Women Directors
Trailer Watch: ‘Chevalier,’ Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Buddy Comedy from Hell
A U.S. trailer has arrived for “Chevalier,” award-winning Greek director Athina Rachel Tsangari’s hilarious dark comedy about middle-aged male frenemies. A group of six men aboard a luxury...
20th Century Fox Announces New Slate of Films for Next Two Years Without a Single Female Director
This week at CinemaCon, the annual convention run by The National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO), 20th Century Fox revealed its slate for their upcoming 2016 and 2017 films. Some big,...
Trailer Watch: “Adult Life Skills” Makes it OK To Be Messed Up
“Rachel Tunnard is a BAFTA “Brit to Watch” and was named as one of the “Creative England 50” in 2015. Her short film “Emotional Fusebox” was nominated for a BAFTA and a BIFA. Her...
2016 Tribeca Women Directors: Meet Maura Axelrod -“Maurizio Cattelan: Be Right Back”
Maura Axelrod has been producing news and documentaries for 15 years. She started at ABC News in New York as a writer and producer, then lived and worked in the Middle East and the Caribbean,...
Watch Mia Wasikowska’s Directorial Debut As Her Second Film Premieres at Tribeca
Just as her second directorial effort premieres at the Tribeca Film Festival this week, Mia Wasikowska’s first directorial project can now be seen online. Wasikowska, who has starred as the...
Tribeca 2016 Women Directors: Meet Kristi Zea — “Everybody Knows… Elizabeth Murray”
“Everybody Knows… Elizabeth Murray” is the documentary directorial debut for Kristi Zea, a two time Oscar-nominated production designer and producer. Her narrative directorial debut...
ArcLight Cinemas to Host Women in Entertainment Workshop Series
ArcLight Cinemas has announced line-up for the ArcLight Women in Entertainment Workshop Series. The event series is designed to “spark a more transparent and open dialogue” on opportunities for...
Tribeca 2016 Women Directors: Meet Liza Johnson — ‘Elvis & Nixon’
Liza Jonhnson is a writer and director whose feature films “Return” (2011) and “Hateship Loveship” (2013) have screened at the Cannes, Toronto, New York, Berlin and Rotterdam film festivals,...
Guest Post: A Woman in Film Highlights Women in Science
Years ago, when my husband, Hal, and I first arrived as young filmmaking partners in Washington, D.C., the first person I met was the wife of a fellow filmmaker. After talking to her briefly, it...
Oscar Nominee Agnieszka Holland Calls Filmmaking a ‘Boys’ Club’ That Ignores Women
We love it when female filmmakers call out the industry for its sexism. Now Agnieszka Holland has joined in the fight. According to The BBC, during an on stage interview with BFI Southbank, which is...
‘Echo Park’ Director Amanda Marsalis Talks Race, Gentrification and Love
Director Amanda Marsalis is a photographer for publications including Vogue, Conde Nast Traveler, GQ and The Guardian, as well as a commercial director. Marsalis is an Echo Park resident. Her unique...
Pamela Romanowsky on the Past and the Mysteries of Our Minds in ‘The Adderall Diaries’
Pamela Romanowsky is a Brooklyn-based writer and director. She is an alumnus of The Sundance Institute’s Screenwriting, Directing, and Composition & Sound labs and the Creative Producing...
Guest Post: Kaitlin McLaughlin On Rejecting ‘Likeable’ Female Characters for ‘Hostile Border’
“Hostile Border,” co-directed by Kaitlin McLoughlin, tells a story about a young undocumented woman (Veronica Sixtos) who is sent back to Mexico and gets involved with an charming drug smuggler...
10 Things We Learned About Karyn Kusama’s Tumultuous Career from Her BuzzFeed Profile
Filmmaker Karyn Kusama hit the scene at Sundance 2000 where she premiered her debut feature, “Girlfight,” before a crowd of thousands. The film, which starred a then-unknown Michelle Rodriguez...
Karyn Kusama on the Power of Grief and Denial in the Dinner Party from Hell, ‘The Invitation’
Karyn Kusama wrote and directed her first feature film, “Girlfight,” in 1999. The film won the Director’s Prize and shared the Grand Jury Prize at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival, the Grand...
Geena Davis’ Bentonville Film Fest Lineup Includes Sharon Stone, Teyonah Parris and Q’orianka Kilcher
The Bentonville Film Festival has announced the lineup for its second installment. This year’s festival will screen 34 films, including 12 world premieres and runs in Bentonville, Arkansas from May...
