SPOTLIGHT – ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

SPOTLIGHT December 2023: SUSANNE BIER, Award-Winning, Pond-Hopping, Genre-Diverse Director

November 30, 2023November 30, 2023 Jennifer Green Oscars Foreign Language, spotlight, susanne bier

Susanne Bier is among Europe’s most prolific and honored female film and television writer-directors. Her career filmography spans formats, genres and countries. Originally from Denmark, some of Bier’s best-known works, at least for international audiences, include Hollywood productions like Bird Box and In A Better World, and the Hollywood remakes of her original films, like Brothers and After the Wedding. Bier is said to be the first female director to win a Golden Globe (Best Picture, In A Better World), a Primetime Emmy (Directing, The Night Manager), a European Film Award (many, including Achievement in World Cinema in 2021) and an Oscar (Foreign Language Film, In a Better World). She currently co-chairs the Academy’s International Feature Film Executive Committee.

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SPOTLIGHT November 2023: Samy Burch, Screenwriter, MAY DECEMBER

October 30, 2023November 9, 2023 Liz Braun alex mechanik, casting director, May December, samy burch, screenwwriter, spotlight, Todd Haynes

One of the most serendipitous pairings in the film world this year is screenwriter Samy Burch and director Todd Haynes. If you’re thinking “Samy who?,” you’re not alone — Burch is best-known as a casting director, and she appears to have come out of nowhere with the superb screenplay for May December, the new Todd Haynes movie starring Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman. In fact, Burch is also a writer/director. The May December story was co-written by Burch and Alex Mechanik, a fellow filmmaker who happens to be her husband.

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SPOTLIGHT October 2023: Sandra Huller, Actress of the Year

October 1, 2023September 30, 2023 Liz Braun afternoon of a fall, basel theater, cannes, Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts, Sandra Hüller, Sisi & I, The Zone of Interest, TIFF, Toni Erdmann

In a bit of casting kismet, two of the biggest films this year star the same actor: Sandra Huller. Huller was dubbed the “Queen of Cannes” last May after director Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall won the Palme d’Or and Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest took both the runner-up Grand Prize of the Festival and the FIPRESCI honors. Huller, 45, stars in the courtroom thriller Anatomy of a Fall as a woman on trial for her husband’s murder. The film is a carefully structured moral conundrum about truth and perception, and all of it hinges on Huller’s performance . In The Zone of Interest, a Holocaust film unlike any other, she plays Hedwig Hoss, a homemaker enjoying the upward mobility that comes with being the wife of the Commandant of Auschwitz. What Huller does here is understated and difficult to describe, but the specificity in her work is such that you will swear you know what the character smells like.

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SPOTLIGHT September 2023: Fran Drescher, Actor, Author, SAG-AFTRA Activist

August 31, 2023August 31, 2023 Liz Braun Cancer Schmancer, Fran Dresher, Francine Joy Drescher, Peter Marc Jacobson, sag-aftra, Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, spotlight, The Nanny

She may have perfected the role of glamorous ditz, but Fran Drescher is actually a warrior. Known best for perennial favourite The Nanny, Drescher captured the attention of TV viewers for years and became fixed in the public consciousness as funny, fearless and feminist. In the last few months, Drescher has recaptured the spotlight in her role as President of SAG-AFTRA, a union leadership position to which she was elected in 2021. Initially, some doubted her ability to represent the massive 160,000-strong union membership —yes, a woman underestimated. When did that ever happen before?

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SPOTLIGHT August 2023: Judy Lung, Cinema PR Ace, TIFF Communications Chief

July 30, 2023August 30, 2023 Liz Braun cineplex, judy lung, piano prodigy, spotlight, TIFF, TIFF 2023, toronto international film festival

Judy Lung is a mensch and a mentor, always an oasis of calm and meticulous organization in what can be a frenetic industry. She is highly respected by the media and well-known as an ally to the press in Toronto and across Canada, and her recent appointment at TIFF was cause for celebration among reporters. As she takes her place in the important cultural institution that is the Toronto International Film Festival, it’s time to spread the word outside Canada and introduce Lung to an international audience.

