#Films
Pick of the Day: “Materna”
Jean (Kate Lyn Sheil), Mona (Jade Eshete), Ruth (Lindsay Burdge), and Perizad (Assol Abdullina) are four very different women with no connection to one another, besides the fact that they are on the...
Pick of the Day: “The Macaluso Sisters”
A fun day at the beach has unforeseen ripple effects in “The Macaluso Sisters,” Emma Dante’s adaptation of her play of the same name. Comprised of three parts that catch up with the...
August 2021 Film Preview
A history-making Sundance winner and a biopic about the Queen of Soul are among the most anticipated titles hitting theaters this August. Kicking off this month’s releases is “Pray...
Jane Campion’s “Power of the Dog,” Cannes Winner “Unclenching the Fists,” & More Added to TIFF Lineup
More films have been added to the Toronto International Film Festival’s 2021 lineup. An additional three titles will screen as Gala Presentations, two of which are directed or co-directed by...
Jane Campion’s “The Power of the Dog” Will Be New York Film Fest’s Centerpiece Film
The 59th New York Film Festival (NYFF) has named Jane Campion’s latest, “The Power of the Dog,” as its Centerpiece selection. A press release has announced the Western is set to...
“Cousins” Directors Ainsley Gardiner and Briar Grace-Smith on Exploring Indigenous Identity and Resilience
Ainsley Gardiner (Ngāti Pikiao, Ngāti Awa, Te Whānau-a-Apanui, Whakatōhea), has produced more than a dozen short and feature films, documentaries, and television drama series. Her first short...
Telefilm Canada Achieves Gender Parity, but Lags in Its Support of Women of Color
Telefilm Canada, Canada’s top film financier, has reached gender parity among the projects it funds. But the org still has some work to do. According to The Hollywood Reporter, there is still a...
TIFF Starts Unveiling Gala & Special Presentation Programs, 28 Percent of Titles Directed by Women
The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) has announced the first selections in its two highest-profile programs, Gala and Special Presentations. The 46th edition of the fest will include...
Trailer Watch: Rep. Barbara Lee Has Been “Speaking Truth to Power” Throughout Her Career
“I see myself more as a public servant, not necessarily a politician,” Congresswoman Barbara Lee tells us in the trailer for “Barbara Lee: Speaking Truth to Power.” From...
Pick of the Day: “No Ordinary Man”
In January 1989, jazz musician Billy Tipton died from a bleeding ulcer with his son, Billy Tipton, Jr., by his side. When the paramedics arrived, they and the younger Tipton discovered Billy —...
Trailer Watch: A Māori Family Finds Their Way Back to One Another in “Cousins”
“People go away or they die — your land, that’s where you belong,” we’re told in a new trailer for “Cousins.” The drama is based on Patricia Grace’s...
Swedish Film Institute & Netherlands Film Fund Launch International Fund to Support Underserved Filmmakers
The Swedish Film Institute and the Netherlands Film Fund are partnering on an initiative designed to support filmmakers who are too often denied funding. A press release announced that the two orgs...
Cannes 2021 Women Directors: Meet Kira Kovalenko – “Unclenching the Fists”
Kira Kovalenko was born in Nalchik, Russia. She graduated from Alexander Sokurov’s directing workshop at Kabardino-Balkarian State University in 2015. She made her feature directorial debut in 2016...
Cannes 2021 Women Directors: Meet Luàna Bajrami – “The Hill Where Lionesses Roar”
Self taught, Luàna Bajrami acquired experience through her collaborations with different filmmakers while practicing writing, editing, and directing through numerous amateur short film projects....
Pick of the Day: “Black Widow”
Natasha Romanoff aka Black Widow made her MCU debut in 2010’s “Iron Man 2.” In the intervening 11 years, she’s joined the Avengers, saved the world half a dozen times, and...
Cannes 2021 Women Directors: Meet Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic – “Murina”
Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic is a writer-director born in Dubrovnik and currently based in New York. Her short “Into the Blue” was nominated for a Student Academy Award, and won awards at...
Cannes 2021 Women Directors: Meet Nathalie Álvarez Mesén – “Clara Sola”
Nathalie Álvarez Mesén is a Costa Rican-Swedish writer and director. She is an alumna of Columbia University’s Graduate Film Program, the Berlinale Talents, and the TIFF Filmmaker Lab. Alvarez...
