#Women Directors
Sundance 2019 Women Directors: Meet Gurinder Chadha – “Blinded by the Light”
Gurinder Chadha’s award-winning films have earned over $300 million at the international box office. Her film credits include “Bhaji on the Beach,” “Bend It Like Beckham,” and...
Weekly Update for January 25: Women Centric, Directed, and Written Films Playing Near You
FILMS ABOUT WOMEN OPENING Ánimas – Written and Directed by Laura Alvea and Jose F. Ortuño (Available on Netflix) When her best friend Abraham’s father is killed in a mysterious accident, a...
Sundance 2019 Women Directors: Meet Minhal Baig – “Hala”
Minhal Baig is a writer and director. In 2017, she was chosen as a directing mentee for Ryan Murphy’s Half Foundation Directing Mentorship. Currently, she is a story editor on Netflix’s...
Sundance 2019 Women Directors: Meet Irene Taylor Brodsky – “Moonlight Sonata: Deafness in Three Movements”
Irene Taylor Brodsky is an Oscar-nominated, Emmy and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker. Her first feature film, “Hear and Now,” won the Sundance Film Festival Audience Award in 2007 as well as a...
Study: Sundance Boasts Impressive Pipeline of Women & POC Directors, But Still Has Work to Do
Sundance 2019 is in full swing but the Sundance Institute isn’t resting on its laurels. Far from it. The org released a study with the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, entitled...
Sundance 2019 Women Directors: Meet Rachel Leah Jones – “Advocate”
Rachel Leah Jones is a critically acclaimed documentary filmmaker and producer whose work focuses on Israel and Palestine. Her directing credits include “500 Dunam on the Moon,”...
Sundance Pic “Hala” Adopted the Inclusion Rider
Written and directed by Minhal Baig, “Hala” is a coming-of-age story centering around a 17-year-old girl (Geraldine Viswanathan) raised in a conservative Muslim household. The film is...
Sundance 2019 Women Directors: Meet Mirrah Foulkes – “Judy and Punch”
Mirrah Foulkes is an award-winning Australian actor, writer, and director. Foulkes has directed three short films: “Dumpy Goes to the Big Smoke,” “Florence Has Left The...
Sundance 2019 Women Directors: Meet Rachel Lears – “Knock Down the House”
Rachel Lears is a director, writer, producer, and cinematographer. She is a 2013 Sundance Creative Producing Fellow and director of the Emmy-nominated documentary “The Hand That Feeds,” which was...
Trailer Watch: Patricia Clarkson Investigates a Murder, Time, & Space in “Out of Blue”
“Do you know your place in the universe?” A new trailer for “Out of Blue” doesn’t shy away from the big questions. Far from a typical police procedural, Carol...
Sundance 2019 Women Directors: Meet Chinonye Chukwu – “Clemency”
Chinonye Chukwu is a filmmaker, educator, and social justice advocate. “Clemency” is her second feature film. The script was a 2017 Athena List winner for best feature script featuring a female...
Joanna Hogg Lands Distribution for “The Souvenir – Part 2” Before “Part 1’s” Sundance Premiere
Another installment of “The Souvenir” is in the works. Ahead of the film’s world premiere at Sundance 2019, A24 has snagged North American rights for its sequel, Deadline confirms....
Chicken & Egg Award Winners and (Egg)celerator Lab Participants Announced
Chicken & Egg Pictures has confirmed the 2019 recipients of the Chicken & Egg Award (formerly the Breakthrough Filmmaker Award) and the selected titles for the (Egg)celerator Lab (formerly...
Sundance 2019 Women Directors: Meet Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe – “Greener Grass”
Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe are an award-winning writing and directing team. DeBoer and Luebbe recently directed two episodes of TruTV’s “Adam Ruins Everything,” and in 2017, they sold a...
Sundance 2019 Women Directors: Meet Tayarisha Poe – “Selah and the Spades”
Tayarisha Poe is a storyteller from West Philly. She was chosen as one of the “25 new faces of independent film” by Filmmaker magazine in 2015, and in 2016 she received the Sundance...
Lilly Wachowski to Co-Write & Co-Direct “Work in Progress” Series Starring Abby McEnany
Abby McEnany and Tim Mason’s pilot, “Work in Progress,” won’t be premiering at Sundance until Tuesday but it’s becoming a series — and a big name has already come...
Sundance 2019 Women Directors: Meet Alice Waddington – “Paradise Hills”
Alice Waddington’s first short 2015’s “Disco Inferno,” was invited to 65 international film festivals, including Fantastic Fest, where it won Best Director and Best Feature...
