Mania Akbari is an internationally acclaimed filmmaker, artist, writer, and actress. Her provocative, revolutionary and radical films were recently the subject of retrospectives at the BFI, London (2013), the DFI, Denmark (2014), Oldenburg International Film Festival, Germany (2014) and Cyprus Film Festival [...]
Julie Dash has been making films and television for four decades, and is part of the LA Rebellion generation of filmmakers. Her feature Daughters of the Dust (1991) was the first full-length film by an African-American woman with general theatrical release in the United States. Dash is the [...]
Shahrbanoo Sadat is a 20 year old Afghan woman, scriptwriter and director. She is based in Kabul. She studied documentary film-making at the “Atelier Varan Kabul” a French Workshop. Her first short fiction “Vice Versa One” was selected at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight in 2011. [...]
Desperate Optimists are Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor. Born in Dublin, Ireland, they studied theatre in the UK in the late 80s. From 1992 to 1999 they toured six internationally acclaimed devised theatre shows. Between 2000 and 2003 they directed a number of [...]
Amy Merry is a film and television graphic designer, nominated for the Craft & Design Award for Best Titles, Royal Television Society, for her work with Yianni Papanicolaou on BBC Two's THE HOUR, where she was also an art director. She has also worked [...]
The Levelling receives its world premiere tonight at the Toronto International Film Festival. In our final diary instalment writer/director Hope Dickson Leach (HDL) talks to her husband Phil Miller (PJEM) about primary parenting, routine and freezers full of food. HDL: The [...]
Tonight, PREVENGE receives its world premiere at Venice Critics' Week. Below, in our third instalment of The Prevenge diaries, Alice Lowe talks us through the edit process with a tiny baby on her lap. I find that with films, as with [...]
Here's our second instalment from Alice Lowe's diary on making her first feature film, Prevenge, whose world premiere will open Critics' Week at the 2016 Venice Film Festival. Read the first instalment, about the shoot, here. It’s upsetting and sad that people put off having [...]
I work for myself, like many people in film & TV, so maternity leave hasn’t really been an option for me in the traditional sense. With both my children I had a very notional three weeks off, which in reality involved [...]
Kelly O'Brien is an independent filmmaker and mother of three who lives in Toronto. Her film “Softening” won the grand jury prize in the shorts competition at the 2013 DOC NYC festival and appeared in the New York Times online. She recently exhibited [...]
Joeli Brearley is founder of the project and campaign Pregnant Then Screwed, a place for women to tell their stories of pregnancy and maternity discrimination to expose this systemic problem and make a case for recognition, change and respect. She writes about [...]
Making a film is hard. Making a film and having a baby is a lot harder! Back in 2006, I was a busy freelancer working on popular factual shows for broadcasters like the BBC, Channel 4 and Discovery, travelling the world and [...]
As a young producer’s assistant, then script editor, then head of development, I was too busy working and chasing the next bit of development funding to think about kids. But by 30, I’d built up enough regular freelance script editing clients [...]
Men and women are different. Whether because of our genes or conditioning. We experience, at home and on the street, playground or onscreen, different qualities prized in females and males. Big cinema stories internationally exported most obviously in the superhero franchises, [...]
We are Co-Directors, Co-Writers and Co-Parents. Oh yeah, and we’ve been married for nearly a decade. Not that we have much time to think about such trivial things like love. We shot our first feature, THE WHITE KING, in Hungary last [...]
I have recently come to three realizations about being a filmmaker and a parent. The first is that everything comes down to money. The second is that the challenges facing parents in the industry disproportionately affect women. The third is that [...]
Maja Borg was born in Norrköping, Sweden, in 1982. She is an Artist and Film Director, additionally working as Director of Photography and Editor. In 2005, Borg’s ‘To She In Me’ was selected for the Culture Bound 7, East Wing Collection at [...]
Penny Woolcock is a writer and director with a background in radical theatre and the trade union movement. She has worked across film, television, radio, and live opera, and made both fiction films and documentaries. She is best known for the [...]
In 2010 when my son was a week old my friend Corinna McFarlane came to meet him. She also wanted to tell me that she was going away for a while, to write a script about her unknown ancestors in Scotland. [...]
Sometimes I feel like an Uber driver in Los Angeles. I’ve moved to a city where my skill is necessary and much valued, but comes with no job security. And definitely no tips. I’m a freelance Archive Producer, which involves footage [...]
