Women Filmmakers in Cannes: Female Stories, Directors, and Industry Perspectives
Even before the opening of the 78th edition of the Cannes Film Festival, the official programme got attention for having seven female directors in the competition line-up. Moreover, for the first time in Cannes history, a feature film debut directed by a woman opened the festival with Amélie Bonnin’s Leave One Day (Partir un jour) screening out of competition. Bonnin’s film builds on a short film by the same name (which received a César in 2023), but the feature film has added musical sequences and changed the leading role from a man to being the 40-year-old chef Cécile (played by Juliette Armanet) who returns to her hometown and is forced to think carefully about her life choices. From the outset, Cannes thus put new female voices in the spotlight, and this year’s festival had many other interesting women directors and stories in the extensive film slate. Not the least in the Un Certain Regard section which also had several female directors in the selection, among them the first films directed by Kristen Stewart and Scarlett Johansson.
While Cannes is always a great place for seeing famous auteurs present their new productions and for discovering upcoming talent, this year’s selection offered an excellent opportunity to get a sense of what is happening among a wide range of female filmmakers, in the festival cinemas or at seminars and presentations in the film market. Among the numerous industry events with female perspectives, Women in Motion celebrated their 10th anniversary with talks and an award to Nicole Kidman, and one could attend a ‘Yes she Cannes’ film market panel on women in genre filmmaking and other topics across genres and borders. One of the more surprising aspects of filmmaking presented at the Yes she Cannes panel was how the Paris-based company Cinebaby – founded by a group of women filmmakers in 2006 to make sure that women can recognise their own experiences (like portrayals of pregnancy and childbirth) on screen – had been expert collaborators on two films in the official competition (Young Mothers/Jeunes Mères by Jean-Luc and Pierre Dardenne and Hafsia Herzi’s The Little Sister/La Petite Dernière), following the company’s credit on last year’s Palm d’Or winner Titane.
Depending on one’s focus – and access – one could thus encounter many different issues related to women in the global film industries in Cannes. There are important discussions to be had around the general conditions for female filmmakers from the industry perspective, but from a film critic point of view, the most interesting aspect is meeting the female-led stories that end up on screen. This year’s programme invited audiences to experience female lives across the globe and dived into intimate portrayals of complex female characters. While films by already acclaimed directors like Lynne Ramsay and Kelly Reichardt got attention among the competition titles, the following will focus on the films in the Un Certain Regard selection which had several strong titles – and more to look forward to – from a very diverse group of female filmmakers.
The opening film of Un Certain Regard was Erige Sehiri’s third feature film Promised Sky (Promis le ciel) which follows the fate of three women through an engaging story about their migrant lives in Tunesia. The film opens with the three women taking an orphan girl into their refuge, and the following story portrays the everyday endeavours and challenges in their lives while they all seek a better, or just decent, future. Interestingly, the film shares thematic interests with Morad Mostafa’s drama Aisha Can’t Fly Away which follows the 26-year-old Sudanese caregiver Aisha working in Cairo and similarly investigates some of the many tensions between migrants and locals, even though Mostafa’s first feature does this from a more violent perspective and ends of mixing dreams and reality.
Several stories in Un Certain Regard dealt with issues of expatriate lives with female characters at the core, like Kei Ishikawa’s A Pale View of Hills based on Kazuo Ishiguro’s first novel which tells a post-war Nagasaki story, set in both Japan and the UK, through the interweaving lives of women across generations. Other films by male directors also had a remarkable female perspective on a distinct universe, like Chilean Diego Céspedes’ fascinating drama The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo (La Misteriosa mirada del flamenco) which allows both humour and poetry to play a major part in its unconventional take on the tragedies around the AIDS crisis of the 1980s when seeing them through the eyes of an 11-year-old girl growing up in a queer community.
Un Certain Regard had four female filmmakers presenting their first or second feature film in the programme, among them the much-awaited directorial debuts of Kristen Stewart and Scarlett Johansson. Kristen Stewart presented a visually experimental take on a biopic with her powerful adaptation of Lidia Yuknavitch’s memoir The Chronology of Water which brings the audience close to a woman who uses writing and literature as a way to overcome a traumatic childhood and find her way in a troubled life. Scarlett Johansson has chosen a more traditional approach to allow her now 95-year-old star June Squibb and strong supporting ladies to shine in Eleanor the Great’s entertaining approach to life stories – and lies as good stories. The beautiful opening of the film, with an old woman losing her life companion after a fun and moving introduction to their special relationship, is almost a short film in its own right, before the film then moves to New York and focuses on new intergenerational friendships and the importance of sharing one’s life experiences, tragic as well as happy, with others.
Czech director Zuzana Kirchnerová also showed her first film, Caravan (Karavan), to the world in Cannes, an unpredictable road-trip with the 45-year-old single mom Ester and her mentally disabled teenage son at the centre which poignantly explores emotionally demanding issues while moving through Italian summer landscapes and random encounters on their way. Anna Cazenave Cambet’s second feature film similarly put a pressured mother on the screen in the custody drama Love me Tender where a magnificent Vicky Krieps plays a mother fighting for the right to see her son. In general, motherhood was a prominent theme across many films this year, not the least in Lynne Ramsay and Jennifer Lawrence’s intense and sensual exploration of a woman feeling unfulfilled and meeting her inner demons after becoming a mother in Die, My Love.
Across sections and selections, this year’s festival offered many exciting opportunities to meet interesting female characters, stories, and filmmakers. There was a sense of a strong and diverse pool of screenwriters and directors who are likely to present fascinating works based on their personal voices and world/women perspectives in the coming years. Not the least if they are selected to present their work at a prestigious festival like Cannes where films get widely seen and discussed, and sustainable careers can be launched.
Here’s to seeing many of them back in Cannes for future festival editions!
Eva Novrup Redvall
©FIPRESCI