Interviews
LAFF Women Directors: Meet Amanda Marsalis (Echo Park)
California-born Amanda Marsalis’ photography career began during her teenage years, when she would document punk shows held in her mother’s basement and skip class to spend time in her high...
Human Rights Watch FF Women Directors: Meet Jennifer M. Kroot (To Be Takei)
Jennifer M. Kroot directed the documentary feature It Came From Kuchar, about the legendary underground filmmaking twins George and Mike Kuchar, which premiered at the 2009 South by Southwest Film...
Human Rights Watch FF Women Directors: Meet Katy Chevigny (E-Team)
Katy Chevigny is an award-winning filmmaker and partner at Big Mouth Productions. She has produced a dozen feature-length documentaries as well as short-form films, videos and webisodes. Her credits...
LAFF Women Directors: Meet Rania Attieh (Recommended by Enrique)
Rania Attieh, among Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 Faces of Independent Film” in 2011, is a Guggenheim and U.S. Rockefeller Fellow in film/ video. Attieh is from Tripoli, Lebanon. Together with...
LAFF Women Directors: Meet Kimberly Levin (Runoff)
Kimberly Levin is an award-winning filmmaker and former biochemist. Her short film Between Baronovsksy premiered at the Seattle International Film Festival and went on to play festivals in the US...
Obvious Child Director Gillian Robespierre: “We Don’t Make Abortion Funny. We Make a Character Funny.”
Obvious Child is the kind of movie that helped me remember why I love movies. I was laughing my ass off even before the credits, and that’s when I knew I was in for a treat. In this tightly...
Maleficent Writer Linda Woolverton on Adapting Fairy Tales for a New Generation
Morethan a decade before Frozen’s Jennifer Lee became thefirst woman to direct a Walt Disney Animation Studios feature and Brave’s Brenda Chapman became thefirst female director of a Pixar film,...
Night Moves Director Kelly Reichardt On How Her “Action Film” Is About People, Not Politics
After gaining notice for Wendy and Lucy and Meek’s Cutoff, her small but critically acclaimed collaborations with actress Michelle Williams, director Kelly Reichardt has made the...
Director Alice Rohrwacher on Her Cannes Grand Prix-Winning Film The Wonders
Italian director Alice Rohrwacher took home the Cannes Grand Prix, the festival’s silver medal, this weekend. Her sophomore debut, Le Meraviglie (The Wonders), centers on a German-Italian family,...
Fed Up Director Stephanie Soechtig on Voting with Our Forks, Working with Katie Couric, and the Power of Knowledge
“For the past 30 years, everything we thought we knew about food and exercise is dead wrong. Fed Up is the film the food industry doesn’t want you to see. From Katie Couric, Laurie David and...
Sundance London Directors: Meet Sydney Freeland (Drunktown’s Finest)
Writer-director SydneyFreeland’s feature debut, Drunktown’s Finest, was shotagainst New Mexico’s mesmerizing landscape and explores life on the reservationin the 21st century. The film...
Callie Khouri Talks Nashville Season 2 Conclusion (No Spoilers)
I’ve been very lucky to be able to talk with Nashville creator Callie Khouri a bunch of times over the last two seasons. THe show has two more episodes (one airs tonight) and the team is still...
SFIFF Women Directors: Meet Catherine Breillat (Abuse of Weakness)
Beginning in 2004, filmmaker/novelist Catherine Breillat had a series of debilitating strokes connected to a previously undiagnosed cerebrovascular disease. During her long, grueling recovery, she...
Sundance London Women Directors: Meet Jane Lipsitz (Under the Electric Sky)
By way of England and New York City respectively, Dan Cutforth and Jane Lipsitz joined forces in 2001 to form the television production company, Magical Elves, which has given us Top Chef, Project...
Belle Director Amma Asante on Challenging Stereotypes About Black Directors
There’s nothing quite like Belle on the contemporary film scene — a luxurious period film and a sweet, gentle romance that wears its keenly insightful politics on its silk sleeves. Belle is...
Ukraine is Not a Brothel Director Kitty Green Documents Where Feminism and Self-Objectification Meet
Ukraine is Not a Brothel is a portrait of Ukraine’s topless feminist sensation, Femen, which has stirred up a press frenzy across Europe. Outraged by the world’s image of Ukrainian women as...
Belle Director Amma Asante Explains Why She Wanted Tell a Jane Austen Story With a Black Protagonist
There’s nothing quite like Belle on the contemporary film scene — a luxurious period film and a sweet, gentle romance that wears its keenly insightful politics on its silk sleeves. Belle is...
