News
For the first time since the pandemic, the Women’s Weekend Film Challenge (WWFC) is taking place, with the goal of addressing the off-screen gender gap. Applications are now open for the fifth...
Features
As anti-LGTBQIA+ attacks ramp up all over the country, it is more important than ever to pay attention to what LGBTQ people are saying in our own words. As the freedom to discuss the very existence...
Filmmaking incubator First Flights and entertainment financier/production house Goldfinch are teaming up to support a woman artist as she creates a short film. A press release has announced the...
One of the things that independent cinema does best is tell stories of relationships found outside of the dominant culture. The mainstream tends to focus on romantic relationships between men and...
Women In Film, Los Angeles (WIF) will fund three shorts from up-and-coming women and nonbinary filmmakers, with support from Google. Applications are now being accepted for the inaugural WIF Shorts...
Awards
The Future of Film Is Female (FOFIF) has awarded its latest round of funding. The org, which supports female filmmakers with financial support, exhibition, and promotion, presented Spring 2021 grants...
There is not one, singular way to be a woman, but looking at the ways women are represented in mainstream media, one may start to believe that’s the case. All too often, the “ideal”...
Documentary film series and distribution platform Still I Rise has earmarked a $50,000 grant for women artists and filmmakers. According to Deadline, the Still I Rise Fellowship will provide...
You don’t have to be a daredevil to feel the exhilarating danger of tightrope walking. In fact, life often forces us to occupy roles that are incompatible with our own desires, that sometimes...
Shira Baron and Marian De Pontes are the winners of the seventh annual Horizon Award, an honor presented to emerging female filmmakers. According to Screen Daily, Baron and De Pontes will both...
Festivals
This year’s edition of the Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival has confirmed its final week’s titles and events. The fest, an annual affair founded by African Voices magazine and...
The fourth annual New York Women in Film & Television (NYWIFT) Online Shorts Festival is now accepting submissions, a press release has announced. NYWIFT members are welcome to enter their short...
Women filmmakers are redefining what intimacy and relationships may look like in the future — not through making tired critiques of dating apps, but rather by offering expansive interpretations...
Women In Film LA, ReFrame, and IMDbPro have launched a contest for women and nonbinary filmmakers who have been keeping creative during quarantine. Per a press release, the Curbside Shorts Two-Minute...
Understanding yourself rarely comes easy. Finding out who you are — from which labels you prefer to use, to your relationship to sexuality, and your bodily autonomy — takes time, and discoveries...
We all eventually face barriers of some kind. These barriers can be personal or professional, and often concern both ourselves and the families and communities we come from. Our latest crowdfunding...
Women and Hollywood has temporarily suspended our recommendations newsletter. We’ll be sharing some of the week’s highlights in TV, VOD, and streaming via blog posts. In “Marcy Learns...
A new opportunity has arisen “for film professionals and film enthusiasts who have already rewatched all the favorite series and movies, read all the books on the shelf, and played online games...
It seems like every day brings more cancellations, closings, and upsetting news. The coronavirus is affecting the whole world, not least of all the artists and creators who are trying to bring their...
Family can come with a lot of baggage, good and bad. Our latest crowdfunding picks examine all the complications of our familial relationships — the ones we choose and the ones we don’t...
Sometimes one decision can change your life forever; whether it be simply saying yes or no, deciding to go out or stay in, or making a more substantial, life-altering choice. These short films and...
COVID-19 is not preventing “Porcupine Lake” director Ingrid Veninger from making art — or from supporting fellow female filmmakers. According to a press release, Veninger is...
Trauma impacts all of us in different ways, and can come from many different places, whether they be our experiences with gender, race, and class, our family, or our friends. Our latest crowdfunding...
Comedy is an extremely effective — and often underrated — tool by which to tell important stories. Our latest crowdfunding picks use humor to examine a variety of important contemporary...
