Interviews
Cannes 2022 Women Directors: Meet Charlotte Vandermeersch – “The Eight Mountains”
Charlotte Vandermeersch is an acclaimed Belgian stage and screen actress. She also sings and writes for film and theater. In 2011 she wrote a version of the screenplay of “The Broken Circle...
Cannes 2022 Women Directors: Meet Emily Atef – “More Than Ever” (“Plus Que Jamais”)
Emily Atef is a French-Iranian director born in Berlin. Her first feature film, “Molly’s Way,” won the Best Screenplay Award at the Munich Film Festival and the Grand Jury Prize at...
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Meet Laura Ángel Córdoba – “Ernesto, Gracias”
Laura Ángel Córdoba was born in Bogotá, Colombia, and migrated to Costa Rica. She has participated in over 30 documentary projects focusing on a wide variety of topics in Costa Rica, Panama,...
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Meet Kathryn Ferguson – “Nothing Compares”
Belfast-born Kathryn Ferguson is an award-winning director whose innovative and boundary-pushing documentary work has screened globally. She was nominated for the Grand Prix award at Clermont-Ferrand...
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Meet Patty Ivins Specht – “Deconstructing Karen”
Patty Ivins Specht is an Emmy award winning producer, director, and writer who has made several documentaries about womanhood, including “Hungry,” “Mean Girls: Mind Games,”...
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Meet Bogna Kowalczyk – “Boylesque”
Bogna Kowalczyk currently works as a creative art director, director, and animator at Warsaw Production. Since 2009 she has been directing animated films and music videos and has supported dozens of...
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Meet Pauline Beugnies – “The End of Innocence” (“Petites”)
Pauline Beugnies is an author, photographer, and director from Belgium. For 10 years, she has been documenting the emancipation of youth in Egypt in multiple forms: photo exhibitions, 2012 web...
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Meet Pilar Moreno & Ana Endara – “For Your Peace of Mind, Make Your Own Museum”
Pilar Moreno is a visual artist from Spain and based in Panama, whose art projects address social and political issues. Her previous credits include documentaries “Reinas” — which...
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Meet Zaynê Akyol – “Rojek”
Zaynê Akyol’s first feature documentary, “Gulîstan, Land of Roses,” was selected by 80 international film festivals, earning 50 nominations and winning 12 awards, including the...
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Meet Lina Rodriguez – “Mis Dos Voces” (“My Two Voices”)
Colombian/Canadian filmmaker Lina Rodriguez is the writer-director of narrative features “Señoritas” and “This Time Tomorrow,” which have been showcased in festivals and...
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Meet Hanna Polak – “Angels of Sinjar”
A producer, director, and cinematographer, Polish filmmaker Hanna Polak received an Academy Award and a News and Documentary Emmy nomination for the documentary short “The Children of...
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Meet Phyllis Ellis – “Category: Woman”
Phyllis Ellis is a Canadian filmmaker, writer, actor, and producer who has worked in Europe, Asia, Africa, India, and the U.S. for the past 35 years. Nominated for the 2021 International Emmys and...
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Meet Jacquelyn Mills – “Geographies of Solitude”
Jacquelyn Mills is an award-winning filmmaker from Cape Breton Island and based in Montreal. Her film “In the Waves” premiered at Visions du Réel and was theatrically released at...
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Meet Laura Faerman and Marina Weis – “The Wind Blows the Border”
Laura Faerman has been working as a documentarist, researcher, and curator for the past 20 years. In 2014 Faerman worked as an audiovisual researcher at the Indigenous National Truth Commission,...
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Meet Noura Kevorkian – “Batata”
Noura Kevorkian is a Syrian-Lebanese filmmaker who made her filmmaking debut with her first short documentary ” Veils Uncovered” (Official Competition, Amsterdam IDFA) about lingerie and...
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Chloe Sosa-Sims – “Hunting in Packs”
Chloe Sosa-Sims is a Toronto-based director, producer, and writer. Her feature debut, “Dan and Margot,” illuminated the complicated truths of schizophrenia. Sosa-Sims has participated in...
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Meet Olha Zhurba – “Outside”
Olha Zhurba is a Ukrainian filmmaker whose first short fiction film ,”Dad’s Sneakers,” premiered in the short competition at Locarno Film Festival 2021 and won Best Ukrainian Short...
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Jackie Torrens – “Bernie Langille Wants To Know What Happened To Bernie Langille”
Jackie Torrens is an actor, writer, and documentary filmmaker. In 2012, she co-founded Peep Media with producer Jessica Brown, and since then they have completed four television documentaries for the...
