Women Directors
26% of SFIFF Films in Competition Directed by Women
Though the 2014 San Francisco International Film Festival’s (April 24-May 8) full lineup won’t be announced until April 1, SFIFF organizers have announced the films competing in the narrative...
Special Report: Women Directors at the Box Office in February 2014
Opening onValentine’s Day, the teen romance EndlessLove was the first wide release (2,872 theaters) from a female director in2014. The original, starring teen queen Brooke Shields, was released in...
War Zone/ Comfort Zone: Confronting the Issue of Homeless Women Veterans
Making a movie is like walking across a tightrope. It requires balance, will and muscles you never even knew you had. I’ve spent the last few years making a documentary about homeless women...
Tribeca FF Announces 10 More Women-Directed Films
The Tribeca Film Festival (April 16–27) announced the second half of its 2014 line-up yesterday, and there are some big names among the ten female-helmed selections. Kelly Reichardt’s fifth film...
BBC, Directors UK Launch Workshops to Help Women Directors Find Work
Remember the “cast-iron ceiling” for women directors in the British film industry that Sally Potter mentioned last week? The BBC and Directors UK (Britain’s version of the DGA) are taking a...
First Half of 2014 Tribeca Line-Up Announced; Women-Directed Films Make Up 25%
The Tribeca Film Festival (April 16–27) announced the first half of its 2014 line-up earlier this week, and women’s representation at the festival could both be better and worse. Among the...
NYU’s Fusion FF: Celebrating Women in Film, Television, & New Media
Women behind the camera are rarelyacknowledged in the film industry. As a reader of Women and Hollywood, you already know this. In fact, weall know the sad statistics generated by the recent...
Frozen is First Woman-Directed Movie to Make $1 Billion
Women want to see movies about women. And since women buy the majority of movie tickets (and boys and men will buy tickets to watch the adventures of female protagonists), movies about women...
Paramount to Distribute Ava DuVernay’s Selma
Director Ava DuVernay’s Martin Luther King, Jr. biopic Selma just got a big boost through a distribution deal with Paramount. Produced by Oprah Winfrey, Selma will be the third narrative feature...
Sally Potter on the Cast Iron Ceiling for Women Directors
In preparation for a career retrospective next month at the Bradford International Film Festival and the publication of her book Naked Cinema, Sally Potter answered some questions for the Guardian...
SXSW’s New Gamechanger Award to Help Fund Women-Directed Films
Men and women may enter film school at the same rate these days, but 90–95% of the directing jobs in Hollywood still go to male filmmakers. Gamechanger Films is one of the many players trying to...
Special Report: Women Directors in January 2014
While Frozen continues its box-officedominance (with over $360 million in domestic grosses and a new sing-along version intheaters), the Mickey Mouse short that accompanies it, “Get a Horse!,”...
Five Women Directors Win at Berlinale
Representing five countries on three continents, a quintet of female filmmakers won honors at the 2014 Berlinale but none in the main competition section. Australian Sophie Hyde took home the...
Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken Gets Olympic Preview
Angelina Jolie’s Christmas 2014 release Unbroken looks like it will be the highest-profile woman-directed picture since Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty. The Louis Zamperini biopic got a...
UCLA Releases Scathing Report on Diversity in Film and TV
Just when you thought it was safe to be hopeful again, here comes another reality check. The Bunche Center at UCLA has released its annual “Hollywood Diversity Report” to remind us that we’re...
Catherine Hardwicke and Marti Noxon Get Series Orders
Cable just keeps getting better. Catherine Hardwicke and Marti Noxon have announced separate TV projects, both rather intriguing. Hardwicke, who’s built her career on young-adult fare like...
Berlinale Women Directors: Meet Celina Murga
Argentine director Celina Murga was thrust into the international film scene when she was chosen by Martin Scorsese to participate in the Rolex Mentor and Protege Arts Initiative several years ago....
Berlinale Dispatch 1: Off the Plane and Into the Competition
I didn’t get to attend the beginning of the Berlin International Film Festival because the Athena Film Festival overlapped with the first weekend of the Berlinale. But I hopped on a plane the day...
Berlinale Women Directors: Meet Sophie Fillieres
Paris-born Sophie Fillieres is the director of five films and the screenwriter of several other features. Her latest work, If You Don’t, I Will, follows a long-time couple, played by Emmanuelle...
Berlinale Women Directors: Meet Gina Kim
South Korea-born director Gina Kim is best known for the critically acclaimed drama Never Forever (2007), starring Vera Farmiga as a woman struggling to conceive a child with her infertile husband....
Berlinale Women Directors: Meet Anja Marquardt
Writer-director Anja Marquardt was born and raised in Berlin when the city was still divided in two. Her personal and national background have strongly shaped her artistic interests. “Having felt...
New Fellowship for Women Playwrights Announced
New York City’s Drama League and Broadway director Michael Mayer have announced the creation of the Beatrice Terry Fellowship. The fellowship will support the development of an original work from...
Julie Delpy to Direct a Sixth Feature
Julie Delpy has announced plans to write and direct her sixth film, A Dazzling Display of Splendor. Variety reports that the film is set during “the early days of silent films and the automobile...
Study: Female Movie Stars’ Paychecks Decrease Rapidly After Age 34
On the hit show New Girl, Zooey Deschanel’s character Jess is finally embarking on responsible adulthood. In real life, though, the perpetually youthful Deschanel apparently stands at the...
SXSW Festival Lineup Features 20 Features from Women Directors
Of the 115 features that will play at the South by Southwest Festival in March 7–15, women filmmakers will be represented in 20, or about 17%, of them. Two of the eight films competing for the...
