Interviews
Cannes 2021 Women Directors: Meet Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic – “Murina”
Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic is a writer-director born in Dubrovnik and currently based in New York. Her short “Into the Blue” was nominated for a Student Academy Award, and won awards at...
Cannes 2021 Women Directors: Meet Nathalie Álvarez Mesén – “Clara Sola”
Nathalie Álvarez Mesén is a Costa Rican-Swedish writer and director. She is an alumna of Columbia University’s Graduate Film Program, the Berlinale Talents, and the TIFF Filmmaker Lab. Alvarez...
Cannes 2021 Women Directors: Meet Sandrine Kiberlain – “A Radiant Girl”
Sandrine Kiberlain is a French actress and singer. She received the César for Best Actress for her role in “9-Month Stretch.” The short film “Smile” was her first film as a director....
Cannes 2021 Women Directors: Meet Mina Mileva and Vesela Kazakova – “Women Do Cry”
After two decades in the British animation industry, Mina Mileva created Activist38 with actress Vesela Kazakova, whose leading roles earned her the Silver George at the Moscow International Film...
Cannes 2021 Women Directors: Meet Anaïs Volpé – “The Braves”
Anaïs Volpé is a self-taught screenwriter, filmmaker, and editor. In 2016, she self-produced “Heis,” a cross-media project which has been screened at international festivals and won the Jury...
Cannes 2021 Women Directors: Meet Teodora Ana Mihai – “La Civil”
Teodora Ana Mihai was born in Bucharest, Romania, during the Ceausescu Regime and moved to Belgium in 1989 with her parents. She went to film school in New York. She started working in Belgium as a...
Cannes 2021 Women Directors: Meet Anita Rocha da Silveira – “Medusa”
Born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Anita Rocha da Silveira has written, directed, and edited three short films: “The Noon Vampire,” “Handball,” and “The Living...
Teona Strugar Mitevska on Telling a Story About Having the Audacity to Define Yourself in “God Exists, Her Name is Petrunya”
Teona Strugar Mitevska was born in Macedonia. She started as a child actor, and trained as a painter and a graphic designer before studying in the MFA program in film at New York University’s...
Lizzie Borden Revisits “Working Girls” and Reflects on its Origins
After receiving a BFA in art history at Wellesley College, Lizzie Borden moved to New York, painted, wrote for Artforum Magazine, and made an experimental documentary, “Regrouping,”...
Jeanne Leblanc on Exploring the Silent Complicity of a Tight-Knit Community in “Les Nôtres”
Jeanne Leblanc has directed close to ten short films that have screened in international festivals. In 2017, she directed her first feature film, “Isla Blanca.” “Les Nôtres”...
Tribeca 2021 Directors: Meet Giselle Bailey and Nneka Onuorah – “The Legend of the Underground”
Giselle Bailey is a producer working across TV and commercial production. Her career started in contemporary art where she worked on public performance pieces aimed to disrupt reality. She went on to...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Kristine Stolakis – “Pray Away”
Interview by Cody Corrall 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,...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Bernadette Wegenstein – “The Conductor”
Bernadette Wegenstein is an Austrian-born linguist, author, and documentary filmmaker living in Baltimore. She is a professor at Johns Hopkins University. Her films and books bring together her...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Macha Colón – “Perfume de Gardenias”
Macha Colón is Gisela Rosario Ramos, an undisciplined artist currently based in Puerto Rico. Her award-winning short documentary “El Hijo de Ruby” has been shown in international...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Corinne van der Borch and Tone Grøttjord-Glenne – “Sisters on Track”
Corinne van der Borch is a Dutch artist and award-winning documentary filmmaker based in Brooklyn. Her feature length documentary “Girl with Black Balloons,” about the oldest living resident of...
Rachel Winter Talks “The Space Between,” a Coming-of-Age Dramedy and Love Letter to Music
Rachel Winter is an Academy Award-nominated filmmaker and producer who is making her feature directorial debut with “The Space Between.” She received an Oscar nomination for producing...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Maya Cueva and Leah Galant – “On the Divide”
Maya Cueva is a Latina award-winning director and producer with a background in radio and podcast producing. Her short documentary “The Provider” premiered at SXSW and was nominated for...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Andrea Nix Fine- “LFG”
Andrea Nix Fine is an Oscar, Emmy, and Peabody award-winning filmmaker. In 2021, she, along with her husband and partner Sean Fine, launched impact studio Change Content to develop true stories into...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Shannon Post – “Building a Bridge”
Shannon Post is a queer documentary filmmaker from Florida. She attended college in Orlando, and Pulse nightclub was a safe place for her and her friends to have fun and be out and proud. Her first...