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SPOTLIGHT July 2023: Jennifer Esposito, Actress, Baker, Teacher, Director of FRESH KILLS

June 30, 2023June 30, 2023 Jennifer Merin Blue Bloods, Emily Bader, Fresh Kills, George Lorus, Jennifer Esposito, Jennifer's Way Bakery, mafia, Odessa A’zion, spotlight, staten island, Tribeca Film Festival 2023

“Fresh Kills isn’t at all autobiographical, yet it’s all me, says first time writer/director Jennifer Esposito. “I did take pieces of people I grew up around and I used the essence of where I grew up to inform the characters’ world, but every character has some part of me in them. Staten Island, where I grew up and where the film takes place, felt very repressed and claustrophobic to me so that really influenced me when writing. The essence of the film is simple – it’s finding a voice in a world that tells you not to have one and I’ve felt that way my entire life.”

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SPOTLIGHT June 2023: Molly Conners and Jane Sinisi, Producers, Founders of Phiphen Studios in New Jersey

May 31, 2023August 21, 2023 Leslie Combemale Aldey Sanchez, Alice Guy-Blanché, diversity, Jane Sinisi, julia stiles, lionsgate, Molly Conners, netflix, parity for women, Phiphen, Phiphen Studios, Solex Studios, The God Committee

New Jersey has a stellar, and very important role in history of American film, particularly as it relates to female filmmakers. In 1912, Alice Guy-Blanché, the first female director in history, opened Solex Studios, one of the most successful studios in early American film, in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Now two producers, Molly Conners and Jane Sinisi, have opened Phiphen Studios in Englewood Cliff. Their goal is to support and and be part of expanding the ever-growing New Jersey film community, which saw an increase in investment from $70 million in 2017 to over a half billion dollars just two years later in 2019.

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SPOTLIGHT May, 2023: Alice Maio Mackay, Eighteen-year-old Transgender Australian Horror Filmmaker

April 30, 2023April 30, 2023 Alexandra Heller-Nicholas Alice Maio Mackay

Alice Maio Mackay is, at the age of 18, a one-woman horror filmmaking machine whose already impressive filmography of low-budget genre bangers barely gives us time to exhale before she is ready to throw another one at us. An Australian transgender filmmaker who wears her activist spirit fiercely on her sleeve, Mackay’s films are unapologetically queer and delight in the fantastic potential the horror genre affords. Whether it’s demon cults or vampires, her colorful cadre of characters tackle all that the supernatural has to throw at them with Mackay’s now-signature comic verve, yet she never takes her eye off her determined vision to position queer folk front and center in her stories.

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SPOTLIGHT April 2023: Deirdra Elizabeth Govan, Costume Designer, IATSE Activist

April 1, 2023April 4, 2023 Leslie Combemale #nakedwithoutus, amazon prime, boots riley, Deirdra Elizabeth Govan, Devotion, Happiness for Beginners, harlem, I’m a Virgo, iatse, Rob Peace, sorry to bother you, spotloight

Costume and production designer and activist Deirdra Elizabeth Govan, has brilliantly crafted her career out of her passions for storytelling, history, strategic design, and social justice. Her eclectic accomplishments show that there are as many ways to build a career as there are people who want to make film and TV their life’s work, and that curiosity and passion elevate a person’s artistry. As Vice President of IATSE, she’s campaigning for equity, diversity and inclusion in the film industry. If we really want Hollywood to not only reflect society but to contribute to making the world better, we need passionate professionals who are not only talented and driven, but who collaborate and consider the collective in all they do. That’s Deirdra Elizabeth Govan.

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SPOTLIGHT March, 2023: Kai Bowe, Programming Director, OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network

March 1, 2023March 5, 2023 Leslie Combemale Africa Channel, ferguson rises, Kai Bowe, oprah winfrey, OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network, program director, reality tv, show runner, spike lee, spotlight, unscripted programming

Kai Bowe strives to create content and shepherd a variety of projects that entertain or comfort, as well as those that make change or impact the world for the better. She is someone who personally stands in her own power and walks the walk of striving to be better for herself, family, friends, and community. So many of the most influential Black creatives, including Spike Lee and Oprah Winfrey, have incorporated “Each one Teach one”, and Kai continues to embrace that philosophy in all her projects. We at AWFJ so appreciate women who bring such positivity, talent, and inspiration to the world of film and TV!

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