Lilibet Foster on ‘Spartacus’ Star Andy Whitfield’s Battle with Cancer in Doc ‘Be Here Now’
Lilibet Foster is an award-winning director, producer and writer of feature documentaries, television programs and integrated brand campaigns. She received an Oscar nomination for producing the...
Cross-Post: Let’s Make Female Directors More Visible
There’s this game that I play when I have trouble falling asleep: I start listing female film directors. I usually doze off when reaching number 20–25 — if my insomnia is particularly bad,...
Ava DuVernay To Receive Spirit of Independence Award
Ava DuVernay and Array Releasing, her film collective dedicated to promoting films by women and people of color, will receive this year’s Spirit of Independence Award at the LA Film Festival. The...
Male Directors Outnumber Female Directors 5 to 1 in Spain
A recent report from CIMA, the Spanish Association for Women Filmmakers and Audiovisual Media Professionals, found that women directors of narrative features were outnumbered by male directors...
Guest Post: My Peek Under the Niqab — A Muslim Filmmaker’s Journey Breaking Her Own Stereotypes
In 2009, I quit my job as Gulf Correspondent for The Washington Post and decided to pursue filmmaking full-time. I had become a journalist to tell realistic stories about the Arab world, having...
Emmanuelle Bercot on Portraying the Juvenile Justice System in Cannes 2015 Opener ‘Standing Tall’
Multi-hyphenate Emmanuelle Bercot is one of the few French film talents able to seamlessly shift between acting, directing and writing. Much of her work has debuted at the Cannes Film Festival, from...
Announcing New Weekly Feature: Women Filmmaker Wednesdays
Women and Hollywood is always looking for engaging ways to celebrate women in the film industry and we’re incredibly excited to announce the launch of a brand new social media campaign. Because...
Emily Schwend Wins Prestigious Yale Theater Prize, Both Runners-Up Are Women
Playwright Emily Schwend has won the 2016 Yale Drama Series prize for her play “Utility,” a family drama set in Texas. Schwend will receive $10,000, publication by Yale University Press and a...
Guest Post: Women of the West Offer New Perspectives on the American Stage
From John Wayne movies to the plays of Sam Shepard, the story of the American West has always been presented as a distinctly male experience. Cowboys and Indians, outlaws and frontiersman, ranchers...
Lake Bell To Write, Direct, Produce and Star in ‘What’s the Point?’
In a world… where female filmmakers can thrive, Lake Bell will emerge victorious. Bell will write, direct, produce and star in “What’s the Point? (And Other Fair Questions About Marriage).”...
Carey Mulligan in Negotiations to Star in New Dee Rees Drama
“Suffragette” star Carey Mulligan is in negotiations to take the lead in another period drama. The Oscar nominee is circling Dee Rees’s indie film “Mudbound,” set in post-World War II...
Gwendoline Christie Joins Elisabeth Moss for Season 2 of Jane Campion’s ‘Top of the Lake’
The force is strong with “Game of Thrones” star Gwendoline Christie — and “Top of the Lake” fans. Hot off her big screen success with “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” Christie will...
Ava DuVernay Will Write and Direct HBO’s ‘The Battle of Versailles’
“Selma” director and Array (formerly AFFRM) founder Ava DuVernay will co-write and direct HBO’s “The Battle of Versailles.” While the project may sound like a war epic, the film is...
Agnieszka Holland to Helm Psychological Thriller About a Female Killer
Agnieszka Holland has a new project in the works. The Polish director will helm the memorably titled “The Kind Worth Killing,” a psychological thriller based on a 2015 novel of the same name....
Naomi Kawase to Head Cinefondation and Short Film Jury at Cannes
The youngest-ever winner of the Camera d’Or continues to make waves at the Cannes Film Festival. Naomi Kawase has been named as the president of both the Cinefondation section and Short Film...
Ghetto Film School L.A. Introduces New Program for Female Students
Ghetto Film School L.A. is adding a new program to its curriculum. A new class, “Iris-In: A Ghetto Film School Program for Young Women,” will be offered to female students. The nonprofit will...
Warner Bros. Launches Directors Workshop for Underrepresented Directors
Last year, a study conducted by the Los Angeles Times revealed that, among the major studios, Warner Bros. hired the least women directors. An embarrassing claim to fame, period, but especially in...
Eileen Meyer Awarded the 2016 Karen Schmeer Film Editing Fellowship
Eileen Meyer has been awarded the 2016 Karen Schmeer Film Editing Fellowship. Meyer edited the award-winning 2015 documentary “Best of Enemies,” an exploration of pundit politics. The editor...