Cannes 2021 Women Directors: Meet Sandrine Kiberlain – “A Radiant Girl”
Sandrine Kiberlain is a French actress and singer. She received the César for Best Actress for her role in “9-Month Stretch.” The short film “Smile” was her first film as a director....
Cannes 2021 Women Directors: Meet Mina Mileva and Vesela Kazakova – “Women Do Cry”
After two decades in the British animation industry, Mina Mileva created Activist38 with actress Vesela Kazakova, whose leading roles earned her the Silver George at the Moscow International Film...
Cannes 2021 Women Directors: Meet Anaïs Volpé – “The Braves”
Anaïs Volpé is a self-taught screenwriter, filmmaker, and editor. In 2016, she self-produced “Heis,” a cross-media project which has been screened at international festivals and won the Jury...
Cannes 2021 Women Directors: Meet Teodora Ana Mihai – “La Civil”
Teodora Ana Mihai was born in Bucharest, Romania, during the Ceausescu Regime and moved to Belgium in 1989 with her parents. She went to film school in New York. She started working in Belgium as a...
Cannes 2021 Women Directors: Meet Anita Rocha da Silveira – “Medusa”
Born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Anita Rocha da Silveira has written, directed, and edited three short films: “The Noon Vampire,” “Handball,” and “The Living...
Teona Strugar Mitevska on Telling a Story About Having the Audacity to Define Yourself in “God Exists, Her Name is Petrunya”
Teona Strugar Mitevska was born in Macedonia. She started as a child actor, and trained as a painter and a graphic designer before studying in the MFA program in film at New York University’s...
Tribeca 2021 Directors: Meet Giselle Bailey and Nneka Onuorah – “The Legend of the Underground”
Giselle Bailey is a producer working across TV and commercial production. Her career started in contemporary art where she worked on public performance pieces aimed to disrupt reality. She went on to...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Kristine Stolakis – “Pray Away”
Interview by Cody Corrall Kristine Stolakis is a director whose films explore power, politics, and prejudice — and the way they unfold in real people’s lives. Stolakis’ directorial debut,...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Bernadette Wegenstein – “The Conductor”
Bernadette Wegenstein is an Austrian-born linguist, author, and documentary filmmaker living in Baltimore. She is a professor at Johns Hopkins University. Her films and books bring together her...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Macha Colón – “Perfume de Gardenias”
Macha Colón is Gisela Rosario Ramos, an undisciplined artist currently based in Puerto Rico. Her award-winning short documentary “El Hijo de Ruby” has been shown in international...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Corinne van der Borch and Tone Grøttjord-Glenne – “Sisters on Track”
Corinne van der Borch is a Dutch artist and award-winning documentary filmmaker based in Brooklyn. Her feature length documentary “Girl with Black Balloons,” about the oldest living resident of...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Maya Cueva and Leah Galant – “On the Divide”
Maya Cueva is a Latina award-winning director and producer with a background in radio and podcast producing. Her short documentary “The Provider” premiered at SXSW and was nominated for...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Andrea Nix Fine- “LFG”
Andrea Nix Fine is an Oscar, Emmy, and Peabody award-winning filmmaker. In 2021, she, along with her husband and partner Sean Fine, launched impact studio Change Content to develop true stories into...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Shannon Post – “Building a Bridge”
Shannon Post is a queer documentary filmmaker from Florida. She attended college in Orlando, and Pulse nightclub was a safe place for her and her friends to have fun and be out and proud. Her first...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Chanel James and Taylor Garron – “As of Yet”
Chanel James, also known as Dinosaur Hawk, is a director, writer, editor, and pop archivist who aims to create stories that highlight gradients of the human experience, encourage understanding, and...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Lauren Hadaway – “The Novice”
Lauren Hadaway is an LGBTQ+ writer and director with a background in sound editing and mixing. She briefly worked as a Dallas-based reality TV editor before moving to Los Angeles in 2012 to pursue a...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Suzanne Joe Kai – “Like a Rolling Stone: The Life & Times of Ben Fong-Torres”
Suzanne Joe Kai received two Emmy Award nominations and was named Best Woman News Reporter while a broadcast journalist at San Francisco’s NBC affiliate KRON-TV. She worked at KCBS Radio (CBS) and...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Nana Mensah – “Queen of Glory”
Nana Mensah is a Ghanaian-American actor, writer, and director. This summer, she will appear in a series regular role opposite Sandra Oh and Bob Balaban in Netflix’s “The Chair” and this fall,...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Laura Fairrie – “Lady Boss: The Jackie Collins Story”
Laura Fairrie previously directed “The Battle for Barking,” an observational feature documentary about the far-right in Britain that screened at The Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary...