Stéphanie Lamorré Talks “Being Thunder,” Her Portrait of A Two-Spirit Genderqueer Teen
Stéphanie Lamorré is a French documentary filmmaker working as an international independent writer, director, and producer. She’s shot documentaries in Iraq, Africa, South America, and...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Chanel James and Taylor Garron – “As of Yet”
Chanel James, also known as Dinosaur Hawk, is a director, writer, editor, and pop archivist who aims to create stories that highlight gradients of the human experience, encourage understanding, and...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Lauren Hadaway – “The Novice”
Lauren Hadaway is an LGBTQ+ writer and director with a background in sound editing and mixing. She briefly worked as a Dallas-based reality TV editor before moving to Los Angeles in 2012 to pursue a...
Manjari Makijany on Telling an Empowering Story About Confidence and Courage in “Skater Girl”
Manjari Makijany is Los Angeles-based writer, director, and producer with diverse film experience in India and the United States. Her journey as a director took off with her critically acclaimed...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Suzanne Joe Kai – “Like a Rolling Stone: The Life & Times of Ben Fong-Torres”
Suzanne Joe Kai received two Emmy Award nominations and was named Best Woman News Reporter while a broadcast journalist at San Francisco’s NBC affiliate KRON-TV. She worked at KCBS Radio (CBS) and...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Nana Mensah – “Queen of Glory”
Nana Mensah is a Ghanaian-American actor, writer, and director. This summer, she will appear in a series regular role opposite Sandra Oh and Bob Balaban in Netflix’s “The Chair” and this fall,...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Laura Fairrie – “Lady Boss: The Jackie Collins Story”
Laura Fairrie previously directed “The Battle for Barking,” an observational feature documentary about the far-right in Britain that screened at The Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary...
Quiara Alegría Hudes on the Responsibility of Taking “In the Heights” from Stage to Screen
Writer-producer Quiara Alegría Hudes is a big believer in weaving in parts of her Latino heritage and culture into her storylines for a greater sense of reality. So when she was asked to join...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Jessica Kingdon – “Ascension”
New York-based Jessica Kingdon is a Chinese-American director and producer. She was named one of the “25 New Faces of Independent Film” by Filmmaker Magazine and selected for the 2020 DOC NYC...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Geeta Malik – “India Sweets and Spices”
Geeta Malik is an award-winning writer and director whose accolades include the inaugural Academy Gold Fellowship for Women and the Academy Nicholl Fellowship. Her short film “Beast” played at...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Heather O’Neill – “No Ordinary Life”
Heather O’Neill is an Emmy and Peabody Award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker. She produced “Help Us Find Sunil Tripathi,” which screened at the Hot Docs International Film Festival...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Samantha Aldana – “Shapeless”
Samantha Aldana is a New Orleans-based director and writer. Her work is heavily influenced by the storytelling traditions of her multicultural upbringing in the American South and the Caribbean....
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Gaysorn Thavat – “The Justice of Bunny King”
Gaysorn Thavat began her film career in 1995 working in the camera department. Starting as a clapper loader, she worked her way up to 1st AC before making the switch to directing with television...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Amber Sealey – “No Man of God”
Amber Sealey is an award-winning filmmaker. She is attached to direct “The Education of Shelby Knox” and a comedy pilot she wrote called “Sistered.” She has written scripts...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Hannah Marks – “Mark, Mary & Some Other People”
Hannah Marks made her feature co-directorial debut with the independent film “After Everything,” which she also co-wrote. The film premiered in competition at the 2018 SXSW Film Festival....
Human Rights Watch Film Fest 2021 Women Directors: Meet Jana Matthes and Andrea Schramm – “Tacheles – The Heart of the Matter”
Jana Matthes and Andrea Schramm work as directors and producers for arte, 3sat, ARD, and ZDF. After studying journalism in Leipzig and directing in Potsdam-Babelsberg, they founded Schramm Matthes...
