#Women Directors
Helen Hunt to Write, Direct, Produce and Star in Ride
Helen Hunt is writing, directing, producing and starring in Ride. This will be her second directing gig following the 2007 film Then She Found Me. The film focuses on a 20 year...
Gwyneth Horder-Payton: A Woman Who Specializes in Directing Men
At a panel of directors who work on FX shows at the Television Critics Association press tour in Los Angeles on Sunday, one of the reporters in the room asked newly-minted Directors Guild of America...
TIFF Announces Documentary Line Up
Last week, the 2013 Toronto Film Festival began announcing its line up. However that came with dismaying news for female directors–out of the 16 galas not one was directed by a woman. And of...
August Film Preview
It’s been a depressing summer for women at the box office but things are looking up…heading into August, there are a several great women centric, directed and written films to look...
Nine for IX: Swoopes Directed by Hannah Storm Premieres July 30
Sheryl Swoopes is one of the greatest women’s basketball players to have ever graced the court. Those early seasons after she had her son and she was playing on the Houston Comets when...
Women Directed Documentaries on HBO’s Fall Line Up
HBO announced their Fall 2013 documentary line up and it’s ruled by women directed features. They’ll be airing docs from Whoopi Goldberg, Andrea and Sean Fine and Cynthia Wade....
New Trailer Watch: After Tiller Directed by Martha Shane and Lana Wilson
I saw After Tiller when it premiered at Sundance. It is a film that needs to be seen and is so relevant to our times and the continued assaults on women’s reproductive freedom....
Film News Round Up for July 26th: Updates on Gone Girl, Nicole Holofcener’s Latest and Melissa McCarthy as a Spy
Here’s a news round up of some of the most notable news from the past couple days. Drew Barrymore is producing Animal –a horror film for the Chiller network about a group of friends who...
Kimberly Peirce’s Carrie and Diablo Cody’s Paradise Go Head to Head on October 18th
It’s not like we get that many women directed films so it is always baffling films — especially such high profile films like Kimberly Peirce’s remake of Carrie and Oscar winner...
Weekly Update for July 26: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening This Weekend The To Do List – Written and Directed by Maggie Carey The teen sex comedy is a staple subgenre of teen films. Porky’s, Revenge...
Cross Post: Heroines of Cinema: The 10 Most Exciting Young Female Directors in the World Today
This week, the British Film Institute released statistics revealing that a mere 14 feature films were directed by women in the UK last year, compared to 164 by men....
Maggie Carey’s The To Do List Reinvents the Teen Sex Comedy
The teen sex comedy is a staple subgenre of teen films. Porky’s, Revenge of the Nerds and American Pie are just some of the films that have brought sex puns and now grossly iconic...
70th Venice International Film Festival Announces Line Up
The 70th annual Venice International Film Festival announced their line up today and it’s very thin on women directed films. There are only two women directed films out of the 20 films that...
Guest Post: A Rising Tide: Women in Independent Documentary Production
As a documentary director and producer, I am surrounded by women working and thriving in the entertainment industry. The documentary realm has long had a reputation for being more open to...
Carey Mulligan to Reteam with Writer Abi Morgan for The Fury
Carey Mulligan is in early talks to join director Sarah Gavron’s The Fury, written by Abi Morgan. The film will focus on the suffragette movement in the UK. This is the second time that...
Report From London: Women Directors and Screenwriters in Decline According to New BFI Statistics
The BFI’s Stats Yearbook for 2013 was published this week and provides an unsettling wake up call for women working as screenwriters and directors in the UK. Only 25 of 187...
Natalie Portman to Direct, Write and Star in A Tale of Love and Darkness
Natalie Portman just received a grant from the Jerusalem Film Fund to write, direct and star in an adaptation of Amos Oz’s memoir, A Tale of Love and Darkness. Taking place in the 1940s...
Toronto International Film Festival Announces Galas and Special Presentations for 2013
This morning the folks at the Toronto Film Festival rolled out the beginning of the line-up — the galas and the special presentations. These are the film where we see the biggest...
Sticking Together
Having recently completed my first feature film, Arcadia, I’m occasionally asked in q&a’s what my experience has been directing a feature as a woman. In truth, I don’t often...
Sony Pictures Classics Only Counting on Women for Austenland
Sony Pictures Classics (SPC) has made a calculated decision that the audience for the upcoming Jerusha Hess (who co-wrote Napoleon Dynamite) directed film will be predominantly women. They are...
Celebrate the 18th Anniversary of Amy Heckerling’s Clueless
I remember watching Clueless for the first time when I was in 5th grade. It was immediately my favorite movie because I wanted all of Cher’s clothes, her electronic wardrobe and thought Paul...
Outfest Review Roundup: Road Trips, True Love and Iconic Queer Memoirs
This year’s Outfest Los Angeles has yet again proven why they are one of the best LGBT film festivals in the country. They’ve had a spectacular line up of LGBT films including a few we...
Weekly Update July 19th: Women Centric, Written and Directed Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening This Weekend Girl Most Likely – Directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, written by Michelle Morgan Kristen Wiig could have made another...
2013 Emmy Nominated Women React to Nominations
As we reported yesterday, the caliber, talent and diversity of women nominated for the 2013 Emmy Awards is incredible. We have writers and directors like Lena Dunham and Allison Anders earning...
Guest Post: There She Is: From Festival Rejections To Online Success
In film school you learn that there is an established process once you’re done with your film. After hours slaving away in an edit room, you start applying to festivals and hope for the...
Looking at the 2013 Emmy Nominated Women
Looking at this year’s Emmy Awards a couple of things are clear. TV, like films has changed. Cable had been infiltrating the Emmy’s for years but now there is Netflix, maybe soon...
