ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

Female Film Critics 24/375

Author: Shadan Larki

Interviews 

Kimmy Gatewood on Directing for Disney and Creating Opportunies for Women – Shadan Larki interviews

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Kimmy Gatewood has reached a new chapter in her career—one where she’s no longer just finding opportunities, but helping create them for others. After building an eclectic, Emmy-winning résumé as a performer and director across comedy, children’s television, and streaming hits including The Baby-Sitters Club, Girls5eva, and GLOW, Gatewood is at the helm of Disney’s Descendants sequel, Wicked Wonderland. As her career growS, she’s increasingly focused on championing female storytellers, mentoring emerging filmmakers, and working with the DGA on a female directors in television initiative. In conversation with Shadan Larki, Gatewood reflects on creating her version of Wonderland, the responsibility of making stories for young audiences, mentors that helped her pave a unique path, and uplifting the next generation of female directors

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Interviews 

Wanda Sykes and Tamika Miller on UNDERCARD, Trust and Vulnerability – Shadan Larki interviews

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There is something quietly disarming about Undercard. It is set inside a sport built on spectacle — sweat, impact, applause, glory — yet the film’s most devastating blows land in silence. Directed and co-written by Tamika Miller (with Anita M. Cal), the film uses boxing not as a vehicle for triumph, but as a framework for the conflicts that unfold outside the ring: between a mother and son, between past and present, between your mistakes and their lingering consequences. Undercard is a film that understands something many sports dramas miss: sometimes the hardest fight isn’t the one in the ring. It’s the one you have to endure when the applause ends, the glory fades, and you are left to either revel or dismay in the aftermath. In an exclusive interview with AWFJ’s Shadan Larki, Miller and Sykes speak about trust, vulnerability, and working together to execute Miller’s singular vision.

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Interviews 

Natasha Kermani on THE DREADFUL, Horror and Creative Collaboration – Shadan Larki interviews

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Writer-Director Natasha Kermani has built a career using genre to explore women pushed to the margins of power structures—religious, cultural, and psychological. With The Dreadful, she turns to the medieval era, crafting a story steeped in isolation, superstition, and the volatile intersections of faith, obligation and fear. In this conversation, Kermani discusses building a visually-textured world, collaborating with her cast —Sophie Turner, Kit Harington, and Marsha Gay Harden—and cinematographer Julia Swain, and using horror not as spectacle, but as a vehicle for examining repression, control, and desire.

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Reviews 

PAYING FOR IT – Review by Shadan Larki

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“Romantic love is bullshit, and I’m not spending more time chasing it.” This is Chester Brown’s (Dan Beirne) declaration to friends when pressed about his romantic endeavors, presenting the central thesis of Paying for It, the latest feature from co-writer and director Sook-Yin Lee. The film is holding back. If it presents itself as an honest, no-holds-barred look at sex, it has to mean more than just nudity—where are the stakes? Where are the consequences? The film sets expectations for a clever meditation on why “romantic love is bullshit,” but as the plot progresses, it fails to deliver answers to the questions it raises. A strong thesis with no defining conclusion is a classic writerly mistake, made all the more ironic given that the film is based on the real-life Chester Brown’s own comic book chronicling of his dating experiences.

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Reviews 

SACRIFICE – Review by Shadan Larki

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Sacrifice opens with an environmental charity gala in Greece that assembles a group of A-list guests. You’ve got the action star (Chris Evans), the Jeff Bezos-inspired billionaire (Vincent Cassel), the pop icon (Salma Hayek Pinault, fabulously channeling Madonna), and the fun-loving Charli xcx-type pop star (Charli xcx herself, in a fun cameo). Everyone comes in with an agenda, fight climate change, naturally, and use the camera-laden event to shift the media narrative that surrounds their celebrity status. Anya Taylor-Joy’s Joan and her cultish group of friends take the gala hostage with an agenda of their own—take three of these attendees to be sacrificed to a near-by volcano on the cusp of erupting, doing so will prevent the end of the world.

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Reviews 

OPPENHEIMER – Review by Shadan Larki

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the main reason I hold Oppenheimer in such high esteem and don’t hesitate to recommend it is Cillian Murphy’s enigmatic performance as the father of the atomic bomb. I have adored Murphy’s work for nearly 20 years. He is one of our finest character actors, and he has never been better, commanding nearly every frame of this three-hour drama.

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