Interviews – ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

JUDY LUNG on TIFF 2026 and the Fest’s Future – Liz Braun interviews (Exclusive)

September 13, 2026September 14, 2026 Liz Braun film media, film press, judy lung, TIFF 2026, Toronto Interntional Film Festival

Judy Lung regards TIFF 2026 as the start of “the next 50 years.” As part of the executive team, she’s one of the main architects of last year’s 50th birthday party for the Toronto International Film Festival, and in her role as VP, Strategy, Communications, and Stakeholder Relations, Lung is already working hard to ensure the festival is around for a centenary celebration. In her role, Lung has a wide view across the organization and is involved in TIFF year-round beyond its annual film fest. The organization is now in year two of a three-year strategic plan that focuses on future-proofing TIFF, and Lung says that the strategy part of her role has come to the forefront, given the changes across the industry.

Interviews

MARGARET ATWOOD Reflects on Art and Reality Imitating Each Other – Jennifer Green reports

August 28, 2026August 29, 2026 Jennifer Green Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts, margaret atwood, political election, Power Up Conference, Take the Lead, The Handmaid’s Tale

Despite more than 50 books published in 40-plus languages, author Margaret Atwood may always be best known for her novel and hit series The Handmaid’s Tale, and now its sequel The Testaments . Both are set in a dystopian future society where women are forced to live under a fundamentalist theocratic dictatorship that denies them basic rights and freedoms. “Everything in The Handmaid’s Tale has happened somewhere, sometime,” Atwood affirmed at a recent public appearance. “Somebody wrote on Twitter (now X), ‘Where does Margaret Atwood come up with all this weird shit?’ And I was like, ‘It’s the human race that came up with all this weird shit.’ And believe me, there’s a lot weirder shit out there that the human race has done.’”

Interviews

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

July 7, 2026July 16, 2026 Shadan Larki Aline Brosh McKenna, Alison Becker, Descendants: Wicked Wonderland, DGA Women's Steering Committee, Girls5eva, glow, Kimmy Gatewood, lynn shelton, Sara Bareilles

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

Interviews

Marjorie David on Adapting READING LOLITA IN TEHRAN – Jennifer Green interviews

June 30, 2026July 5, 2026 Jennifer Green Arash Marandi, Azar Nafisi, Eran Riklis, Golshifteh Farahani, marjorie david, Reading Lolita in Tehran

A book both beloved (over 100 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list) and banned (in Iran), Iranian author Azar Nafisi’s memoir, Reading Lolita in Tehran, was adapted to screen in 2023 by Israeli filmmaker Eran Riklis based on a script he co-wrote with American Marjorie David. In 2024, it won the Audience Award and Special Jury Prize at the Rome Film Festival, the city where it was filmed. Reading Lolita in Tehran premieres in the US on July 10 through Greenwich Entertainment. The delay is curious considering the book’s popularity in the US. “It was hard to get an American distributor for some reason,” David admits. “It got European distribution immediately. I don’t know why nobody picked it up here for so long. It seems nuts! It’s of the moment, it’s of special interest to women. It’s of interest to anybody interested in Iran.” American interest in Iran could hit a new high this summer as a result of current events. Whether the ongoing US-Iran hostilities will help or hurt the film’s release is yet to be seen. One thing is for sure, though—Americans can and perhaps should gain insights into the people and culture of Iran from this story. And those who have read the book will appreciate how loyal the script stays to the true story at its core.

Festivals Interviews

Maria Martínez Bayona talks THE END OF IT (Cannes 2026) – Jennifer Green interviews

May 16, 2026May 17, 2026 Jennifer Green Beanie Feldstein, Cannes 2026, catalan films, gael garcia bernal, Maria Martínez Bayona, noomi rapace, rebecca hall

For a young Spanish director to make her first feature film in English with a Euros 8 million ($9.4m) budget—more than double the Spanish average—and with internationally renowned actors like Rebecca Hall, Noomi Rapace, Gael García Bernal and Beanie Feldstein is unusual. For her film to be invited to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival is even more out of the ordinary.

Interviews

Maryam Touzani talks CALLE MALAGA, Aging with Spirit and Personal Storytelling – Jennifer Green interviews

March 3, 2026March 6, 2026 Jennifer Green Ahmed Boulane, calle malaga, Carmen Maura, international oscars, María Alfonsa Rosso, Marta Etura, Maryam Touzani, Moroccan films, Nabil Ayouch

Tangier-born writer-actor-director Maryam Touzani says that with her new film Calle Malaga, she wanted to “celebrate the beauty of aging and the freedom that can come with aging.” The story turns on a 70-something woman, played by Spanish veteran Carmen Maura, who insists on remaining in her home in Tangier—against all odds. In doing so, she remakes her life, finds new love and reinforces her connections with her Moroccan roots, the place where she was born and raised as part of a Spanish immigrant community. The subject was personal for Touzani, whose own blended Moroccan-Spanish family gave inspiration for Calle Málaga.

Interviews

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

February 26, 2026February 26, 2026 Shadan Larki Anita M. Cal, Tamika Miller, Undercard, Wanda Sykes

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.

Interviews

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

February 14, 2026February 17, 2026 Shadan Larki Julia Swain, Kit Harington, Marsha Gay Harden, Natasha Kermani, Sophie Turner, The Dreadful

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.

Festivals Interviews

Brisbane Internatl Film Fest: New Exec Dir SOPHIE MATHISEN is Revisioning – Sarah Ward reports

November 26, 2025December 1, 2025 Sarah Ward Austraian film festivals, BIFF, Brisbane International Film Festival, Screen Queensland, Sophie Mathisen

Change is a film festival’s natural state. Regardless of an event’s size, city, theme or fame, “new year, new program” always remains the guiding mantra. Courtesy of a history more complicated than it should be, largely due to the vagaries of funding, the Brisbane International Film Festival has lived that truth beyond its peers over the past decade. The Australian festival’s new Executive Director Sophie Mathisen is well-aware that 2025 marks makeover number four since the BIFF’s return in 2017, after the Queensland capital’s primary celebration of cinema was scrapped between 2014–16 and replaced by the short-lived Brisbane Asia Pacific Film Festival.

Interviews

Hikari on Loneliness, Being Japanese and RENTAL FAMILY – Nadine Whitney interviews (Exclusive!)

November 17, 2025November 18, 2025 Nadine Whitney Brendan Fraser, Hikari, Rental Family, Searchlight Pictures, twiw, week in women

Hikari’s tender film Rental Family takes Phillip (Brendan Fraser) an out of work actor living in Japan through the phenomenon of role playing as a real-life character in the lives of Japanese people who require a figure to act as family or friend. At the heart of the film is the epidemic of loneliness and Japan’s difficulties in dealing with mental health and social difference. Hikari, herself, experienced isolation and loneliness when she participated in an exchange program in America. Nadine Whitney speaks with Hikari about reaching out to people to create chosen families.

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