Women Directors
Women in Film, Indiegogo, and the Black List Launch New Award for Young Female Filmmakers
When it comes to fostering female directing talent, support and mentorship can’t come soon enough. To that end, a group of producers, media companies, and film organizations have come together to...
CineCause Launches New Mentorship and Networking Initiative for Female Filmmakers
Producer Gina Belafonte, Killer Films chief Christine Vachon, and writer-director-actress Jocelyn Towne will be among the headliners at the inaugural Fueling Female Filmmakers (F3) event, a new...
Mia Hansen-Løve’s ‘Eden’ to Be Released Next Spring
French director Mia Hansen-Løve’s fourth feature, Eden, has been a staple this year at major festivals like TIFF and NYFF. And now the 20-year electronica epic has found a distributor in Broad...
Julie Delpy to Start Shooting Her Sixth Film Next Month
Fresh off her Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar nod for Before Midnight (along with Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke), Julie Delpy is set to start shooting her sixth feature next month. Delpy will...
Women Directors Dominate the Competition at Abu Dhabi Film Festival
Seventy percent of the works in competition at the 2014 Abu Dhabi Film Festival (October 23 — November 1) will be directed by women. The ADFF will only showcase shorts (along with a Truffaut...
DGA Celebrates Women Directors, But What’s the Next Move?
The DGA hosted an event last Saturday night to celebrate the six women who created the Women’s Steering Committee 35 years ago. The 600-seat theatre was packed, with impassioned cheering and...
Things I Learned from the ‘Selma’ Sneak
On Saturday night, Ava DuVernay brought a short clip of her upcoming film Selma (opening Christmas Day) to the Urbanworld Film Festival in NYC. (As Ava put it: “Jason Reitman takes his films to...
Angelina Jolie Announces Her Fourth Directing Project
Three months ahead of the release of Unbroken, her second film as director, Angelina Jolie has signaled that she’s serious about her mid-career turn as a filmmaker by announcing her fourth...
The Stagnation of Opportunities for Women on TV
From my latest Forbes post on how the progress for women writers and especially directors on the small screen has stalled: Women are stuck, and that is even more clearly illustrated in the data...
Infographic: Women Directed 10% of Independent Features Between 2009–2013
Earlier this summer, we published an infographic highlighting the awful truth that less than 5% of studio movies in the past five years were directed by women. Now we’ve taken a look at the...
Guest Post: Honeymoon, Bloody Unicorns and Spumoni
If you’ve been in an intimate relationship, you’ve had that moment — that awful moment — where the person you’ve been sharing your bed with suddenly seems like a stranger. It was...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Shahad Ameen — ‘Eye & Mermaid’
Shahad Ameen was born and raised in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Realizing at an early age that she could not make her dream of becoing a professional soccer player come true in Saudi Arabia, she turned to...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Carolina Markowicz and Fernanda Salloum — ‘Tatuapé Mahal Tower’
Carolina Markowicz is a director and screenwriter from São Paulo, Brazil. She has directed the short film 69-Luz Square, which won several awards in many festivals around the world, including Bst...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Nanna Kristín Magnúsdóttir — ‘Playing with Balls’
Nanna Kristín Magnúsdóttir is an Icelandic actress,producer, and VFS (Vancouver Film School) graduate who has receivednumerous nominations and awards for her work both in Iceland...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Sarah Galea-Davis — ‘An Apartment’
Sarah Galea-Davis is an award-winning director, writerand producer. She works in both fiction and documentary filmmaking. Her last short film, Can You Wave Bye-Bye?, won Best Short Film at the...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Torill Kove — ‘Me and My Moulton’
Torill Kove is an award-winning director, animator, illustrator, and author. Born in Hamar, Norway, Kove lived in Kenya before moving to Montreal in 1982 to attend Concordia University. She went on...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Caroline Mailloux — ‘The Barnhouse’
The Barnhouse is the third short film written and directed by Caroline Mailloux. Her films Motel Pluton and Cher Dieu (Dear God) both enjoyed much success on the festival circuit, and Cher Dieu was...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Amanda Strong — ‘Indigo’
Amanda Strong is a filmmaker and media artist working in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. Making use of diverse media (film, photography and illustration) and artistic collaboration, her work seeks...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Johanne Ste-Marie — ‘Migration’
Johanne Ste-Marie is a Montreal native who dove head firstinto the burning ring of animation after graduating with a BFA in FilmAnimation from Concordia University. In 2002, she formed an art duo,...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Michelle Latimer — ‘The Underground’
Michelle Latimer, writer and director of the dramatic short The Underground, is an actor, filmmaker, and curator. Her award-winning documentary Aliaspremiered at the 2013 Hot Docs Film Festival...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Atsuko Hirayanagi — ‘Oh Lucy!’