‘Parisienne’ Director Danielle Arbid on Telling A Positive Story About a Foreigner Living in Paris
Danielle Arbid been directing films since 1997. Selected for numerous festivals in France and abroad (Cannes, New York Film Festival, San Francisco, Locarno, Pusan, Tokyo Filmex, etc.), her narrative...
Amy Ryan to Topline Nicole Holofcener Comedy Series
Nicole Holofcener is coming to TV, and she’s taking Amy Ryan (“Birdman”) with her. The “Enough Said” helmer is looking for a straight-to-series order for a new half-hour, untitled comedy...
The National Film Board of Canada to Divide Funding 50/50 Between Female and Male Directors
The National Film Board of Canada (NFB), an agency of the country’s federal government, is working to close the gender gap in Canadian filmmaking. On Tuesday the public agency announced that at...
Julie Taymor Launches Fellowship for Young Theater Directors
Julie Taymor, the first woman to win a Tony Award for directing a musical, has created a fellowship for young theater directors. The Julie Taymor World Theater Fellowship is designed to enable...
Guest Post: Why Are People Concerned Directing Is “Too Much” for Women? We Can Handle It, Thanks
When I was a little girl my mother worked in an unheated factory five days a week and cleaned houses on weekends. Never once did anyone tell her, “Well, that’s too big a job for a woman.” Nor...
Focus World Picks up Natalie Portman’s Directorial Debut
The U.S. rights for “A Tale of Love and Darkness,” Natalie Portman’s directorial debut, have been acquired by Focus World, a division of Focus Features. The Oscar winner premiered the drama,...
Guest Post: How the Female Directors in Film Fatales Are Tackling Hollywood’s Inclusion Problem
By now we have all heard the statistics. The film industry is facing a crisis of inclusion. According to research by the Media, Diversity and Social Change Initiative at USC Annenberg, less than 20%...
Eva Husson’s Teen Sex Drama ‘Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story)’ Gets U.S. Distribution
Samuel Goldwyn Films has acquired North American rights for “Bang Gang (A Modern Love Story),” Eva Husson’s feature directorial debut. The company bought the rights from Films Distribution....
A New International Film Competition Moves Beyond the Bechdel Test
One of the oldest chapters of Women in Film and Video is teaming up with Harvard Square Script Writers to launch Flicks4Chicks, a new international film contest. The two Boston-based non-profits grew...
An Open Letter to DGA President Paris Barclay
As President of the Directors Guild of America, your job is to represent all directors in Hollywood. From what I can tell, you are a working TV director with lots of credits and I’m sure you’re...
Mary Stuart Masterson Wants to Open A Movie Studio in Upstate NY
Mary Stuart Masterson plans to open a movie studio away from the bright lights of New York City and even further from Hollywood. The actress, producer, director and writer, best known for starring in...
Quote of the Day: Amy Pascal Says The System is “Geared for Women to Fail in Films”
In a new interview with Britain’s The Sunday Times Magazine, former Sony co-chairperson Amy Pascal described the lack of opportunities for female directors as “a travesty, a real travesty.”...
Guest Post: What I Learned Shadowing on ‘Homeland’
A year ago, I went to a “diversity” lunch at Directors Guild of America in Los Angeles. I was hesitant to attend, because the overwhelming majority of those who currently fill this position are...
UCLA’s Hollywood Diversity Report Demonstrates the Benefits of Inclusive Casting
#OscarsSoWhite is an ugly symptom of an ugly problem that goes deeper than one particular awards show. The third annual Hollywood Diversity Report from the UCLA Bunche Center details just how...
Shakespeare’s Sister Initiative Commissions Women-Directed Shorts
Shakespeare’s Sister, an initiative from Film London and the British Council, has commissioned two short films by female filmmakers to honor the 400th anniversary of the Bard’s passing. Lucy...
20 of Hollywood’s Biggest Male Stars Have Never Worked With a Female Director
Of the top 100 grossing leading men in Hollywood, 20 haven’t worked on a single film with a woman director, Cosmopolitan has revealed. The magazine compiled a list of the big screen’s A-list...
Trailer Watch: Greta Gerwig Falls Out of Love in Rebecca Miller’s ‘Maggie’s Plan’
A trailer has been released for writer-director Rebecca Miller’s “Maggie’s Plan.” Greta Gerwig’s name is now pretty much synonymous with oddball comedies, but she continuously offers fresh...