SFIFF Women Directors: Meet Zeynep Dadak and Merve Kayan (The Blue Wave)
Zeynep Dadak was born in Balikesir, the midsize Turkish city where The Blue Wave is set. She has been making movies since 2001, is a contributor to the Turkish film magazine Altyazi, and lectures on...
Sundance London Women Directors: Meet Marjane Satrapi (The Voices)
MarjaneSatrapis’s fourth feature film, The Voices, stars Ryan Reynolds, AnnaKendrick and Gemma Arterton and was included in the Sundance London program this past weekend. Shecame to our attention...
Newport Beach FF Women Directors: Meet Regina Russell (Well Now You’re Here, There’s No Way Back)
After two decades and over fifty film and television roles as an actress, Regina Russell steps behind the camera as director and producer. A visual artist in many mediums, she has always had a...
Hot Docs Women Director: Meet Teodora Ana Mihai (Waiting for August)
Teodora Ana Mihai was born in 1981 in Bucharest, Romania, under Nicolae Ceausescu’s dictatorship. In 1989, she came to Belgium and was reunited with her parents, who had fled the year before. In...
SFIFF Women Directors: Meet Sara Dosa (The Last Season)
Sara Dosa’s past projects include work as an associate producer on Elena and Jacob Kornbluth’s acclaimed documentary about Robert Reich, Inequality for All. A graduate of Wesleyan University,...
SFIFF Women Directors: Meet Julie Bertuccelli (School of Babel)
Julie Bertuccelli is the daughter of filmmaker Jean-Louis Bertuccelli. She worked as an assistant director to several well-known filmmakers before helming several documentaries for television. Her...
Sundance’s Keri Putnam Shares What She’s Learned from the Women Filmmakers Initiative
As the Executive Director of the Sundance Institute, Keri Putnam oversees all of the organization’s programs, including the Women Filmmakers Initiative and its associatedresearch. Prior to taking...
Argentine Director Lucia Puenzo Helps Her Country Come to Terms With Its Nazi-Sheltering Past
Writer-director Lucia Puenzo’s historical drama The German Doctor (opening April 25) became a sensation in Argentina last year, ultimately amassing nine Sur Awards (the Argentine Oscars),...
SFIFF Women Directors: Meet Jane Pollard (20,000 Days on Earth)
Artist and filmmaker Jane Pollard met her collaborative partner Iain Forsyth at Goldsmiths College in the early 1990s. After the duo earned early acclaim with A Rock ’N’ Roll Suicide (1998), a...
Tribeca Women Directors: Meet Sheila Canavan (Compared to What: The Improbable Journey of Barney Frank)
Sheila Canavan makes her directorial debut with Compared to What: The Improbable Journey ofBarney Frank. Canavan grew up in Boston and met Frank as a youngcollege student, when they were both...
Tribeca Women Directors: Meet Farihah Zaman (This Time Next Year)
This Time Next Year is Jeff Reichert and Farihah Zaman’s first feature documentary as co-directors. Their short film “Remote Area Medical” premiered at the 2013 Full Frame Documentary Film...
Tribeca Women Directors: Meet Gillian Greene (Murder of a Cat)
The daughter of veteran actor Lorne Greene,Gillian Greene grew up in Los Angeles on the sets of her father’s televisionshows. She attended USC and NYU before moving back to Los Angeles to...
Tribeca Women Directors: Meet Courteney Cox (Just Before I Go)
Actress Courteney Cox, best known for her Emmy Award-winning comedy Friends and for her Golden Globe-nominated role in Cougar Town, segues behind the camera to make her feature-film directorial...
Tribeca Women Directors: Meet Eva von Schweinitz (A Film Is a Film Is a Film)
Eva von Schweinitz is a Brooklyn based interdisciplinary artist, working in theater, film, and interactive media. Holding a B.A. in screenwriting, she has expanded her interest in storytelling into...
Tribeca Women Directors: Meet Megan Griffiths (Lucky Them)
Megan Griffiths has been a director, writer, and producer in the independent film community for over a decade. Her film, The Off Hours, premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival and went on to...
Tribeca Women Directors: Meet Karen Leigh Hopkins (Miss Meadows)
Born in Sandusky, Ohio, and raised by an Italian factory-workermother whose dream of being an artist were squelched by a teacher who told hershe had not imagination, Karen Leigh Hopkins was not...
