her previous documentary, “Two Worlds Collide,” won a Gemini and a Golden Sheaf Award in...
Hot Docs 2017 Women Directors: Meet Vaishali Sinha — “Ask the Sexpert”
Vaishali Sinha co-directed and produced the feature documentary “Made in India,” which focused on the personal stories behind the phenomenon of outsourcing surrogate mothers to India. The...
Hot Docs 2017 Women Directors: Meet Karin Jurschick — “Playing God”
Karin Jurschick is the co-founder of the International Women’s Film Festival in Cologne, Germany. Her award-winning films include “On the Rail of Evil,” “Chernobyl and its Consequences,”...
Hot Docs 2017 Women Directors: Meet Kalina Bertin — “Manic”
“Manic” is Kalina Bertin’s first feature. It will premiere at the 2017 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival on April 30. W&H: Describe the film for us in your...
Hot Docs 2017 Women Directors: Meet Stacey Tenenbaum — “Shiners”
Stacey Tenenbaum is an award-winning creative producer and director who started her career in factual television 18 years ago. In 2014 Tenenbaum founded H2L Productions, a Montreal-based boutique...
Hot Docs 2017 Women Directors: Meet Ann Shin — “My Enemy, My Brother”
Ann Shin’s cross-platform project “The Defector” won Best Documentary and Best Documentary Director at the 2014 Canadian Screen Awards. The short version of “My Enemy, My Brother” was...
Hot Docs 2017 Women Directors: Meet Ashley Sabin — “Do Donkeys Act?”
Ashley Sabin’s documentaries have screened internationally in festivals and on television worldwide. Her vast body of work includes four recent “animal ethnography” films based in the world...
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...
Listen: Podcast with “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” Executive Producer Lydia Dean Pilcher
“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” uncovers important history that’s gone largely unwritten. We should all know the name Henrietta Lacks. The African-American tobacco farmer’s cells...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Trailer Watch: Katell Quillévéré’s “Heal the Living” Explores Each Side of a Heart Transplant
“I can’t walk much. I can’t go upstairs,” a woman waiting for a heart transplant explains in the trailer for “Heal the Living.” “I’m not sure I want a dead person’s heart,”...
Listen: Podcast with “Shots Fired” Co-Creator Gina Prince-Bythewood
Gina Prince-Bythewood’s film credits include “Beyond the Lights,” “The Secret Life of Bees,” and “Love & Basketball.” Now the writer-director is re-teaming with Sanaa Lathan, who...