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Celebrating women directors and their incredible contributions to filmmaking, the new book “Cinema Her Way: Visionary Female Directors in Their Own Words” includes a brief history about groundbreaking trailblazers, in-depth interviews with singular female directors, and a comprehensive list of noteworthy talents and their films from author, critic, and IndieWire contributor Marya E. Gates.

The filmmakers interviewed for the upcoming book are: Allison Anders, Gillian Armstrong, Lizzie Borden, Jane Campion, Martha Coolidge, Julie Dash, Josephine Decker, Cheryl Dunne, Bette Gordon, Marielle Heller, Miranda July, Karyn Kusama, Mary Lambert, Mira Nair, Sally Potter, Gina Prince-Bythewood, Isabel Sandoval, Susan Seidelman, and Katt Shea.

IndieWire shares an exclusive excerpt from Gates’ introduction below.

I first became aware that women could direct films when I was eight years old and my mother took me to see Gillian Armstrong’s “Little Women.” That movie affected me deeply and has remained my favorite film ever since.

Who’s afraid of a little female body horror? For once, not the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, which on Thursday morning, finally opened one of the last remaining gilded doors of their annual Oscar nominations, pouring love all over filmmaker Coralie Fargeat and her “The Substance.”

The filmmaker, with just her second film, earned the sole spot for a female filmmaker in the Best Director race, in addition to helming the lone female-directed film in the Best Picture race. Meanwhile, other female filmmakers and their work were shut out not just from the picture and director race, but the entire Oscar nom kit and kaboodle, including Payal Kapadia and her “All We Imagine as Light” and Halina Reijn and her “Babygirl.”

Earlier this month, Fargeat told IndieWire at the Golden Globes that she believes horror films are fully deserving of a level playing field at the Oscars.

This year, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences nominated one female director: Coralie Fargeat for The Substance.

The other nominees in the category are Sean Baker (Anora), James Mangold (A Complete Unknown), Jacques Audiard (Emilia Pérez) and Brady Corbet (The Brutalist).

Payal Kapadia, who directed All We Imagine as Light, was omitted from the lineup on Thursday. Fargeat also received a best original screenplay nomination.

The Academy has long been criticized for its lack of female director nominees. Previously, the Academy had only nominated a woman nine times (eight women have been nominated. Jane Campion received a nod twice) in the best director category (Fargeat is the ninth female nominee), and only three have won. Lina Wertmüller, Sofia Coppola, Kathryn Bigelow, Greta Gerwig, Emerald Fennell, Chloé Zhao, Justine Triet and Campion are the only women nominated in the century-long history of the Academy Awards. Campion, Zhao and Bigelow won.

All five Academy Award nominees for Best Director on Thursday — Brady Corbet for The Brutalist, Sean Baker for Anora, Jacques Audiard for Emilia Pérez, James Mangold for A Complete Unknown, and Coralie Fargeat for The Substance — are first-timers in the category.

The last time the Best Directors list was all first-timers was 1998, when James Cameron (Titanic), Peter Cattaneo (The Full Monty), Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting), Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential), Atom Egoyan (The Sweet Hereafter), Terrence Malick (The Thin Red Line), and Peter Weir (The Truman Show) were honored. That was the year that Cameron went on to personally win three Oscars, for Best Picture and Best Editing in addition to directing as part of Titanic’s massive 11-victory haul.

Too, Fargeat joined an exclusive club on Thursday, becoming just the ninth woman to be nominated in the Best Director category. The other eight were Lina Wertmüller (Seven Beauties,...

Coralie Fargeat joined an exclusive Oscar list on Thursday morning thanks to her Best Director nomination for The Substance.

She is now the ninth woman to receive a directing bid at the Academy Awards, with the eight other female filmmakers being Lina Wertmuller for Seven Beauties (1976), Jane Campion for The Piano (1993) and The Power of the Dog (2021), Sofia Coppola for Lost in Translation (2003), Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker (2009), Greta Gerwig for Lady Bird (2017), Chloé Zhao for Nomadland (2020), Emerald Fennell for Promising Young Woman (2020), and Justine Triet for Anatomy of a Fall (2023). To date, the only three to win are Bigelow, Zhao, and Campion (The Power of the Dog).

