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Celebrating Roya Sadat!

"Credited as one of the first women to direct film in post-(2001) Taliban Afghanistan, Roya Sadat centers feminism, truth-telling, and the stories of Afghan women and girls in the face of repression."

Read more in I Care If You Listen's 5 Questions to Roya Sadat (film and opera director).

A Letter to the President | Namai Ba Rahis Gomhor (2017)

"The film’s fury isn’t just directed at the obvious villains in the piece. It argues that the system itself is sick and that oppression sometimes manifests itself even through men seemingly armed with good intentions. "

Read more in The Hollywood Reporter's review.

A Thousand Splendid Suns [opera] world premiere Feb 25-26, 2023

"Two years ago, moments before her first in-person meeting to discuss directing “A Thousand Splendid Suns” for Seattle Opera, Afghan film director Roya Sadat got a text message: The Taliban were retaking power in her home country."

"Sadat says the Taliban’s return is not the only way “A Thousand Splendid Suns” is all too relevant. Its themes are universal — and yet not often portrayed. In art, women are often described from a male perspective that emphasizes their beauty and value as love objects. When you see women in literature, “most of them are written with the pen of men,” she said. In contrast, this story is about the courage of women told through powerful female voices."

Read more in Seattle Times' Seattle Opera’s ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’: How a new opera is born.

Learn more about Sadat's work on her website.

#Roya Sadat #directed by women

Celebrating Kamila Andini! "It’s important for me when I can see myself in a movie (even if it is a movie from a different country), when I see my society, problems I can relate to… Hollywood movies are like a dream, something unrealistic and distant, detached from reality. In Indonesia, we are not very confrontational people. We don’t put the conflict on a dining table and don’t talk about it. We hide our feelings. People of the East have a different way of talking about conflict."

Read more in Asian Movie Pulse's Interview With Kamila Andini: We, Women, Often Don’t Have a Sense of Ownership Even of Ourselves.

Yuni (2021)

"Throughout, the film asks, what is Yuni willing to risk to have control over her life, and will the world she lives in let her get it?"

Read more on Oprah.com.

Explore Hamri's filmography on MUBI:

#Sanaa Hamri #directed by women

Celebrating Regina King! "We still managed to smile, dance, laugh, love, even with all of the things that we are up against, just in day-to-day life." Read more in the NY Times interview Regina King: Speaking Truth to Power Through Her Art.

One Night in Miami... (2020)

"At this moment in time, King’s directorial debut arrives like a thunderclap." Read more in Sara Stewart's ‘One Night in Miami’ review: Regina King’s directing debut electrifies in NY Post.

Learn more about King's directing work on MUBI:

#Regina King #directed by women

Celebrating Donna Deitch! "When you’re making a film, you never know how it’s all going to end up. Are you going to sell it? Are people going to see it? These are all unpredictable things that one tries not to think about. I made the movie I wanted to see—that was my guide." Read more in the Criterion interview Breaking Ground: A Conversation with Donna Deitch.

Desert Hearts (1985)

"Donna Deitch’s swooning and sensual first narrative feature, Desert Hearts, was groundbreaking upon its release in 1985: a love story about two women, made entirely independently, on a shoestring budget, by a woman.... With undeniable chemistry between its two leads, an evocative jukebox soundtrack, and vivid cinematography by Robert Elswit, Desert Hearts beautifully exudes a sense of tender yearning and emotional candor." Read more on Criterion Collection's website.

It's Valentine's Day. So I'm simply going to keep the focus on the amazing, romantic Desert Hearts, but definitely explore more about the rest of Deitch's work on her website.

#Donna Deitch #directed by women

Celebrating Julie Dash! "Thirty-one years ago, filmmaker Julie Dash broke through racial and gender boundaries with her Sundance award-winning film (Best Cinematography) Daughters of the Dust. She became the first African American woman to have a wide theatrical release of her feature film. The Library of Congress placed Daughters of the Dust and her UCLA MFA senior thesis Illusions in the National Film Registry. These two films join a select group of American films preserved and protected as national treasures by the Librarian of Congress." Visit Dash's website for more information about her extensive and varied career.

Standing at the Scratch Line (2016)

"Standing at the Scratch Line is a short film about returning to sacred spaces of departure and arrival. Multi-media artist Julie Dash portrays the stories of a people seeking refuge and freedom in the African Methodist Episcopal Denomination."

Learn more about the project on The Great Migration website.

Give Me One Reason [music video] (1996)

Daughters of the Dust (1991) "Dash’s first feature — Daughters of the Dust (1991) — was the first film by an African American woman to receive a general theatrical release in the United States; the Library of Congress named it to the National Film Registry in 2004."

Learn more at UCLA Library Film & Television Archive.

"...Julie Dash’s vast yet intimate drama, set in 1902, about the preparations of an extended family on one of the Sea Islands, off the coast of Georgia, to migrate to the American mainland. It’s a movie that runs less than two hours and feels like three or four—not in sitting time but in substance, in historical scope and depth of emotion, in the number of characters it brings to life and the novelistic subtlety of the connections between them, in the profusion of its ideas and the cinematic imagination with which they’re realized, in the sensuous beauty of its images and sounds and the indelibly exalted gestures that it impresses on one’s memory.... The movie’s images have a luminous fullness, a decentered dynamism, and a dance-like flow that separate them from mere illustration and raise them to a visual music that matches the movie’s bold dramatic construction."

