Women Directors
The Year of the “Strong Women” at the 2015 London Film Fest Lineup
When we learned Sarah Gavron’s “Suffragette” would open this year’s BFI London Film Festival, we were optimistic about the rest of the lineup. The full program for the 59th edition of the...
It’s time to fall madly in love with films #DirectedbyWomen
How many films #DirectedbyWomen can we celebrate in a 15-day worldwide film-viewing party? We’re about to find out. Starting September 1st, film lovers around the globe are invited to turn their...
The 10 Most Gut-Punching Moments From BuzzFeed’s Exposé on Sexism in Animation
It’s not news that the animation industry has always been a boys club, but that doesn’t make BuzzFeed’s recent longform exposé on the historical, institutional and ongoing sexism within the...
Angelina Jolie’s ‘By the Sea’ the First Woman-Directed Film to Open AFI Fest in At Least a Decade
“By the Sea,” Angelina Jolie’s third narrative feature as a director, will open this year’s AFI Fest (November 5–12). The drama about a husband and wife (played by Jolie Pit and her...
Guest Post: From Day Job to Dream Job: How This Cupcake Girl Got a Feature Film in 6 Easy Steps
A lot ofpeople in Hollywood have a day job and work as writers, actors, directors, etc., by night. Well, I was justthe same, working at Sprinkles Cupcakes in Beverly Hills, when it occurredto me...
16% is Not a Win: Parsing the DGA’s Latest Stats on Women and Minority Directors in TV
“Female TV directors make gains,” proclaimed mainstream headlines following the DGA’s release yesterday of a report on female and minority directors in TV. If this is progress for women, color...
An Open Letter to Colin Trevorrow
Dear Colin, Congratulations on the huge box-office success of “Jurassic World” this summer. It must feel good to be the king of the world. Interestingly, while you said several months ago that...
Jasmila Zbanic Reveals Info About Her Upcoming Srebrenica Massacre Film
Bosnian director Jasmila Zbanic has revealed what to expect from her upcoming drama about the Srebrenica massacre, a genocide that took place during the Bosnian War in that country’s eastern...
Win an Online Master Class with BAFTA-Winning Director Amma Asante
BAFTA-winning director Amma Asante is offering three emerging women directors the opportunity to take part in a master class with her. Asante helmed the wondrous period romance “Belle” and the...
TIFF Announces More Films, Incl. Works by Catherine Hardwicke, Natalie Portman, Chantal Akerman
TIFF continues to roll out additions to its lineup on a near daily basis, and thankfully many of the newly announced crop of films are helmed by women. Three female directors have been added to the...
Trailer Watch: A Family and a Nation Face Crises in Natalie Portman’s ‘A Tale of Love and Darkness’
Trailer Watch: Alison Brie Learns About Masturbation in Dirty Rom Com ‘Sleeping with Other People’
Lainey (Alison Brie) is a serial cheater and Jake (Jason Sudeikis) is a sex addict. While they aren’t, shall we say, an ideal match, the red-band trailer for writer-director Leslye Headland’s...
Podcast: Marielle Heller — Writer and Director of ‘The Diary of a Teenage Girl’
I was able to get some time to speak with Marielle Heller on the opening day of “The Diary of a Teenage Girl.” Here’s a short review “The Diary of a Teenage Girl” is an important movie...
The Women of Color Heroes We Both Need and Deserve
This summer has been a pretty big one for nerd culture so far. Nerd Christmas came and went with this year’s San Diego Comic-Con”: “Ant-Man” premiered; the trailers for “Superman v....
Little White Lies Lists 100 Greatest Movies by Women Directors
Last month, the BBC created a list of the 100 greatest American films ever made. Appallingly, only three female co-directors made the cut: Ellen Hovde and Muffie Meyer on “Grey Gardens” and Maya...
Trailer Watch: Anne Hathaway is the Boss in Nancy Meyers’ ‘The Intern’
UCLA Launches 14-Film Dorothy Arzner Retrospective
It’s impossible to overstate Dorothy Arzner’s importance as a feminist and film pioneer. She was the first female contract director in Hollywood, the first female member of the DGA, the widely...