Human Rights Watch Film Fest 2021 Women Directors: Meet Brooke Swaney – “Daughter of a Lost Bird”
“Daughter of a Lost Bird” is Brooke Swaney’s first feature documentary. She recently made the Blacklist’s Inaugural Indigenous List with “Tinder On The Rez” along with...
Caroline Link on Standing Up to Fascism with Her New Film “When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit”
When Caroline Link first read the children’s book “When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit” as a young girl, she was immediately drawn to the story. The semi-autographical novel by Judith...
Human Rights Watch Film Fest 2021 Women Directors: Meet Ashley O’Shay – “Unapologetic”
Ashley O’Shay is a Chicago-based DP and documentarian whose work focuses on illuminating marginalized voices. Most recently, she filmed the final episode of Dr. Martens’ “Tough As You”...
Jessica Ellis on Telling a Different Kind of Story About Women in the Woods in “What Lies West”
Jessica Ellis is an award-winning screenwriter making her feature debut as a writer-director with “What Lies West.” She’s an AFI graduate, has won the Sloan Fellowship, the Black...
Hot Docs 2021 Women Directors: Meet Maria Carolina Telles – “You Are Not a Soldier”
Maria Carolina Telles is a showrunner, director, screenwriter, and journalist. Telles is known for creating and directing the docu reality series “Reto Imposible” for Natgeo Latin...
Hot Docs 2021 Women Directors: Meet Chris J. Russo – “Lady Buds”
Chris J. Russo’s award-winning short films have screened all over the world, including at the Sundance Film Festival, and have been broadcast on Showtime, PBS, IFC, LOGO, and Netflix. She is a...
Hot Docs 2021 Women Directors: Meet Bobbi Jo Hart – “Fanny: The Right to Rock”
Bobbi Jo Hart is an award-winning American/Canadian documentary filmmaker with Adobe Productions International, based in Montreal. Her most recent feature documentary, “I Am Not a Rock...
Hot Docs 2021 Women Directors: Meet Shannon Walsh – “The Gig is Up”
Shannon Walsh has written and directed feature documentaries “The Gig is Up,” “Illusions of Control,” “Jeppe on a Friday,” “À St-Henri, le 26 Août,” and “H2Oil,” as well as...
Hot Docs 2021 Women Directors: Meet Svetlana Rodina – “Ostrov – Lost Island”
Svetlana Rodina has worked as a reporter and host for various television programs on the RTR channel. In 2011, she became the editor-in-chief of the documentary department of United Media Group, one...
Hot Docs 2021 Women Directors: Meet Luciana Kaplan – “The Spokeswoman”
Argentina-born, Mexico-based Luciana Kaplan has dedicated her career to documentary filmmaking and teaching. Her films have won support grants from the Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes,...
Hot Docs 2021 Women Directors: Meet Irene Vélez-Torres – “Bajo Fuego”
Irene Vélez-Torres is a professor at the University of Valle who specializes in socio-environmental conflicts and ethno-racial inequalities. While engaging in research, she frequently applies...
Hot Docs 2021 Women Directors: Meet Roser Corella – “Room Without a View”
Berlin-based independent filmmaker Roser Corella started her career as video-journalist for Catalan television, but her interest in the human stories behind global issues moved her to self-produce...
Hot Docs 2021 Women Directors: Meet Ann Shin – “A.rtificial I.mmortality”
Ann Shin is an award-winning writer and filmmaker. Her debut novel, “The Last Exiles,” was published earlier this year by Harper Collins. The book is partly based on her experience...
Hot Docs 2021 Women Directors: Meet Celina Escher – “Fly So Far”
Celina Escher is a Swiss-Salvadorean filmmaker telling stories about women as well their pursuits of empowerment, artistic processes, and their sociopolitical contexts. Her film “Verde Olivo” was...
Hot Docs 2021 Women Directors: Meet the Team Behind “Only the Ocean Between Us”
Khaldiya Amer Ali is Syrian filmmaker living in Za’atari Refugee Camp, Jordan. Her short film “Another Kind of Girl” premiered at Sundance; screened at Cannes and SXSW; was featured on The New...
Hot Docs 2021 Women Directors: Meet Mia Halme – “People We Come Across”
Director and writer Mia Halme has a background in journalism. Her documentaries have been screened in various festivals around the world. “Forever Yours” (2012) was awarded the...