Atsuko Hirayanagi wasborn in Nagano and raised in Chiba, Japan. She is a recent graduate of NYUTisch School of The Arts, Asia, with an MFA in Film Production. Her short films have played at numerous...
Drew Barrymore and Toni Collette Are Best Friends in Catherine Hardwicke’s ‘Miss You Already’
Drew Barrymore replaces Rachel Weisz as Toni Collette’s best friend in Catherine Hardwicke’s upcoming dramedy Miss You Already. Morwenna Banks’ script finds two lifelong friends being pulled...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Yassmina Karajah — ‘Light’
Yassmina Karajah was born in Amman, Jordan, and is a graduate of the Bristol Law School. She studies film production at the University of British Columbia. In Light (2014), her directorial debut, a...
Seattle Fest Announces Women in Cinema Lineup: Lynn Shelton, Hannah Espia, Jessica Yu, More
The Seattle International Film Festival has released the lineup for its Women in Cinema showcase. The showcase will be a four-day event at SIFF 2015, and will include 12 features and documentaries,...
TIFF Women DIrectors: Meet Shonali Bose — ‘Margarita, With a Straw’
Shonali Bose was raised in Calcutta, Mumbai, and Delhi. She received her BA from Delhi University and her MA from Columbia before earning her MFA at UCLA film school. She made her feature debut as...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Tala Hadid — ‘The Narrow Frame of Midnight’
Tala Hadid was born in London, graduated from Columbia University in NewYork City, and participated in the Sundance Institute Directors Lab. Her filmsinclude the documentary feature Sacred Poet, the...
TIFF Women Directors: Meet Martine Époque — ‘Coda: The Finale for The Rite of Spring’
Choreographer Martine Époque is the founder of Montreal’s renowned contemporary dance company Groupe Nouvelle Aire and was its Artistic Director from 1968 to 1981. She was also the driving force...
Infographic: Women Directors in the Studio System
Women and Hollywood is on vacation this week. While our lights are out, we’ll be reposting our most popular posts of the summer. The director’s chair is one of the most influential thrones in...
AFI Expands Directing Workshop for Women Program for Digital Age
It’s a whole new world out there for filmmakers today — and the AFI Directing Workshop for Women (DWW) is changing to reflect that fact. This year’s DWW program, sponsored by Will &...
TIFF Announces Julie Taymor and Marjane Satrapi Premieres
As with any huge festival, Toronto FF (September 4–14) has announced its programming in waves. We were initially unimpressed by the paltry number of female filmmakers featured in the main...
‘May in the Summer’ Writer-Director Cherien Dabis on Hiring Herself to Star in Her Film
May in the Summer is Cherien Dabis’ second film about people who live in two worlds. (Her debut was the Sundance hit Amreeka.) In addition to writing and directing, Dabis went in front of the...
Guest Post: Film Fatales Give Back: The Importance of Community Outreach
Film Fatales is a collective of female writers/directors who meet regularly to support each other’s work and promote the creation of more films by and about women. Several of us recently...
Second Mary Shelley Biopic to Star Game of Thrones’ Sophie Turner
There are now officially two Mary Shelley biopics in the works, both focusing on the young author’s work of writing Frankenstein and her romance with the older poet Percy Shelley (who would later...
Toronto Film Fest Announces More Women-Directed Films
When the 39th Toronto International Film Festival (September 4–14) released its first two rounds of programming at this year’s events, we were initially unimpressed by the paltry representation...
Trailer Watch: I Am Eleven is a Charming Look at Being Between Childhood and Adolescence
Australian documentarian Genevieve Bailey found herself dispirited working for a newspaper as a college student, reading bad news day after day. She worried especially about how that bad news would...