Tribeca Women Directors: Meet Jessica Yu (Misconception)
Jessica Yu’s award-winning body of work includes her film “Breathing Lessons,” which won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short; her documentary for Participant Media on the water crisis,...
Tribeca Women Directors: Meet Amy Berg (Every Secret Thing)
Amy Berg is a critically acclaimed, Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker. She was nominated for an Academy Award for her documentary Deliver Us From Evil (2006). The film tells the...
Tribeca Women Directors: Meet Kate Davis (Newburgh Sting)
Kate Davis’ documentary Southern Comfort, a 2001 Sundance Film Festival Grand Prize winner, has won over 25 awards and continues to be screened as a seminal work aimed towards overcoming...
Tribeca Women Directors: Meet Sabine Lubbe Bakker (Ne Me Quitte Pas)
Filmmaker Sabine Lubbe Bakker was born and raised in Antwerp, Belgium, and has studied in The Netherlands and Brazil. Her credits include the award-winning documentary Shout (2010), Power to the...
Tribeca Women Directors: Meet Melissa Johnson (Love in the Time of March Madness)
Melissa Johnson is a writer and filmmaker living in Venice, California. She is best known for her award-winning feature documentary, No Look Pass, about a Burmese lesbian basketball star, currently...
Tribeca Women Directors: Meet Louise Ni Fhiannachta (Rubai)
Irishdirector Louise Ni Fhiannachta’s love affair with storytelling started whenshe discovered she could entertain her family at the age offour and a half. It wasn’t long beforeshe was...
Tribeca Women Directors: Meet Susanna Fogel (Life Partners)
Susanna Fogel began writing and directing short films as a teenager, premiering her first two, “For Real” and “Words of Wisdom,” at the Toronto International Film Festival in 1995 and 1997....
Tribeca Women Directors: Meet Johanna Hamilton (1971)
Johanna Hamilton has most recently co-produced Pray the Devil Back to Hell, which won Best Documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2008 and was shortlisted for an Academy Award. She has produced...
Tribeca Women Directors: Meet Garrett Bradley (Below Dreams)
Garrett Bradley was born in New York City and now lives and works in New Orleans, Louisiana. The recipient of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association Award, the Lynn Weston Fellowship, the Motion...
Tribeca Women Directors: Meet Alexandra Liveris (Nocturnity)
Alexandra Liveris is currently an MFA Candidate in Stanford University’s Documentary Film Program. In 2013 she directed three shorts and is currently directing a documentary under the working...
Tribeca Women Directors: Meet Olivia Klaus (Life After Manson)
Olivia Klaus is an award-winning documentary filmmaker whose work has been seen on networks like CNN, HLN, Discovery, MTV and The History Channel. Sin by Silence, her 2009 directorial debut, went on...
Tribeca Women Directors: Meet Jennifer Grausman (Art and Craft)
Jennifer Grausman directed and produced the Emmy-nominated documentary Pressure Cooker (2008). Previously, she was the Director of the Screenwriters Colony and Manager of Exhibition and Film Funding...
Tribeca Women Directors: Meet Linda G. Mills (Of Many)
Linda G. Mills is the inaugural Lisa Ellen Goldberg professor at New York University and co-Chair of the Advisory Board of the Of Many Institute with Chelsea Clinton (who produced “Of Many”)....
Tribeca Women Directors: Meet Sofia Norlin (Broken Hill Blues)
Born in Njurunda in Sweden in 1974, Sofia Norlin studied film in Stockholm and Paris, where she now lives and works as a theater and film director. Her 2005 film Les Courants screened at numerous...
Tribeca Women Directors: Meet Talya Lavie (Zero Motivation)
Talya Lavie is a director, screenwriter, and comics artist. She studied animation at the Bezalel Art Academy and graduated with merit from the Sam Spiegel Film School in Jerusalem. She has also...
Tribeca Women Directors: Meet Anete Melece (The Kiosk)
Anete Melece was born in Latvia in 1983. She studied visual communication at the Art Academy of Latvia (BA) and animation at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (MA). She is an...
Tribeca Women DIrectors: Meet Elizabeth Swados (My Depression)
Perhaps best known for her Broadway and international smash hit Runaways, Elizabeth Swados has composed, written and directed for over 30 years. Some of her works include the Obie Award-winning...
Julianne Nicholson on August: Osage County, Masters of Sex, and Aging in Hollywood
August: Osage County offers apainfully intimate look at a family reuniting in the wake of tragedy. Deathbrings out the dysfunction in every family, but it’s clear that there have beengaping cracks...