director

Promising Young Woman is British filmmaker Emerald Fennell’s feature directorial debut and is a unique mixture of comedy, revenge, and horror with a twist of rom-com too. It has Carey Mulligan in the leading role as Cassie, a medical school dropout – and a promising young woman – whose life has taken a drastic turn as something dramatic happens to her best friend.

Farewell Amor is an immigrant story with a lot of heart. After nearly two decades apart, a husband and wife are reunited in Brooklyn, where he has made a life for himself.

“I was constantly asking white, male, Hollywood for permission to make Yellow Rose, and getting, ‘no’. ” Director, Writer, Producer, Diane Paragas, falls into one of the smallest subsets of a subset – a woman of Asian descent directing a movie.

Eve’s Bayou is the film that introduced the then 36-year-old Kasi Lemmons to audiences as a director. It is also the film that Ebert once rated “number one on the forgotten list”.

Born in Iran, director, and graphic novelist Marjane Satrapi takes on the story of Madame Curie (Rosamund Pike) in the film Radioactive. The woman whose previous at-bat, Persepolis, an adaptation of her own graphic novel, garnered awards worldwide, speaks truth in a way that makes her radioactive to many.

Alan Parker, the recently deceased British director, was interviewed several times by the journalists of the Hollywood Foreign Press. He spoke broadly with us about his films and influences.

Gina Prince-Bythewood is the director of The Old Guard, an action-adventure based on a graphic novel with super-heroes that don’t fit the normal spectrum. Gay, female, people of color and oh, yes, one straight white male, head up an all-star cast which includes Charlize Theron, Kiki Layne, Matthias Schoenaerts, Luca Marinelli,  and Chiwetel Ejiofor – to name a partial list.

“It has been more than sixty years since I came to Hollywood, first to learn how to make films and then to make them myself. I have now made thirty-five of them, some better than others, some prizewinners, other money losers.

What happens when a woman writes a crime drama? You get the crime, you get the drama, and you get a little something more – characters who aren’t cookie-cutter. Rebecca Cutter, creator, director, executive producer, and writer of Starz’s Hightown, ratchets up mystery against the backdrop of America’s opioid epidemic.

“You have to be able to trust your instincts; when you do, in the moment, you can be successful. ” It started with a backyard charity production of Annie that 8-year-old Maggie Kiley staged with her sister in Rochester, New York.