Ninth Floor director Mina Shum: In Canada, “We’re racist but we like to apologize about our racism.” Shum discusses Canadian racism and her new documentary.
In Her Chair
Female-identifying directors reflect on their experiences making films and leading creative teams.
Kris Swanberg on Unexpected, her female-driven pregnancy film
Kris Swanberg’s Unexpected is a quiet film full of small, wonderful revelations about what women go through during pregnancy. Swanberg maintains the perspective of the female characters throughout: the men come and go, but the women are always on-screen, often dealing with pregnancy alone.
Director Shira Piven talks Welcome to Me, Chauncey Gardner, and finding comedic rhythms
Kristen Wiig stars, in Shira Piven’s Welcome to Me, as a woman with borderline personality disorder who wins an 86 million dollar lottery and decides to use her winnings to create her own Oprah-like talk show all about her. The Seventh Row sat down with Piven to discuss her aesthetic approach, the influence of Chauncey Gardner, and finding the […]
Advantageous director Jennifer Phang talks bringing feminist sci-fi to the screen
Writer-director Jennifer Phang’s Netflix film Advantageous is a feminist science fiction film for lovers of French New Wave cinema and intimate family dramas. It deals with issues of race, motherhood, and economic hardship.
SFFS Artist-in-Residence Sally El Hosaini on writing and directing My Brother the Devil
Sally El Hosaini’s directorial debut, My Brother the Devil, is a touching and sensitive story of two Arab brothers in Hackney, London. During her sojourn in San Francisco as the San Francisco Film Society’s Artist-in-Residence, I sat down with El Hosaini to discuss her writing process, working with non-actors, her shoot, and her approach to the film’s aesthetic. […]
‘Cinema is the only art ever where you share somebody’s loneliness’ and other insights from Céline Sciamma
Céline Sciamma discusses her third film Girlhood: the genesis of the film, how cinema is the only art form in which you can share someone else’s loneliness, and how she created the remarkable Rihanna scene.