Hope Dickson Leach's The Levelling diaries continues... “Oh and the cat’s shitting blood and might need to be put down.” “What?” “They’re fighting - I’ve got to go.” And so ends the conversation with my husband around bedtime on day 9 [...]
Helene Klodawsky is a veteran independent filmmaker – a passionate storyteller committed to portraying political and social struggles, as well as to exploring the documentary art form. Helene is known for poignant, daring films. Painted Landscapes of the Times (1986), Shoot and Cry (1988), Motherland [...]
I leave home to start prep in two and a half weeks. I’m almost ready. I’ve decided to leave my 3 year old behind. This is definitely the right decision for us, and it may have been obvious to others from [...]
When my son was born I was 27. I was an actress. I was doing well. Now 20 years later I realize that 27 is the high point of many an actress's career: whatever I had done, whether I had stuck to [...]
The first installment from Hope Dickson Leach on the making of The Levelling... My two little boys love animals, mud and poo - oh how they love poo - so I thought that bringing them on our location scout for a [...]
Kris Swanberg is the writer-director of the independent feature films It Was Great, But I Was Ready to Come Home, Marriage Material, Empire Builder and Unexpected, and director of the web series Young American Bodies. She has also appeared in films by her [...]
Ruth Fowler is a writer, screenwriter and vlogger. She has written about stripping in New York and about how the American medical industry fails mothers, and she was a Screen 2012 Star of Tomorrow. You can support her crowdfunder here. The photograph of Ruth [...]
Alexandra Hidalgo is a documentary filmmaker, an assistant professor at Michigan State University, and the co-founder and editor-in-chief of agnès films, a site for female filmmakers. Her current project is Vanishing Borders, a feature documentary telling the story of four immigrant women living in [...]
Debbie Isitt is one of the UK's most prolific directors. She is known for her improvisational style of working with actors, a model that has produced critical and box office hits like "Confetti", starring Martin Freeman and Jessica Hynes, which was nominated [...]
Romola Garai is an acclaimed actor, writer and director, twice nominated for Golden Globe awards and BIFA awards. 'Scrubber', which she wrote, directed and produced, was released as part of Soda Pictures' New British Cinema Quarterly in 2012. Since her breakout film role in I Capture [...]
Jeanie Finlay is a British artist and filmmaker. She set up Glimmer Films in 2008 to deliver ambitious, engaging and empathetic work for cinema, broadcast and exhibition. Her work includes the feature documentaries ORION: The Man Who Would Be King (Winner Grand Jury – Nashville), Panto! [...]
Computer-scientist-turned-filmmaker, Afia Nathaniel is the founder of Zambeel Films, an independent production company in Pakistan. Prior to filmmaking, she worked for the Power to Change Fund, and spoke internationally on the issue of violence against women and the role of artists as [...]
Tally Abecassis is a Montreal-based documentary filmmaker. She graduated from Concordia University, Montreal, in 1996 with a specialization in Communications Studies. Her documentaries, which have screened at international festivals and on Canadian TV, include Warshaw on the Main, about a group [...]
Marie-Hélène Cousineau formed the collective Arnait Ikajurtigiit (Women's Video Workshop, now Arnait Video Productions) in Igloolik, Nunavut, in 1991. She is its coordinator/trainer as well as an active collaborating producer. Cousineau has written about the experiences of women making video in Igloolik [...]
I couldn’t have made the movies I made without having kids. Academy Award-winning filmmaker Susanne Bier spoke to us from the shoot of The Night Manager (2016) in Morocco. A member of the Dogme 95 group, Bier is the model of a transnational [...]
Having my daughter, Nikita, is the best thing that has happened to me, personally and professionally. It is often assumed that having children halts careers but she made my career. Alex Kalymnios is a film and and TV drama director whose recent credits include the Lifetime/Sony TV movie [...]
When I was 9, my cousin Laura and I were brought onto the set of my mother Susanne Bier’s film The One and Only (1999) as extras. It was for the film’s last sequence, a wedding, and while I don’t remember [...]
I am a director, and father of two sons, currently aged 5 and 3. I was always determined not to let my insane choice of a career stop me from starting a family. I knew a few people who were constantly [...]
I wish I'd known I wanted to be a filmmaker years ago. You know, like one of those kids who taught themselves to edit on hooked-up VCRs and has been thinking in terms of shots all their lives. Who wrote their first screenplay [...]
I work in television arts documentaries as a producer-director. I worked my way into this position before I had children by working for several years as a researcher and assistant producer. I got pregnant while I was editing my first ever [...]