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Meet Jasmín Mara López – “Silent Beauty”
Jasmín Mara López is a journalist, audio producer, and documentary filmmaker living between Los Angeles and New Orleans. Born in the U.S. with familial roots in México, her childhood was affected...
Hot Docs 2022 Women Directors: Stacey Tenenbaum – “Scrap”
Stacey Tenenbaum is an award-winning producer and director. In 2014 she founded H2L Productions, a boutique documentary film production company specializing in crafting international character-driven...
Sarah Jones on”Sell/Buy/Date,” an “Unorthodoc” Exploring the Sex Industry
Sarah Jones is a Tony Award-winning performer, writer, comedian, and activist known for her multi-character, one-person shows, including Broadway hit “Bridge & Tunnel,” originally...
Gigi Gaston Talks “9 Bullets,” Her Action Pic About Second Chances Starring Lena Headey
Olympian turned writer-director Gigi Gaston has sold screenplays to Universal, Miramax, New Line, and Fox, and directed music videos, features, and an award-winning Sundance documentary. Gaston made...
Maris Curran Talks “Jeannette,” Her Portrait of a Pulse Night Club Survivor
Maris Curran’s films have shown at Berlinale, Toronto International Film Festival, the Museum of Modern Art, the NY Times Op-Docs, and PBS’ “Independent Lens.” Her debut narrative...
Megan Griffiths on Exploring the Freedom That Comes from Personal Acceptance in “I’ll Show You Mine”
Megan Griffiths is a writer-director working in film and television. Her feature credits include “Sadie,” “The Night Stalker,” “Lucky Them,” “Eden,”...
Deborah Anderson on Highlighting Indigenous Voices in “Women of the White Buffalo”
Deborah Anderson is an award-winning filmmaker and photographer. Of Indigenous, Black, Irish, and Scottish descent, her photographic work has hung in galleries both in Europe and the U.S., including...
Kelsey Peterson Talks “Move Me,” Her Documentary Exploring Her Personal Journey Becoming Disabled
Kelsey Peterson is a dancer, choreographer, writer, and filmmaker. She received her BFA in Dance from the University of Montana in 2008, and later, her yoga teacher certification from CorePower Yoga....
Laura Herrero Garvín on “La Mami,” a Doc About Women Who Connect & Transform in a Mexican Night Club
Born in Toledo, Spain, Laura Herrero Garvín is the co-founder of Sandia Digital, a company through which she has made about 20 short documentaries. Her professional career is closely linked to...
SXSW 2022 Women Directors: Meet Jessica Edwards – “Skate Dreams”
Jessica Edwards launched Film First in 2010 to produce documentary shorts and feature-length work. Her award-winning debut short, “Seltzer Works,” premiered at SXSW and was broadcast on...
Leya Hale on Tackling the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Epidemic in “Bring Her Home”
Leya Hale comes from the Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota and Diné Nations. She is a producer for Twin Cities PBS and is best known for her first feature documentary, “The People’s...
SXSW 2022 Women Directors: Meet Vasilisa Kuzmina – “Nika”
Born in Moscow, Vasilisa Kuzmina is a young Russian filmmaker and scriptwriter. After getting a B.F.A. in acting at the Moscow Drama School, Kuzmina debuted as a film director with the web series...
SXSW 2022 Women Directors: Meet Zara Katz and Lisa Riordan Seville – “A Woman on the Outside”
Zara Katz is currently Photography Director at NBC News Digital and has worked for editorial outlets including The New York Times, Time magazine, and The New Yorker. She was senior photo producer on...
SXSW 2022 Women Directors: Meet Gracie Otto – “Seriously Red”
Gracie Otto is currently set-up director on the Netflix Original series “Heartbreak High” and is set to direct the feminist-noir comedy drama “Deadloch” for Amazon Studios....
SXSW 2022 Women Directors: Meet Camille Hardman – “Still Working 9 to 5”
Camille Hardman has produced documentaries and reality TV series in both her native Australia and Los Angeles. She started in TV in Sydney over 15 years ago, making animal and travel documentaries...
SXSW 2022 Women Directors: Meet Julie Cohen and Betsy West – “Gabby Giffords Won’t Back Down”
Julie Cohen and Betsy West are Academy Award-nominated, Emmy-winning filmmakers who directed and produced the theatrical documentary “RBG.” Their film “Julia” was released...