Guest Post: One for the Girls: Women Directors Group Spreads to London
This year the news has been bad for UK female film directors. Statistics have revealed, in article after article, the depressingly low numbers of women directing feature films. I look at the slates...
Katharine Hepburn Biopic in the Works
Katharine Hepburn starred in some of the best films Hollywood has ever made, but the film industry has thus far only made her an accessory in stories about men, namely those of producer David O....
An Open Letter to Sony Chief Amy Pascal: Here’s Your Opportunity to Be a Leader for Women
Dear Amy Pascal, I read the exciting news yesterday that your studio, Sony, will be making a female superhero movie set in the Spider-Man universe. This is great news for those of us who have been...
Sight and Sound Publishes Top 50 Documentaries List
UK’s Sight and Sound magazine published a “Greatest Documentaries of All Time” list last week to accompany their famed catalog of the “Greatest Films Ever.” The top 50...
New Research Shows a Six-Year Low for Women Directors, 98% of Films Feature More Male than Female Characters
When I started the site nearly seven(!) years ago, research on women onscreen and behind the scenes was sparse. The good news is that, today, studies on this subject arrive regularly from all types...
Elle Fanning to Play Mary Shelley in Haifaa Al-Mansour’s Biopic of Frankenstein Author
Elle Fanning continues to impress with her film choices. Her latest anounced project is Wadjda director Haifaa al-Mansour’s A Storm in the Stars, a biopic of Frankenstein author Mary Shelley. A...
Toronto Film Fest Announces More Films; Only 12% of Lineup So Far Directed by Women
Though the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival (September 4–14) may prove an effective launching pad for award-hungry actresses, the new lineups announced today affirm our earlier assessment...
Guest Post: How I Quit the LA Actor Race and Became the Filmmaker I Always Wanted to Be
Ever since I saw Jaws, I knew I wanted to be a director. I wanted to take people on the same thrill ride I’d experienced watching that movie. I came to Los Angeles and got on set as quickly as I...
Jodie Foster to Direct George Clooney in Thriller Called Money Monster
Jodie Foster will direct her fellow actor-turned-filmmaker, George Clooney, in a media- and money-themed thriller. In Money Monster, Clooney will play the host of a finance show taken hostage by a...
ESPN Debuts Shorts Series About Female Pro Athletes and Coaches
Premiering today is the Nine for IX documentary shorts series, a collection of five films about female athletes from women filmmakers. An extension of ESPN’s Emmy-nominated, feature-length Nine...
Trailer Watch: First Look at Susanne Bier’s A Second Chance
Though her most recent film was the winsome rom com Love is All You Need, director Susanne Bier is best known for her grave, weighty dramas like Brothers, After the Wedding, and the Oscar-winning In...
17% of Venice Film Fest’s Main Lineup Directed by Women
The Venice Film Festival released the full lineup for its 71st iteration (August 27-September 6) today. Though the Lido beats out Toronto’s paltry 10% female lineup, its 17% female statistic...
Amma Asante Inspires Women Filmmakers at BAFTA Event: “I Want to Do a Studio Film to Show that as a Woman I Can”:
Belle director Amma Asanteoffered encouragement and advice to young women filmmakers at aBAFTA Film Question Time event in London on Monday. Asante was one of four panellists — threeof them...
The Big O: Watch Out, Toronto — The Great Kate, Dame Maggie, and Some Stellar Female Directors Are Coming Your Way
Lastyear’s Toronto International Film Festival provided invaluable lift-off to atleast three female-driven movies that landed in the 2013 Oscar race: Gravity, Philomena,and August:...
Half of Sarajevo Film Fest Doc Contenders Directed by Women
Sometimes it’s necessary to travel far afield to find good news, as was the case this week when the Toronto Film Festival’s first-round lineup was revealed to be only 10% directed by women....
Chicken and Egg Launches New Fund for Women Documentarians from India
Chicken and Egg Pictures, the nonprofit film fund dedicated to incubating socially conscious documentaries from female filmmakers, has partnered up with the Indian Documentary Foundation to launch a...