Read more in Richard Brody's The Return of Julie Dash’s Historic “Daughters of the Dust” in The New Yorker.

Learn more about the film in Dash's book Daughters of the Dust: The Making of an African American Woman's Film, "which includes Dash's complete screenplay, describes the story of her extraordinary sixteen-year struggle to complete the project."

Illusions (1982)

"In this thirty-four-minute featurette, from 1982, Julie Dash ingeniously revives classic-Hollywood themes and styles in order to subject them to a sharp historical critique.... Dash blends intimate portraiture with echoing reflections and multiple exposures, capturing Hollywood’s harrowing game of multiple hidden identities." Read more in Richard Brody's review in The New Yorker.

Four Women (1975)

"Pioneering, provocative and visionary, the L.A. Rebellion films form a crucial body of work in post-war cinema… Julie Dash's dazzling film is both a critical response to female stereotypes and one of the most brilliantly released films about dance."- George Clark, Tate Modern Learn more at Third World Newsreel.

Explore Dash's filmography on MUBI:

#Julie Dash #directed by women #Youtube

Celebrating Elizabeth Lo!

"Elizabeth Lo is an award-winning nonfiction filmmaker who is interested in finding new, aesthetic ways of exploring the boundaries between species, class, and unequal states of personhood."

Learn more on Elizabeth Lo's website.

Stray (2020)

"I think that, on some level, the film is indeed trying to channel this immigrant experience, the feeling of being an outsider. I showed the film in China once, and someone asked me why I like to occupy this outsider’s perspective. They very astutely pointed out that because I grew up in Hong Kong, culturally American with a Chinese-American mother, and later moved to America, I’m familiar with this experience of being an outsider. And yes, that’s probably why I’m drawn to the outsider’s gaze. Being a foreigner in Turkey was a very comfortable position for me." Read more in Guernica Magazine's Elizabeth Lo: “Like the dogs, I existed in a limbo where I wasn’t entirely part of human society.”

Bisonhead (2016)

“A quietly devastating glimpse into the modern indigenous struggle, focused just as intently on the snowy land and sturdy bison, as it is on the faces of the native tribe. Rendered with a non-showy compassion, director Elizabeth Lo pairs poetic visuals of Yellowstone with a haunting wind-swept soundscape to gracefully document the gutted native culture attempting to persevere.” (No Budge)

Hotel 22 (2014)

"The metallic bus railings and seats generate a neon, blue-ish hue and give the film a sci-fi feel. But this is not a work of fiction, instead it’s the grim reality that many Bay Area homeless persons face each night." Read more in The Independent Magazine.

Explore Lo's filmography on MUBI:

#Elizabeth Lo #directed by women #Vimeo

Celebrating Sara Driver!

“She has a kind of wonder at things, the strangeness of the world. It’s a wonder that doesn’t get jaded.” Read more in the New York Times' Sleepwalking in Fantasy Worlds Like This One.

When Pigs Fly (1993)

Sleepwalk (1986)

"Sara Driver’s first feature — a luminous, oddball comic fantasy about ancient Chinese curses and Xerox machines, set in Manhattan’s Chinatown and its immediate environs — may well be the most visually ravishing American independent film of its year (1986). "

Read more in Jonathan Rosenbaum's review on his website.

You Are Not I (1981) "This featurette by Sara Driver, from 1981—an adaptation of a story by Paul Bowles—is a frank and piercingly intimate reckoning with mental illness.... Driver conjures vast spans of harrowing experience in infinitesimal gestures." Read more in The New Yorker. Explore Driver's filmography on MUBI:

#Sara Driver #directed by women

Celebrating Carol Nguyen!

"Carol Nguyen wins the Stella Artois Jay Scott Prize for an emerging artist, which carries a $10,000 purse, courtesy of Labatt. By age 20, the Vietnamese Canadian was already turning heads worldwide with acclaimed short films drawn from her life." Read more in today's post on Toronto Film Critics Association.

Nanitic (2022)

"I think Nanitic is a wonderful, gritty exploration of culture and its fragility within families. Can’t wait to see what other films Nguyen creates in the future." Read more in TIFF 2022: Carol Nguyen’s ‘Nanitic’ is a deeply personal exploration of culture.

No Crying at the Dinner Table (2019)

"After the shoot, my family started saying "I love you" to each other - a really big step in our relationship. It took my dad a while though."

Read more in the FAQ on Nguyen's website.

Uprooted (2013)

I was present at Heartland Film Festival when Carol Nguyen won the High School Competition for her film Uprooted. She was in 10th grade at the time. I was so moved by her stop motion animated short which conveys the story of her father's challenging journey fleeing Vietnam and finding his way to Canada. I've been a big fan ever since. I revisit it often and share it with friends. It's a joy to see her work continue to evolve. Take a few moments to watch her acceptance speech. It's charming.

"I would like my biggest thanks to go to my good friend Duct Tape, because without duct tape I wouldn't have been able to make my film."

Visit Nguyen's website to learn more about her work:

#Carol Nguyen #directed by women #Youtube

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