Women Directors
Quote of the Day: Jane Campion Acknowledges the “Inherent Sexism” of the Film Industry At Cannes
Jane Campion is Cannes Jury President this year, and she’s using her platform to speak out against sexism in the film industry. While Campion is known for being outspoken about gender inequity in...
A Call to Action on Behalf of Female Filmmakers
Here’s my latest post on Forbes: The Cannes Film Festival kicks off today and the film world as the world’s press have descended to seek out the next “it girl”, the next “master” and...
Trailer Watch: Jennifer Jason Leigh Stars in Jane Weinstock’s The Moment
The trailer has been released for psychological drama The Moment, which stars Jennifer Jason Leigh as a woman questioning reality — and whether or not she’s a murderer. The film is directed...
Exclusive Clip from Jocelyn Towne’s I AM I
I AM I is written and directed by Jocelyn Towne and is “story of a young woman, Rachael (Towne), who meets her estranged father Gene (Kevin Tighe) at her mother’s funeral. Eager to get to know...
Reese Witherspoon/Sofia Vergara Unnamed Film Directed by Anne Fletcher Targets Mother’s Day 2015 Release
Reese Witherpoon and Sofia Vergara will co-star in an unnamed buddy comedy directed by Anne Fletcher (The Guilt Trip, The Proposal, 27 Dresses). New Line Cinema/Warner Brothers will co-produce...
Jane Campion Close to Deal to Direct The Flamethrowers for Producer Scott Rudin
One of the things that I will enjoy watching over the next two weeks at the Cannes Film Festival is the high profile of one of the most talented female directors, Jane Campion. She is the 10th woman...
Cannes Trailer Watch: Alice Rohrwacher’s Le Meraviglie
The trailer for Alice Rohrwacher’s Le Meraviglie has been released. The film will premiere at Cannes and is in competition for the Palme d’Or. Only one other film directed by a woman will be...
No Cannes Do — The Status of Women Directors at Cannes Over the Last Decade
As the press and the film industry descend on Cannes this week, this gives us an opportunity to remind people one of the biggest problems that plague this festival as well as the industry in...
Patty Jenkins Signs On For Second Film — Sweetheart
It’s been over a decade since Patty Jenkins directed Charlize Theron to her Oscar for Monster. We all know that Theron has worked on numerous films since then, but Jenkins, who wrote and directed...
Andrea Arnold’s New Film American Honey: Her First Picture Set in the U.S.
Academy Award winning British filmmaker Andrea Arnold (she won for her 2003 short) will shoot her fourth feature — her first based in the U.S. — this summer. American Honey will...
Directors UK: Women Represent Only 14% of the Directors in UK TV
According to a new report from Directors UK entitled Who’s Calling the Shots?, women in the UK are directing only 14% of the TV shows. Weirdly, or not so weirdly, those stats exactly match the...
Women Directors Helmed Nearly 40% of Student Oscar Finalists
Female filmmakers directed or co-directed 38% of the shorts in the running for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ 41st Student Academy Awards competition. Female directors were best...
Women Directors Fare Much Better in the Indie World — But It’s Still Not Good Enough
Here’s my latest column on Forbes If you follow the issue of women directors working in Hollywood you will know that that this is a very complicated issue. Getting more women directors working at...
Special Report: Women Directors at the Box Office in April 2014
The Aprilreleases directed by women were dominated by non-fiction, with elevendocumentaries to six features and one anthology film. The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden, from married...
Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott School Hollywood
When I started writing Women and Hollywood seven years ago sometimes I thought I was nuts. I would write about issues related to gender and films and there were times when I felt I was shooting my...
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...
TV: Queen Latifah to Star as Bessie Smith in HBO Biopic
Queen Latifah will play jazz and blues legend Bessie Smith in an HBO movie written and directed by Dee Rees. Latifah will also serve as an executive producer on the project. An adaptation of Chris...
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...
Jane Campion-Led 2014 Cannes Jury is Majority Female
Five women will sit on the nine-person Cannes jury, which means there will be 2.5 women jurors for every woman director in competition. As we reported earlier this month, only two of the 18...
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...
Crosspost: What’s It Going to Take for Gender Equality to Come to Hollywood?
Crossposted with permission from Awards Daily. The WGA diversity report, released on April 15, delivered this rather devastating news about women screenwriters in Hollywood: While women and other...
Rachel Weisz and Toni Collette to Star as BFFs in Catherine Hardwicke’s Miss You Already
Rachel Weisz and Toni Collette will play best friends in Catherine Hardwicke’s upcoming comedy-drama Miss You Already. Morwenna Banks’ script finds two lifelong friends being pulled in...
Crosspost: The Time of Her Life
Crossposted with permission from DGA Quarterly. Lee Shallat Chemel was recently directing an episode of the critically acclaimed single-camera comedy The Middle when it suddenly dawned on her how...
Take the Quiz: How Many Movies By Female Directors Have You Seen?
Buzzfeed’s Alison Willmore has published a great new quiz on women directors that extends all the way back to 19th-century film pioneer Alice Guy-Blache’s The Cabbage Fairy, includes midcentury...
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...
Guest Post: Getting to the Finish Line
I’ve worked on Vanishing Pearls: The Oystermen of Pointe A La Hache for years — three and a half years, to be exact. During that entire time, I so desired to have a woman on my team. There...