Joining Fargeat in this year’s Best Director lineup are Jacques Audiard (Emilia Pérez), Sean Baker (Anora), Brady Corbet (The Brutalist), and James Mangold (A Complete Unknown). All five of them are first-time director nominees. See the complete list of 2025 Oscar nominations.

Mark your calendars, Oscars fans, because the 97th Academy Awards will air on Sunday, March 2, 2025 on ABC. The annual star-studded ceremony will honor movies released in theaters within the 2024 calendar year of eligibility. AMPAS members will vote on the Oscar winners in 23 categories, including Best Director. But who will win? Here at Gold Derby, thousands of users have been making and updating their 2025 Oscar predictions for Best Director, so let’s take a look at all of the top contenders in our photo gallery below.

These 25 Best Director hopefuls are listed in order of their racetrack odds, which are derived from the combined forecasts of four unique groups: experts we’ve polled from major media outlets, editors who cover awards year-round for this website, top 24 users who had the best accuracy scores last year, and the mass of users who make up our biggest predictions bloc.

There will be five...

Known as the queen of Italian pop, Mina has sold over 150 million records worldwide and remains a music legend who’s been captivating fans since the ’60s. Her new album, Gassa d’Amante, drops on November 22, and its title — named after an essential sailing knot — represents the solid and yet easily untangled nature of love. Just like the knot, the album explores the twists and turns of love in all of its beauty and complexity. At 84, Mina is still going strong, and she’s as iconic as ever.

Mina, born Mina Anna Mazzini, is one of the most adored pop stars in Italy. She is a cult figure who can be compared to Liza Minelli and Bette Midler; a musical diva who is as great a superstar to the Italians as Lady Gaga or Taylor Swift today. Like a 21st century Greta Garbo, she lives in exile in Lugano, Switzerland,...

Johnny Depp’s new film Modi: Three Days on the Wing of Madness will close out the Rome Film Festival on Saturday, Oct. 26, and the denizens of The Eternal City can’t wait for the star to arrive.

Indeed, the highlight of an otherwise unremarkable edition of the 10-day-long fest will undoubtedly be Johnny Depp’s appearance on Saturday to present the biopic Modi, which premiered at the San Sebastian Film Festival and chronicles three chaotic days in the life of Italian painter and sculptor Amedeo Modigliani.

Meanwhile, at an event that is separate from the film fest, Depp’s film will on Friday night receive the coveted Capri Cult Award.

The producer of Modi, Barry Navidi, a long-time friend of Al Pacino, will pick up the Capri prize on Friday night.

The Capri Cult Award is bestowed by the Capri Institute, the non-profit organization that organizes an annual film fest on the eponymous island.

Tomas Arana’s name might not be the first that comes to mind when thinking about great cinema. He’s not a “star” in the most commercial sense of the word.

To be sure, Arana has appeared in what we commonly refer to as blockbusters — Gladiator, The Bourne Supremacy or The Bodyguard with Whitney Houston — but it would be wrong to limit his career to those successes. Arana was Lazarus in Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ, the Detective Breuning in L.A. Confidential, Laginov in The Hunt for Red October with Sean Connery, Walter in Sergio Corbucci’s Neapolitan Mystery, Damon in Michele Soavi’s The Sect and so much more. A veteran of experimental theater companies like La Mamma, Tomas Arana has done it all, and with a particular passion for Italy.

Arana became a good friend of Andy Warhol in the 1970s. The two first...

Susan Seidelman on the Sex And The City pilot she directed: “The opening line of the script is “Once upon a time …” The opening starts off as a happy fairy tale and then it gets dark.”