Trailer Watch: Things Go Awry Between a Bodyguard and His Client in Alice Winocour’s ‘Maryland’
Trailer Watch: True Adulthood Threatens Taissa Farmiga’s Relationship in Hannah Fidell’s ‘6 Years’
Writer-director Hannah Fidell made a splash at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival with “A Teacher,” a dark portrait of a twentysomething teacher desperate to continue her affair with a teenage boy....
Seeking Our Story: Directing the Summer Blockbuster: Mimi Leder’s DEEP IMPACT
Seeking Our Story iscelebrating the summer with Mimi Leder’s blockbuster “Deep Impact.” Leder (b. 1952) grew up in New York City witha mother, Etyl Leder, who played classical piano, and a...
Embracing the Female Gaze
WhenI started writing Women and Hollywood almost eight years ago, the two thingsthat shaped my feminist consciousness were Molly Haskell’s “From Reverence to Rape: TheTreatment of Women in the...
University of Chicago to Celebrate Agnes Varda With Events and Week-Long Residency
After debuting a new short for Miu Miu’s Women’s Tales series at this year’s Venice Film Festival (September 2–12), Agnes Varda will head to the University of Chicago for a week-long...
Trailer Watch: Panic and Dust Swirl in Patricia Riggen’s Chilean Mining Drama ‘The 33’
Venice Film Fest Lineup Released: Only 10% of Films in Competition Helmed by Women Directors
Yesterday we reported that the main jury of this year’s Venice Film Festival will be comprised of six men and three women (Elizabeth Banks, Diane Kruger and Lynne Ramsay). The official lineup for...
TIFF 2015 Announces Just 7 Women-Directed Films in Its First Round of Lineup Selections
The Toronto International Film Festival made public its first batch of films for its 2015 lineup this morning. Forty-nine films made the cut, but only a disappointing seven (about 14%) were directed...
‘Le Dep’ Director Sonia Bonspille Boileau on the Need for Better Representations of Indigenous Women
Two Canadian First Nation women — a director from theKanesatake Mohawk tribe and an actress from the Uashat mak Mani-Utenam community — teamed up recently to make one of the first-ever...
‘Top of the Lake’ Season 2 Moves to Australia; Jane Campion and Elisabeth Moss to Return
One of the best and most feminist mystery series is moving to Australia for its sophomore year. “Top of the Lake” will follow Detective Robin Griffin (Elisabeth Moss) from her home country of...
Angelina Jolie to Direct Netflix Film About Female Cambodian Human Rights Activist
Angelina Jolie has announced her fifth narrative feature since 2011’s “In the Land of Blood and Honey.” The actress-turned-filmmaker will direct a Netflix drama based on Cambodian human...
Trailer Premiere: A Mother Saves Her Daughter From Child Marriage in Pakistan’s Oscar Submission ‘Dukhtar’
“I was 15 when I got married,” a woman named Allah Rakhi (Samiya Mumtaz) says bitterly in Afia Nathaniel’s gorgeous thriller “Dukhtar.” “After that, my story ends.” Allah Rakhi is...
BlogHer 2015: Ava DuVernay Talks “Follow[ing] the White Guys,” Turning Down Marvel (VIDEO)
Ava DuVernay offered advice on getting ahead and turning down what would probably have been the biggest paycheck of her career during a keynote discussion at the 2015 BlogHer conference in NYC this...
Sundance Launches New Resource Map for Female Filmmakers
There are dozens of grants, workshops, blogs, archives, film festivals, resource lists and mentoring programs out there for female filmmakers, but finding the ones relevant to you can be a...
Karen McCullah and Tamra Davis Team Up for R-Rated, ‘Bachelorette’-Style Comedy
Screenwriter Karen McCullah and director Tamra Davis have announced their next project: a R-rated comedy about four female friends, one of them pregnant, who end up stranded overseas and pursued by...
Trailer Watch: Amy Berg Tackles Cult Leader and Child Rapist Warren Jeffs in ‘Prophet’s Prey’
Prolific filmmaker Amy Berg has yet another movie set for release in 2015. It was only last month that the Academy Award nominee debuted the documentary “An Open Secret” and her first narrative...
Seven New ‘Twilight’ Shorts Directed by Female Filmmakers Keep the Franchise Alive
This Monday, the seven finalists in a “Twilight” short film competition presented their work to a theater full of fans and industry insiders. Back in October of 2014, Lionsgate, the studio...