Cannes 2014 Lineup Revealed; Only Two Women Directors in the Main Competition
For whatever reason, the Cannes Film Festival — perhaps because of its grandeur, glamorous red carpet, and press attention — has become the crux around which global conversations about...
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...
Cannes Workshop to Focus on Women Directors and Screenwriters
The European Audiovisual Observatory, a EU organization that compiles statistical and analytical data on film and television, will devote its upcoming workshop at Cannes to women in the film...
90% of Summer 2014 Studio Movies Directed by White Guys
A comprehensive study of this summer’s major releases by The Wrap reveals that a dispiriting 90% of those films will be directed by white men. Jupiter Ascending helmer Lana Wachowski, along with...
Female Film Industry Heavyweights Support Fledgling Female Directors
Jane Campion, Helen Mirren, and Sienna Miller are among the participants of a wonderful new initiative to highlight the next generation of female filmmakers. The London-based fashion and culture...
Dorothy Arzner to Receive Career Retrospective
Here’s the good news: Pioneering director Dorothy Arzner (1897–1979) — was one of the first woman directors to have a career in Hollywood making films. She was the first female member of...
Thea Sharrock to Make Her Feature Directorial Debut
Acclaimed theater and TV director Thea Sharrock has signed on to adapt Jojo Moyes’ best-selling novel Me Before You for the big screen. The production will mark Sharrock’s feature directing...
Guest Post: The Celluloid Ceiling is Much Lower Than You Think
After many years working in the film industry, I am struggling in to find work. It’s hard for me to admit when I need help, and even harder to ask for it. I got into film so I could tell stories...
Frozen Now the Highest-Grossing Animated Film in History
With over a $1 billion in ticket sales internationally, Frozen is no longer just the highest-grossing animated film in Disney history, but the highest-grossing animated film ever. Jennifer Lee and...
Quote of the Day: Penelope Spheeris
Penelope Spheeris has over 30 directing credits to her name, including the films Wayne’s World, The Little Rascals, and Black Sheep, but she doesn’t have the career she wants. “When people...
Study: French Film Industry Suffers Gender Gap in Employment, Budgets
A new study has revealed that French female directors are much better represented in their industry than their counterparts in many other countries, but even they still have a ways to go. The first...
Andrea Arnold to Head Cannes Critics Week Jury
British director Andrea Arnold has been named the head of the five-person jury at Cannes Critics Week. A showcase of 20 films (with 7 in competition), Critics Weeks is devoted to discovering new...
Krysten Ritter on the Life She Could’ve Led in Her New Film “Refuge”
When Amy’s (Krysten Ritter) parents head toFlorida for a “vacation” without a return ticket, she is left to take care ofher two younger siblings: Nat (Logan Huffman, V), her temperamental...
UK’s Channel 4 Exec Tessa Ross Becomes Head of National Theatre
Tessa Ross, the Channel 4 film and drama controller who’s been called “the mother of British filmmaking,” will leave her current position to head the National Theatre. Ross will take over NT...
Madonna to Adapt Novel by Alice Walker’s Daughter
Madonna has announced her third feature-directing project: an adaptation of Rebecca Walker’s debut novel Ade: A Love Story. Published last fall, Ade: A Love Story follows a 19-year-old American...
ND/NF Women Directors: Meet Jessica Oreck
Jessica Oreck makes projects large and small that instill a sense of wonder and invite viewers to question their relationship with the natural world. Her most recent feature-length documentary,...
Frozen Estimated to Become Highest-Grossing Movie in Disney History
Who knew that the best holiday gift Disney could give itself was turning its back on its past? Last November’s Frozen flipped the script on the passive-princess protagonists and...
Review of Freida Mock’s Anita: The Story of a Hero
The following review was originally published as part of Women and Hollywood’s Sundance 2013 coverage. When I was a young woman just starting my career, I encountered sexual harrassment like so...
AFFRM Acquires Nailah Jefferson’s Vanishing Pearls
Nailah Jefferson’s Slamdance documentary Vanishing Pearls, which profiles the devastation wrought by the BP oil spill on the tiny fishing community of Pointe a la Hache, Louisiana, has found...
Wadjda Director Haifaa Al-Mansour Announces Next Project
After making history as Saudi Arabia’s first woman director, Wadjda helmer Haifaa Al-Mansour is in final negotiations for her follow-up film: a romance between writers Percy Shelley and Mary...
Sofia Coppola to Direct Live-Action Little Mermaid Movie
For her sixth movie, Sofia Coppola will be departing from the placid, meditative films that have defined her oeuvre thus far to make a live-action version of the Hans Christian Andersen tale....
New York Indian Film Festival to Salute Gurinder Chadha
On the 20th anniversary of Bhaji on the Beach, her BAFTA-nominated dramedy about a group of South Asian women who take a day trip to the British seashore, Indian-British director Gurinder Chadha...
Anne Sweeney: Leaning in by Leaning Out
Yesterday, Anne Sweeney — the Co-Chair of Disney Media Networks, President of Disney/ABC Television Group, Bob Iger’s Number Two, and the most powerful woman in Hollywood according to The...
Lynne Ramsay and Jane Got a Gun Producers Settle Lawsuit
Screen Daily reports that director Lynne Ramsay and the producers of Jane Got a Gun have reached a settlement. Ramsay signed on to helm the 2011 Black List action western in March 2012, but...