In the first instalment with Susan Seidelman on her memoir, Desperately Seeking Something (St. Martin’s Press), we were joined by music producer and 99 Records founder Ed Bahlman, who over 40 years ago worked with Susan during the late stages of the editing process for her début feature film Smithereens (which had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in 1982), starring Susan Berman opposite Richard Hell and Brad Rijn.

In the second instalment Susan Seidelman discusses Dianne Wiest, Emily Lloyd, and Brenda Vaccaro in Cookie, her Sex And The City pilot, friendship and fashion, fairy tales and their dark side, Lina Wertmüller, the passing of Mark Blum, and the lack of female role models in.

It is no secret that men dominate most industries, especially the film industry. But after a summer of Greta Gerwig 's record breaking 'Barbie', here are 24 female filmmakers that have broken the mold and succeeded in an industry of men. Lina Wertmüller Lina Wertmüller was born in Italy in 1928. She studied theater at the Faculty of Arts in Rome. At the very beginning of her career, she became close to the highly acclaimed filmmaker Federico Fellini and was his assistant on ‘8 ½’ (1963). ‘The Basilisks’ (1961) was her first feature and she made her mark with the clandestine love affair tale of ‘The Seduction of Mimi’ (1972). Not long after, her most acclaimed work, ‘Seven Beauties’ (1975), premiered. The film follows the life of a not very successful crook who essentially makes his living out of "protecting" his seven sisters, who is arrested for murder and ends up in the army...

Italy’s Minerva Pictures has boarded Giovanni Dota’s High Stakes – A Night on the Ward which plays in Venice’s Giornate degli Autori sidebar.

The Italian comedy is set in a Naples hospital and centres on two nurses who bet their Christmas vacation whether a desperately ill patient will survive the night.

The film stars Carlo Buccirosso and Lino Musella. It is produced through Italian International Film with Rai Cinema. I Wonder Pictures is handling Italian distribution.

It plays in the Venetian Nights section of the Giornate degli Autori.

Giovanni Dota worked as an assistant director on Gomorrah. His...

Last year, there was a massive uproar when “Barbie” filmmaker Greta Gerwig was left off of the Best Director lineup at the Oscars, despite the blockbuster movie reaping eight total nominations including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay (for Gerwig and Noah Baumbach). “Anatomy of a Fall” helmer Justine Triet, who won the prize for Best Original Screenplay, did wind up earning a directing bid, and it was only the ninth such time in Academy Awards history for a woman. So will the upcoming 2025 Oscars include any female Best Director nominees? Let’s consult Gold Derby’s Oscar Experts.

According to the rankings of our pundits from major media outlets, the five most likely directing nominees will all be men: Steve McQueen for “Blitz” (Apple TV+), Sean Baker for “Anora” (Neon), Denis Villeneuve for “Dune: Part Two” (Warner Bros.), Edward Berger for “Conclave” (Focus Features), and Ridley Scott for “Gladiator II...

While its often the world premieres that get the most buzz out of any major film festival, look to their restorations lineup (if they are smart enough to have one), and a treasure trove of classics sure to be better than most premieres await. Ahead of their official lineup being unveiled on July 23, the Venice Classics slate is here, featuring films by Michelangelo Antonioni, Fritz Lang, Frederick Wiseman, Howard Hawks, Nagisa Ōshima, Anthony Mann, Lina Wertmüller, and many more.

“The programme of Venice Classics includes the commemoration of several important anniversaries.” said Festival artistic director Alberto Barbera. “First and foremost, the centennial of the birth of Marcello Mastroianni, the most beloved and celebrated Italian actor in the world, whom we will see in The Night (La notte), one of Michelangelo Antonioni’s finest films. It has been fifty years since the death of Vittorio De Sica, who in The Gold of Naples...

Venice Classics will screen restorations of Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Night and Vittorio De Sica’s The Gold Of Naples as part of an 18-film programme at the 81st Venice Film Festival (August 28-Septemer 7).

The Night, a 1961 black-and-white drama depicted a day and night in the life of a disillusioned novelist and his alienated wife, will play in the 100th anniversary year of the birth of its lead actor Marcello Mastroianni.