SXSW 2022 Women Directors: Meet Gretchen Stoeltje – “Shouting Down Midnight”
A Texas-based filmmaker, director Gretchen Stoeltje makes independent documentaries centering on women’s experiences. “Venom in a Jar, a Kiss From the Queen,” explores the role of...
SXSW 2022 Women Directors: Meet Rosa Ruth Boesten – “Master of Light”
Born in Utrecht and based in Amsterdam, Rosa Ruth Boesten, made her first documentary about her grandmother, a single mother and struggling artist who made textile art. She studied directing of...
SXSW 2022 Women Directors: Meet Allison Otto – “The Thief Collector”
Allison Otto is an Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker, cinematographer, and visual journalist. Her documentary short “The Love Bugs” was awarded Best Short Documentary in the 42nd Annual...
Patricia Rozema on Revisiting Her Queer Classic “I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing”
Patricia Rozema’s first feature, “I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing,” screened at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Prix de la Jeunesse, was runner-up for the...
SXSW 2022 Women Directors: Meet Linda Goldstein Knowlton – “Split At The Root”
Linda Goldstein Knowlton is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker, working in documentary, scripted feature films, and television. Her award-winning documentary “We Are The Radical Monarchs” ...
SXSW 2022 Women Directors: Meet Iliana Sosa – “What We Leave Behind”
Iliana Sosa is a documentary and narrative fiction filmmaker based in Austin, Texas. Her documentary short “An Uncertain Future,” co-directed with Chelsea Hernandez, premiered at the 2018...
SXSW 2022 Women Directors: Meet Vanessa Winter – “Deadstream”
Vanessa Winter is a Utah-based writer and director. Practical creature FX with absurd twists are the hallmarks of her and her collaborator and husband Joseph Winter’s viral horror shorts for...
SXSW 2022 Women Directors: Meet Amy Bandlien Storkel – “The Pez Outlaw”
Amy Bandlien Storkel is a documentary filmmaker best known for co-producing “The Legend of Cocaine Island” (Netflix, 2019) and the Emmy Award-winning documentary “Alabama...
SXSW 2022 Women Directors: Meet Nyla Innuksuk – “Slash/Back”
Nyla Innuksuk is the founder of Mixtape VR, which produces film, virtual, and augmented reality content. A writer for Marvel Comics, Innuksuk co-created the character of Snowguard, a teenage...
SXSW 2022 Women Directors: Meet Linda Yellen – “Chantilly Bridge”
Linda Yellen is an Emmy Award-winning director, writer, and producer. She has made over 27 productions for film and television, with premieres at Cannes, Sundance, and Toronto film festivals. Among...
SXSW 2022 Women Directors: Meet Daresha Kyi – “Mama Bears”
Daresha Kyi is an Emmy Award-winning director who also writes and produces film and television in Spanish and English. She made her feature doc directorial debut with “Chavela,” a...
Santa Barbara Film Fest 2022 Women Directors: Meet Nancy Svendsen – “Pasang: In the Shadow of Everest”
After two decades in leadership positions in various facets of the healthcare industry, Nancy Svendsen became an independent filmmaker based in Northern California, beginning with the short...
Stephanie Laing on Channeling Grief and Loss into Art and Comedy in “Family Squares”
Stephanie Laing has eight Emmy nominations and two wins. She just directed all six episodes of the limited series “Mammals” for Amazon Studios. Laing launched her directing career on HBO’s...
Berlinale 2022 Women Directors: Meet Natalia López Gallardo – “Robe of Gems”
Natalia López Gallardo is a Mexican-Bolivian film director, writer, editor, and occasional actress. She has edited films by Lisandro Alonso, Carlos Reygadas, and Amat Escalante, among other...
Berlinale 2022 Women Directors: Meet Yulia Trofimova – “The Land of Sasha”
Yulia Trofimova lives and works in Moscow. She studied screenwriting and filmmaking at the New York Film Academy in 2017-2018 and directing at the Moscow School of New Cinema in 2018-2019....
Emily Ting Talks Imposter Syndrome, Quieting That Negative Inner Voice, and “Tall Girl 2”
Emily Ting is an award-winning writer, director, and producer. Her first feature, “Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong,” starring real life couple Jamie Chung and Bryan Greenberg, premiered at...
Amy Goldstein Revisits a Historic Sit-In with “The Unmaking of a College”
Amy Goldstein is a director, producer, and screenwriter of television series, feature films, and music videos. Her latest documentary, “Kate Nash: Underestimate the Girl,” was made for...