Women Directed Films at the 2013 Locarno Film Festival
The line up for the Locarno Film Festival was unveiled today, the first under new artistic director Carlo Chatrian. The festival runs from August 7-17th and has a diverse slate of films ranging from...
Jane Campion on Television, Women and Being ‘Untameable’
In a new interview with The Telegraph, Jane Campion talks at length about Top of the Lake–her excellent miniseries which just premiered in the UK starring Elisabeth Moss as a detective looking...
Cross Post: Why Women Should Get The Jobs
In a recent episode of the television series Mad Men, two advertising agencies merge. Each agency has a single woman on their creative team and one woman is told she’s...
Why Talking About Women Directors Matters
When I started doing this work six years ago, and when I spoke about the importance of talking about women directors, about the importance of their voices, I was basically talking to the mirror....
Guest Post: Interview with Paula Ortiz
Paula Ortiz’s terrific feature debut Chrysalis aka De tu ventana a la mía is a film of perseverance of spirit. With images that resemble a Braque painting one minute, a Dutch master the next,...
Sundance Institute Awards Documentary Grants
The Sundance Institute awarded 29 documentaries grants from their Documentary Film Program and Fund. Combined all the films will receive over $550,000 in grants. Here are the women directed...
xoxosms directed by Nancy Schwartzman to Air on PBS July 15th
Nancy Schwartzman’s short documentary, xoxosms, will be airing on PBS on July 15th. Schwartzman’s doc follows the romance between Gus and Jiyun–seemingly opposites in every...
Directors Tia Lessin and Carl Deal Use Kickstarter to Replace PBS Funding
Documentarians Tia Lessin and Carl Deal made a big wave with their film, Trouble the Waters about Hurricane Katrina. They got funding through PBS to make their new film that examined the role...
Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken Makes Moves
Angelina Jolie’s second directorial feature Unbroken now has a release date and a star. Written by Joel and Ethan Coen, Jolie’s next feature is based on Laura Hillenbrand’s...
Ava DuVernay To Take on Martin Luther King Jr. Biopic Selma
Ava DuVernay has signed on with Plan B (Brad Pitt’s company) and Pathe UK to helm Selma, a biopic on civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. The film will focus on the voting rights...
Trailer Watch: Austenland – Directed by Jerusha Hess
Jerusha Hess’s feature debut, Austenland, follows the very single Jane (Keri Russell) who has been obsessed with the works of Jane Austen since she was young. However, her status as...
Trailer for Kim Cattrall in Sweet Bird of Youth
I’m kicking myself for not getting a ticket to see Sweet Bird of Youth when I was in London last week especially since Kim Cattrall has been so outspoken on the issue of aging and women and...
Cross Post: Dear Hollywood: Hiring Women Directors Could Rescue the Superhero Movie. Love, Half the Human Race
The superhero picture is suffering from female trouble, and not just because a franchise based on Wonder Woman keeps going in and out of development limbo. Any creature on screen minus a...
Trailer Watch – The Lifeguard – Directed by Liz W. Garcia
We wrote last week about Liz W. Garcia’s amazing and perfect quote about women working as directors in a recent interview. Garcia’s latest film, The Lifeguard, premiered at Sundance and...
Guest Post: Who Says There Are No Women Onscreen This Summer? Susan Seidelman’s The Hot Flashes Hits Theatres This Weekend
The best surprise of this summer is Susan Seidelman’s new film The Hot Flashes, opening in selected theaters on July 12 and starring Brooke Shields, Daryl Hannah, Virginia Madsen, Wanda...
Sofia Coppola’s Career in a Nutshell
Sofia Coppola dissected her career with the website totalfilm.com down to a four minute...
Trailer Watch: Afternoon Delight – Directed by Jill Soloway
Jill Soloway’s directorial debut, Afternoon Delight, was a big hit out of Sundance with great reviews and winning the Dramatic Directing Award. The film follows Rachel (Kathryn Hahn) a...
LAFF Interview with Molly Green, Stephanie Dziczek and Meg Charlton of Forev
I’m not ashamed to admit that I can never pass up a romantic comedy–no matter how bad they can get. It’s a genre that can be extremely accessible–looking at stories about...
Interview with Ava DuVernay – Director of Venus Vs.
Venus Vs.shows an unexpected side of Venus Williams. The film is all about the fight for equal pay for women in tennis. Billie Jean King led the charge in her day and the US Open started...
New Trailer: Adore – Directed by Anne Fontaine
Anne Fontaine’s latest, Adore, stars Naomi Watts and Robin Wright as two lifelong friends who both end up in crossing major boundaries when they each begin relationships with the other’s...
Weekly Update for June 28th and July 5th: Women Centric, Directed and Written Films Playing Near You
Films About Women Opening This Weekend and Next Weekend (we’re taking next Friday off) The...
Quote of the Day: Liz W. Garcia – The Obstacles That Women Face in Hollywood Are Particularly Difficult Because Many Can’t Be Seen, Or Easily Identified…
I came across this interview from Go Into the Story with writer/director Liz W. Garcia whose film The Lifeguard premiered at Sundance in 2013 and will be coming out on August 30th. It’s a...
Beth McCarthy-Miller to Direct Mean Moms
New Line has just hired Beth McCarthy-Miller to direct the comedy, Mean Moms. Don’t worry, it’s not a sequel to 2004’s Mean Girls but both films are based on books by Rosalind...
Trailer Watch: The New Black – Directed by Yoruba Richen
In honor of a historic day in American history, we bring you the new trailer for Yoruba Richen’s documentary The New Black which just won the AFI Docs Film Festival Audience Award and...
Guest Post: Wrap Up from the Human Rights Film Festival
The Human Rights Watch Film Festival just ended, exhibiting some beautiful and undeniably poignant tales that are not always told, nor heard. Bringing together stories from across the globe,...