Athina Rachel Tsangari Named Film Society of Lincoln Center’s 2015 Filmmaker in Residence
Greek-born director Athina Rachel Tsangari has been named Film Society of Lincoln Center’s 2015 Filmmaker in Residence. Tsangari’s features include “The Slow Business of Going” (2000),...
Catherine Hardwicke To Direct New YA Adaptation: ‘Stargirl’
Catherine Hardwicke is getting back into the YA game with an adaptation of Jerry Spinelli’s 2000 bestseller “Stargirl.” The “Twilight” director reportedly sign on to helm after reading...
‘Citizenfour’ Director Laura Poitras Suing US Government Over “Kafkaesque Harassment”
From 2006 to 2012, documentarian Laura Poitras has been detained at the border more than four dozen times, often for hours. Despite never being charged with a crime, the Oscar-winning...
Female Membership in Academy’s Board of Governors Rises by 6% for 2015–2016
Though 40% of this year’s candidates to join the Academy’s Board of Governors were women, female membership increased by only 6% after ballots were tallied. The 51-member Board — made up...
Guest Post: Directing Young Men as a Female Filmmaker
A few years ago, if you had told me that myfirst feature would follow three ten-year-old boys growing up in Palo Alto in1985, I probably wouldn’t have believed you — especially since one is...
Trailer Watch: Drew Barrymore and Toni Collette Are Inseparable Besties in ‘Miss You Already’
Fresh off the news that Catherine Hardwicke will direct a $50 million romantic epic set in China comes the trailer for a different kind of romance helmed by the “Twilight” director, “Miss You...
Women in the Director’s Chair and Whistler FF Launch 4-Month Intensive For Female Directors
The Whistler Film Festival and Women in the Director’s Chair are teaming up to launch WIDC: Story & Leadership, a four-month intensive for women screen directors focusing on fiction feature...
Angelina Jolie Options Book on Catherine the Great
The Sony hack revealed that Angelina Jolie has a Cleopatra movie in the works, but it’s looking like Jolie may be adding another legendary female ruler to her resume. The “Unbroken”...
Ava DuVernay Will Not Be Directing ‘Black Panther’ for Marvel
I wasn’t very surprised to read this weekend that Ava DuVernay will not be directing a Marvel movie. Quite frankly, to me, it always seemed like wishful thinking. While last week there were lots...
ArcLight Cinemas Spotlights “Exceptional” Women-Directed Docs in Summer Series
Four nonfiction films directed or co-directed by women have been selected to be screened as part of ArcLight Cinemas Hollywood’s summer series on female filmmakers. Starting Tuesday, July 7, the...
ACLU to Meet With Government Agencies to Discuss Bias Against Women Directors
Here’s some progress: The ACLU has announced that it will meet next month with the three government agencies it asked to investigate gender discrimination in the film and TV industries. Melissa...
Claire Denis to Team Up With Zadie Smith for Futuristic Space Adventure
French film icon Claire Denis will direct an untitled sci-fi adventure set in a “future that seems like the present” based on a screenplay by Zadie Smith and her husband Nick Laird. The project...
Catherine Hardwicke to Direct $50 Mil China-Set Romantic Epic
Mark this in the Mixed Blessings column: Catherine Hardwicke, one of Hollywood’s few women studio directors and a vocal proponent on behalf of female filmmakers, has just landed her biggest...
Women Push For Seats On the Academy Board In Record-Breaking Numbers: DuVernay, Cholodenko & More
Oscar voters are predominantly old white men. This year’s very white and male-dominated Oscars were an ugly reminder of the Academy’s lopsided constituency. This year, women in Hollywood are...
‘Blackfish’ Helmer Gabriela Cowperthwaite to Make Narrative Debut with Action-Thriller ‘The Search’
Director Gabriela Cowperthwaite (“Blackfish”) is returning to nature in her narrative feature debut. The documentary filmmaker will helm “The Search,” an action-thriller based on a Black...
Rose McGowan Clarifies Claim She Was Dropped by Agents for Speaking Out Against Sexism (UPDATED)
Trailer Watch: Naomi Kawase’s Palme d’Or Contender ‘Still the Water’