Quiara Alegría Hudes on the Responsibility of Taking “In the Heights” from Stage to Screen
Writer-producer Quiara Alegría Hudes is a big believer in weaving in parts of her Latino heritage and culture into her storylines for a greater sense of reality. So when she was asked to join...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Jessica Kingdon – “Ascension”
New York-based Jessica Kingdon is a Chinese-American director and producer. She was named one of the “25 New Faces of Independent Film” by Filmmaker Magazine and selected for the 2020 DOC NYC...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Geeta Malik – “India Sweets and Spices”
Geeta Malik is an award-winning writer and director whose accolades include the inaugural Academy Gold Fellowship for Women and the Academy Nicholl Fellowship. Her short film “Beast” played at...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Heather O’Neill – “No Ordinary Life”
Heather O’Neill is an Emmy and Peabody Award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker. She produced “Help Us Find Sunil Tripathi,” which screened at the Hot Docs International Film Festival...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Samantha Aldana – “Shapeless”
Samantha Aldana is a New Orleans-based director and writer. Her work is heavily influenced by the storytelling traditions of her multicultural upbringing in the American South and the Caribbean....
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Gaysorn Thavat – “The Justice of Bunny King”
Gaysorn Thavat began her film career in 1995 working in the camera department. Starting as a clapper loader, she worked her way up to 1st AC before making the switch to directing with television...
Tribeca 2021 Women Directors: Meet Amber Sealey – “No Man of God”
Amber Sealey is an award-winning filmmaker. She is attached to direct “The Education of Shelby Knox” and a comedy pilot she wrote called “Sistered.” She has written scripts...
Tribeca 2021 Preview: Sisters Racing Their Way into History, Nigerians Fighting for LGBTQ+ Rights, & More
Slated to run from June 9-20 with a mix of online screenings and live in-person events at outdoor venues, Tribeca Film Festival is celebrating its 20th edition with a feature lineup that is 60...
Pick of the Day: “Port Authority”
When we asked writer-director Danielle Lessovitz why she wanted to make “Port Authority,” she told us, “I wanted to write about a connection, both romantic and familial, that...
Pick of the Day: “Plan B”
Given its subject matter and raunchy sense of humor, Natalie Morales’ teen comedy “Plan B” will probably draw comparisons to “Booksmart” and “Unpregnant.”...
Human Rights Watch Film Fest 2021 Women Directors: Meet Jana Matthes and Andrea Schramm – “Tacheles – The Heart of the Matter”
Jana Matthes and Andrea Schramm work as directors and producers for arte, 3sat, ARD, and ZDF. After studying journalism in Leipzig and directing in Potsdam-Babelsberg, they founded Schramm Matthes...
Human Rights Watch Film Fest 2021 Women Directors: Meet Brooke Swaney – “Daughter of a Lost Bird”
“Daughter of a Lost Bird” is Brooke Swaney’s first feature documentary. She recently made the Blacklist’s Inaugural Indigenous List with “Tinder On The Rez” along with...
Caroline Link on Standing Up to Fascism with Her New Film “When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit”
When Caroline Link first read the children’s book “When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit” as a young girl, she was immediately drawn to the story. The semi-autographical novel by Judith...
Pick of the Day: “Take Out Girl”
“Take Out Girl” is one of those films that really could’ve benefited from a bigger budget. That may sound like an insult, but it’s more of a lament. Starring and co-written by...
Human Rights Watch Film Fest 2021 Women Directors: Meet Ashley O’Shay – “Unapologetic”
Ashley O’Shay is a Chicago-based DP and documentarian whose work focuses on illuminating marginalized voices. Most recently, she filmed the final episode of Dr. Martens’ “Tough As You”...