This article features shows and movies showrun or directed by women. Sometimes, a film comes out that includes a lot of leadership elsewhere. Go with me on this, I’ll slide on up to the point in a minute. This week’s “Furiosa” has a number of women in key positions. Margaret Sixel is one of the two editors; she won an Oscar for her solo editing work on “Mad Max: Fury Road”.
Sophie Nash is the supervising art director, a job she’s also done for “Three Thousand Years of Longing”. Costume Design is by Jenny Beavan (“Cruella” and “Fury Road”). Hair and make-up design is by Lesley Vanderwalt (“Aquaman”).
In other words, much of the look of “Furiosa” is due to women’s leadership of various departments. Some of these industry positions see a number of women leading departments, particularly costume and make-up design. Some see fewer.
As an example, Sixel’s 2015 win as editor for “Mad Max: Fury Road” was the only Editing win for a woman between 2009 (Chris Innis for “The Hurt Locker”) and 2023 (Jennifer Lame for “Oppenheimer”.)
Only three women have ever been nominated for Best Cinematography (Rachel Morrison for “Mudbound”, Ari Wegner for “The Power of the Dog”, and “Mandy Walker” for Elvis).
Nominations aren’t counts of how many people are getting these jobs, but they do reflect the ratio of who gets them on films that have better production budgets, marketing outlays, and studio backing to make awards pushes.
The Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film found that the percentage of speaking roles cast with women was 35% in 2023, in major roles 38%, as lead protagonists 28%. Only 18% of films had more women than men, and 5% had an equal number, meaning 77% had more men than women.
Celluloid Ceiling’s annual crew report showed women make up “16% of directors, 17% of writers, 26% of producers, 24% of executive producers, 21% of editors, and 7% of cinematographers.”
I’m in a number of film groups where dudes are constantly moaning about nothing original and everything being the same. Try asking them the last year they watched more films by women than men. The last month. Hell, the last week. If we’re just watching the same men directing the same men, shot and edited by the same men, why would you expect anything to be new?
Hell, I never watched anywhere close to as many films by women as by men until I started doing this weekly feature in 2020. I was in the same grumpy boat about not enough originality. That was the first year in my life I watched more films directed by women than by men, as opposed to the 30-odd years of my life before it where the opposite was true, and I’d never thought to question it. Films with women in leadership positions don’t get the same budgets or marketing, so if we don’t intentionally seek them out, how do we even learn about them?
But suddenly, watching movies from perspectives I hadn’t sought out before took me from being grumpy about lack of originality to feeling like there isn’t enough time to see the amount of original, challenging, invigorating work out there.
There’s that old nugget about every story having already been told, but new storytellers bringing fresh perspectives that make us experience those stories as if for the first time. If we don’t seek out the new storytellers, we’re just seeing the same damn story told from the same perspective in the same way over and over again.
The equality argument is the most worthwhile one by far. And also, momentarily setting that aside, from a personal, greedy, self-centered standpoint…as a critic, a cinephile, someone who’s tired on a weekend and just wants to set those titles aside and see something captivating, as any of those things, we see more quality when we draw from the talent pool that’s out there more fully. If we draw from 50% of the talent pool to make 90% of our stories, we will elevate more subpar work before turning around and wondering why that subpar work is so elevated. We will ignore more great work from women who only have 10% of the room to fit 50% of the storytelling out there, before turning around and wondering why great work is so seldom shared.
These aren’t great mysteries of the universe. As someone who loves movies and series, the entire ecosystem of filmmaking is healthier and more full of possibility when we draw from all talent as equally as possible. It isn’t solely a moral argument, though that moral argument should be more than enough. Audiences just showed us last year with “Barbie” leading the box office the kind of movie that can bring theaters back to life in a very unpredictable environment – a greater number of films by and about women. Yet somehow we navigate ourselves into scratching our heads wondering how to get theater earnings back on track. To put it as diplomatically as I can and this is for the capitalist bros you meet in life, this shit isn’t hard, we’re just such fucking morons about doing it; we’d rather hold onto a subpar product as men than make it better and more profitable with the knowledge that doing so would require sharing influence over it.
NEW SERIES
The Veil (Hulu)
half-directed by Daina Reid
This is one I missed earlier this month. Elisabeth Moss stars as an MI6 agent attempting to gain the trust of a suspected ISIS member. Yumna Marwan, Josh Charles, and James Purefoy co-star.
Daina Reid directs 3 of the 6 episodes. She also directed on “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “Shining Girls”.
“The Veil” is out on Hulu.
NEW MOVIES
Solo (in theaters)
directed by Sophie Dupuis
Simon finds an escape performing in drag, as he endures a destructive relationship with Oliver and his 15-year-absent mother Claire re-entering his life.
Writer-director Sophie Dupuis also helmed “Underground” and “Family First”, the latter of which was Canada’s submission for Best Foreign Language Film for the 2019 Oscars.
“Solo” has a limited release in theaters starting tomorrow, Friday May 24.
Take a look at new shows + movies by women from past weeks.
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Gabriel Diego Valdez 