Glasgow Film Fest 2019: Over Half of the Films Up For the Audience Award Are Women-Directed
The Glasgow Film Festival (GFF) has announced its 2019 lineup and — in news that’s most welcome considering the Oscars failed to nominate a woman director again — most of the films...
Sundance 2019 Women Directors: Meet Sacha Polak – “Dirty God”
Sacha Polak is an award-winning director and screenwriter. Her feature films “Hemel” and “Zurich” were both screened ata range of international film festivals. “Hemel” was awarded the...
Julia Reichert to Receive Outstanding Achievement Award at Hot Docs 2019
Documentarian Julia Reichert will soon have another honor to go with her Emmy and three Oscar noms. Hot Docs has announced it is presenting the director with its Outstanding Achievement Award at...
Sundance 2019 Women Directors: Meet Debra Eisenstadt – “Imaginary Order”
Debra Eisenstadt is a writer, director, producer, and editor. She wrote, produced, directed, shot, and edited the feature film “Daydream Believer,” which won a 2002 Independent Spirit...
Quote of the Day: Mindy Kaling & Nisha Ganatra on the Importance of Opening Doors for Others
A timely tale of inclusivity and women trying to make it in a male-dominated field, “Late Night” is among our most anticipated films screening at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Written...
Sundance 2019 Women Directors: Meet Ursula Macfarlane – “Untouchable”
Ursula Macfarlane is an award-winning UK-based documentary filmmaker. Her films include “One Deadly Weekend in America,” “Charlie Hebdo: Three Days That Shook Paris,” and...
Sundance 2019 Women Directors: Meet Penny Lane – “Hail Satan?”
Penny Lane has previously directed feature documentaries “The Pain of Others,” “Our Nixon,” and “Nuts!” Her work has screened at International Film Festival...
Sundance 2019 Women Directors: Meet Nisha Ganatra – “Late Night”
Nisha Ganatra is a director and producer of “Transparent,” which won a Golden Globe for best television series, musical or comedy, and received numerous Emmy nominations. She recently...
Trailer Watch: A Drama Teacher & Her Class Help Heal Their School in “Song of Parkland”
“We were in the middle of rehearsal, the middle of a scene, and I heard some shots,” Marjory Stoneman Douglas High drama teacher Melody Herzfeld recalls about February 14, 2018 in the...
Sundance 2019 Women Directors: Meet Lulu Wang – “The Farewell”
Lulu Wang is a classical-pianist-turned-filmmaker. Born in Beijing, raised in Miami, and educated in Boston, Wang is a recipient of the 2014 Chaz and Roger Ebert Directing Fellowship, awarded at the...
Exclusive: Women Take the Lead in Trailer for the 2019 Athena Film Festival
“The key to success is to look into the future and visualize what you want to become,” says Geena Davis in an exclusive new trailer for the 2019 Athena Film Festival. The actress and...
Sundance 2019 Women Directors: Meet Martha Stephens – “To the Stars”
Martha Stephens is a writer and director. Her micro-budget feature films “Passenger Pigeons” and “Pilgrim Song” premiered at the SXSW Film Festival. She co-wrote and co-directed “Land...
Sundance 2019 Women Directors: Meet Jennifer Baichwal – “Anthropocene: The Human Epoch”
Jennifer Baichwal has been directing and producing documentaries for over 20 years. Her award-winning films include “Let It Come Down: The Life of Paul Bowles,” “Watermark,”...
Kristin Scott Thomas Named as President of France’s Cesar Awards
Kristin Scott Thomas will serve as President of the French Academy’s most prestigious event, the Cesar Awards. The Hollywood Reporter confirmed the news. The British actress is a three-time...
Sundance 2019 Women Directors: Meet Kim Longinotto – “Shooting the Mafia”
Kim Longinotto is an award-winning documentarian known for making films about female outsiders and rebels. Among her 20 films, she has followed a teenager struggling to become a wrestling star in...
Quote of the Day: Regina King Says We Have to Give Women “More First Shots”
While accepting this year’s Golden Globe for supporting actress, “If Beale Street Could Talk” star Regina King made a public pledge: within two years, women will make up 50 percent...
Oscar Noms 2019: Another All-Male Directing Category
The 2019 Oscar nominations have been announced, and we can still count every woman who has ever been nominated for Best Director on one hand: Lina Wertmüller, Jane Campion, Sofia Coppola, Kathryn...