Donna Langley Becomes Second Most Powerful Woman in Hollywood
On Sunday, The New York Times published a great profile of Donna Langley, the Chairwoman of Universal Pictures. The article coincided with the announcement that Langley’s contract at NBCUniversal...
Interview: Run and Jump Director Steph Green on Families in Flux and Discovering Will Forte’s Dramatic Side
The January doldrums are over. The first great movie of 2014 has arrived: Oscar-nominated director Steph Green’s Run and Jump, her feature debut. Run and Jump centers on an Irish woman named...
Infographic: Women in Filmmaking at Sundance
Though the 2014 lineup at the Sundance was disappointingly low on women directors, the festival remains committed to advancing the ranks of women directors in the industry. Two years ago, Sundance...
Capturing Truth through Fiction in South Africa
The story of how I found my way to film is a funny one. I was living in Paris, and I had no money. I was working as a waitress and a babysitter, pretty much doing everything I could to feed myself....
To Sue Or Not to Sue: What History Teaches Us About Equality in Hollywood
When the Director Guild of America’s Women’s Steering Committee was officiallyestablished in 1979, women comprised just 0.5% of episodic TV directoremployment. One half of one percent! According...
Sundance Women Directors: Meet Martha Stephens
Raised in the hills of Appalachian Kentucky, Land Ho! co-director Martha Stephens longed to create films celebrating and investigating her native land and people. A graduate of the North Carolina...
More Women Directors Announced for Berlinale
Sadly, not a whole lot of them. Of the 36 films screening at the Berlin International Film Festival’s Panorama event, “an overview of current international fictional-feature production,” only...
What Happened to the Women Directed Films from the Sundance Class of 2013?
The 2013Sundance Film Festival was notable for the number of women directors,particularly in the U.S. Dramatic and Documentary Competitions — where halfwere female filmmakers. As Sundance 2014...
Women Directors Comprise 33% of Berlinale Forum
“There is no lack of female directors.” That’s one of the main take-aways from Oscar-nominated director Lexi Alexander’s recent post on the institutional sexism plaguing the movie industry....
An Oscar-Nominated Director Gets Real About How Women Are Treated in Hollywood
The following is cross-posted from Lexi Alexander’s blog with permission from the author. Editor’s Note: The post below is very important. This is a woman director standing up for herself and...
Women Directors Nominated in Nearly Every Narrative Category at DGA-TV Awards
Television is much kinder to women. The opportunities are greater, the stories richer, riskier, and more varied. TV isn’t a haven for women by any means, but they do get more chances to prove...
The New DGA/Studio Agreement: Nothing New for Women
Yesterday, the DGA voted by “an overwhelming margin” to ratify a new contract between its members and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). DGA President Paris Barclay...
10 Highest-Grossing Films of 2013 by Women Directors
As we previously reported, 2013 was the year of the box-office heroine, with girl protagonists headlining the #1 (Hunger Games: Catching Fire) and #4 (Frozen) most popular films of the year. For...
Jane Campion to Lead Cannes 2014 Jury
The Cannes Film Festival has selected New Zealand director Jane Campion to preside over the 2014 jury. Campion has been one of the most vocal critics within the industry of Hollywood’s...
Athena Film Fest Lineup Announced
The Athena Film Festival, the Women and Hollywood-affiliated event co-founded by Melissa Silverstein, has announced the lineup for its fourth annual showcase of works by women directors and about...
What the F@#- is Cancer and Why Does Everybody Have It?
I’ve been around a bit in this business. I came up throughthe ranks of production and then moved into post, all the while writingand working towards helming a film of my own to make my life...
What It’s Like to Be a Woman Director in a Country with a Tiny Film Industry
I’m often askedwhat it’s like to be a woman working in the film industry. My answer? Depends on the context. While I am aware of the dismal statistics on gender inequality in Hollywood and what...
Make Her as Likeable as Possible and Other Advice Filmmakers Should Ignore
My narrative feature, Vino Veritas, opens with a wife and husband arguing. Lauren, a former globe-trotting photojournalist and adventurer, expresses her extreme dissatisfaction with her current...
Exclusive Trailer: Hannah Espia’s Transit
In 2010, Israel began deporting the children of migrant workers, many of whom were fluent only in Hebrew and had never seen the land of their parents. First-time director Hannah Espia’s Transit...
The High and Low Points of 2013
This was a very interesting year for writing about issues related to women in entertainment. On the one hand, I feel very hopeful and think we may have hit a tipping point with the box-office...
TV Superlatives of 2013
All this week, Women and Hollywood will run our own “Best of” lists to honor and celebrate the year’s best women-directed and women-centric movies and TV shows. See our previous posts on the...
Maria Friedman Talks Directing Merrily We Roll Along
Last summer when I was in London, I had the opportunity to see one of the most under-rated shows of Stephen Sondheim’s career, Merrily We Roll Along. It’s got some of his best songs, but as a...
Director Jasmila Zbanic Is Wary of Quotas for Women Directors
Quota is a dirty word in our supposed meritocracy. But it’s a less contentious, even normal, practice in other parts of the world. Sweden, for example, recently mandated that “funding shall be...
10 Films from Women Directors, Screenwriters, or Stars Added to National Film Registry
The National Film Registry has announced its 2013 list of “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” films to be preserved by the Library of Congress, and 10 of its 25 selections...
Less than 10% of Oscar-Eligible Films Directed by Women
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have released their list of films eligible for the 2014 Oscars, and of the 289 films that qualified for Oscar consideration, a paltry 25, or 8.6%,...
Infographic: Women and Hollywood — Better Luck Next Year…Or Next Decade
Change is the keyword in Hollywood these days. A globalizing marketplace, the exportation of work from Los Angeles to every other corner of the world, the replacement of celluloid by digital, and the...