Fear is a powerful force. Whether we realize it or not, the things that scare us often guide how we move through the world. As a genre, horror aims to tap into our universal fears and challenge them...
Sometimes we can feel alienated and left out by the narratives portrayed in culture and media, particularly when they fail to address and include the unique experiences of those with marginalized...
Growing up can be tough — navigating personal identity and self-expression as well as increasingly complicated relationships with family and friends is no easy task, especially when factors...
Whether we like it or not, technology has changed the world we live in. Our communication has gotten faster, but maybe less personal. And the ways we understand ourselves and the people around us...
Boyish, a digital media company spotlighting content created by women, is teaming up with In The Know and Malka Media for a female filmmaker contest. Boyish will award five women-identifying...
Figuring out who you are — and who you want to be — can be a difficult process, especially in a world so eager to put limitations on which identities are considered acceptable. This is an...
Simply existing can be a confusing, scary, difficult endeavor. Many of us struggle with a lack of purpose, wish for better from life, or, even, know what we want but are prevented from getting it....
This month’s crowdfunding picks look at women who persevere — whether through daring feats, everyday moments that could mean life or death, or divulging something personal to someone they...
Modern Films and The Kering Foundation have selected the finalists for the second annual 16 Days 16 Films, a short film initiative inspired by the UN Women campaign 16 Days of Activism Against...
A person’s moral center starts developing at a young age, and continues to grow throughout their life — something we’re exploring in this month’s round of crowdfunding selections....
The Eva Haller Women Transforming Media Award is accepting submissions. Named for the human rights activist and philanthropist Eva Haller, the honor recognizes short films telling women’s...
Wavelength Productions, the company that brought us Rachel Lears’ feminist political doc “Knock Down the House,” has announced a grant supporting first-time female filmmakers of...
Our latest round of VOD and web series picks takes on one of the most complicated, universal, and inescapable institutions in existence: family. Whether it centers on a nontraditional path towards...
HBO has announced submission information for its 2020 Asian Pacific American Visionaries (APAV) short film competition. Per Deadline, “Warrior” exec producer and CEO of Bruce Lee...
Los Angeles teens with filmmaking aspirations, this one’s for you. Nonprofit filmmaking program Ghetto Film School is now accepting applications for its AT&T Mentorship Content Lab, which...
In media, women’s pain is usually used to motivate men. So there’s a real demand for nuanced portrayals of female trauma, which looks at what women are actually going through — as...
Society has unspoken expectations for everyone, especially women. We’re expected to dress in a certain way, do our hair and makeup, be less aggressive with men. Then there are expectations for...
Media company Refinery29 and fashion brand Kate Spade are working together to provide opportunities to emerging women directors. According to WWD, the businesses are partnering on “Pilot Season,”...
If you’re a woman filmmaker with a love for the Great Outdoors, then The North Face has the grant for you. The apparel company has announced the Move Mountains Filmmakers Grant, “a...
The Walt Disney Company is offering directors from underrepresented communities the chance to “present diverse perspectives through the production of original, live-action short films for...
Reproductive rights are under attack across the country. And while women throughout Hollywood are making their own efforts to defend access to safe abortion nationwide, there is still work to be done...
Despite their place at the forefront of the women’s rights movement, queer women have long been marginalized, misunderstood, and underrepresented by media. The history and experiences of queer...
“Humor is just another defense against the universe,” Mel Brooks told Rolling Stone in 1978. This insight is perhaps even truer for women — we’ve often had to wield our senses...
Imagination, J.K. Rowling shared in her 2008 Harvard Commencement Speech, is “not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not” but also “the power that enables us...
CinemaStreet Pictures is hosting a contest for short scripts from female screenwriters. The CinemaStreet Women’s Short Screenplay Competition is accepting women-penned scripts of 20 pages or...
Join our weekly newsletter to stay up-to-date on women centric, directed, and written films and news. Newsletters are sent on Fridays at noon EST.