Sundance 2019 Preview: Films About Late Night Writers, Cliques, Toni Morrison, and More
Sundance 2019 begins this Thursday, January 24, and will be screening plenty of buzzy women-driven and women made films. As always, Women and Hollywood has put together some of the festival...
Trailer Watch: Two Mothers Collide in Laura Bispuri’s “Daughter of Mine”
A 10-year-old girl is torn between two mothers in a newly released trailer for “Daughter of Mine,” Laura Bispuri’s follow-up to her award-winning debut, “Sworn...
Trailer Watch: A Stepmother Crosses the Line in Sundance Pic “Queen of Hearts”
Sundance drama “Queen of Hearts” sees Anne (Trine Dyrholm), a happy lawyer, wife, and mother, upending her life and entering into an affair — with her husband’s troubled son,...
Weekly Update for January 18: Women Centric, Directed, and Written Films Playing Near You
FILMS ABOUT WOMEN OPENING Adult Life Skills – Written and Directed by Rachel Tunnard (Also Available on VOD) Anna (Jodie Whittaker) is stuck: she’s approaching 30, living like a hermit in her...
Trailer Watch: A Super-Powered Gugu Mbatha-Raw Can’t Save the World in “Fast Color”
Julia Hart’s new film sees Gugu Mbatha-Raw playing a woman with superhuman capabilities without superhuman ambitions. As someone in “Fast Color’s” trailer phrases...
Flipping the Script: Crowdfunding Picks
Creating change in any field requires flipping the script — that is, upending the status quo and redefining expectations. Fortunately, there are countless women who do just that every day,...
Vicky Jewson on Telling the Story of a Female Bodyguard in Noomi Rapace-Starrer “Close”
Vicky Jewson began her career at age 16, directing several short films. She founded her production company, Jewson Film, at age 18. Jewson made her feature directorial debut with the 2006’s...
Women Directed 60 Percent of Films Screening in Competition at SXSW 2019
Women-directed films once again dominate the Competition sections of the South by Southwest Conference and Festival. Just like last year, titles helmed and co-helmed by women account for 60 percent...
WIF LA Names 2018 Film Finishing Fund Recipients
Women In Film, Los Angeles (WIF LA) has awarded its 33rd annual Film Finishing Fund to nine projects about and/or made by women, a press release announced. The Fund provides cash grants and in-kind...
Berlinale 2019: 41% of Films Eligible for Top Honors in Competition Are Women-Directed
The Berlin International Film Festival has finalized its 2019 Competition. Of the 23 films selected, eight are helmed by women, or about 35 percent. That figure is more than double last year’s...
Trailer Watch: Pamela Adlon Has a Lot to Stress Over in Season 3 of “Better Things”
Pamela Adlon is on her knees puking in a toilet in a new trailer for “Better Things'” third season, and that’s the least of her problems. “Did you drink too much last night?...
Inaugural Coven Film Festival to Screen Shorts from Women Filmmakers
A press release has introduced the Coven Film Festival, a collection of world-class short films “made by women, for everyone.” Set to take place February 9 at the New People Cinema in San...
Upholding Gender Parity Pledge, Cannes Unveils Selection Committee for the First Time
The Cannes Film Festival is sticking to its word. Last year the fest signed the Gender Parity Pledge, promising to make its film selection process more transparent to the public — and inspired...
AFI Directing Workshop for Women Announces Class of 2020
Robin Cloud, Revati Dhomse, Ashley Eakin, Tiffany Huang, Marie Jamora, Bridget Moloney, Lara Panah-Izadi, and Nicole Taylor-Roberts are the AFI Directing Workshop for Women’s (DWW) Class of...
Trailer Watch: Juliette Binoche Is a Mad Scientist in Space in Claire Denis’ “High Life”
“There’s nothing to fear. Everything’s going to be fine,” says Juliette Binoche in a new trailer for “High Life,” Claire Denis’ English-language debut....
Sofia Coppola to Direct Apple and A24’s First Film, “On the Rocks”
Sofia Coppola is set to team up with Bill Murray for a third time. The frequent collaborators are joining forces for “On the Rocks,” Apple and A24’s first film partnership, and...
Trailer Watch: Tessa Thompson and Lily James Are Desperate and Broke in “Little Woods”
“Everything’s a mess and I’m always the one who has to clean it up,” says Tessa Thompson in the first trailer for “Little Woods.” The well-received Tribeca pic...