Scroll down for the full list of titles

De Sica’s 1954 The Gold Of Naples is formed of six episodes inspired by Giovanni Marotta’s short stories, and plays...

It’s New York City, 1989. Susan Seidelman is in the delivery room, in labor with her son. “Siskel and Ebert” plays on the TV, and in between contractions, the two critics are tearing apart her new movie “She-Devil.” “Watching them review my film literally with the doctor’s hand inside of me telling me to push was very strange,” Seidelman recalls.

That surreal scene is just one of the memorable moments the trailblazing director recounts in “Desperately Seeking Something: A Memoir About Movies, Mothers, and Material Girls.” By turns reflective and celebratory, the book covers the surprises and setbacks of a career carved out at a time when women filmmakers were a rarity.

When Seidelman first realized she could aspire to become a movie director, she could barely find a role model. Outside of Elaine May, there was only a small handful of women directing. But Seidelman kept at it,...

Lily Gladstone has always been a huge fan of Cate Blanchett and now, fresh off joining her acting idol in the elite realm of best actress Academy Award nominees, the two women are teaming up.

Not on screen (yet), but for a greater cause.

Gladstone is among the boldfaced names joining the selection committee for Proof of Concept, an accelerator program focused on supporting the perspectives of women, trans and non-binary people by financially backing their short “proof of concept” films.

The program was announced last December, with Blanchett and her Dirty Films partner Coco Francini teaming up with Dr. Stacy Smith, founder of the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative and supported by the Netflix Fund for Creative Equity to tackle the ongoing disparities facing these communities in the entertainment business.

Per the latest annual reports from Dr. Smith and the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, only 6% of the directors of the 1,700 top-grossing...

Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan won the Academy Award for best director, his first Oscar ever, on Sunday night.

“I have so many people to thank,” Nolan said during his acceptance speech. “The most incredible cast, Matt Damon, Robert, Emily, Florence, just so many others, all at the top of their game, led by the incredible Cillian Murphy… a crew, some of whom have been awarded tonight. I can’t say enough about the incredible crew that we got together on this film. Thank you to Chuck Roven for putting the book in my hands… The incredible Emma Thomas, producer of all our films and all of our children. I love you. To the academy, just to say movies are just a little bit over 100 years old. I mean, imagine being there 100 years into painting or theater. We don’t know where this incredible journey is going from here. But to...

The Oscar-winning actor Richard Dreyfuss, the songwriter and perennial Oscar bridesmaid Diane Warren and Matteo Garrone, the director of this year’s best international feature Oscar-nominated Italian film Io Capitano, will all be honored on Sunday night during the opening ceremony of the 19th Los Angeles, Italia Film, Fashion and Art Festival at Hollywood’s Tcl Chinese Theatres, exactly one week before the 96th Academy Awards take place just down the street.

The festival, which is backed by Italy’s Ministry of Culture, will run through Saturday, March 9, and feature 112 film screenings (47 in movie theaters and 65 on the online platform eventive.org). This year’s edition will be hosted by one Italian screen legend, Franco Nero (as well as Italian actress/model Antonella Salvucci), and is dedicated to another, the late Marcello Mastroianni, whose centenary it coincides with, as well as the late Italian playwright Eduardo de Filippo.

Notable guests...

If would be hard to name an artist in any medium who illustrated Flaubert’s famous maxim of creativity better than Ennio Morricone. Morricone, who died in 2020 (at 91), was certainly one of the greatest composers of movie soundtracks who ever lived. But even if you consider him next to his fellow giants, Morricone scaled his own wild peak, inventing his own kind of beauty, his own transcendent cacophony. Yet you would never have guessed it to look at him.

“Ennio,” directed by Guiseppe Tornatore (“Cinema Paradiso”), is a 156-minute portrait of Morricone built around an extensive interview with the composer. (It also includes comments from a murderers’ row of filmmakers and artists.) The movie opens on a beating metronome, which seems to set the orderly, clockwork rhythm of Morricone’s life. Strolling into his ornately furnished living room, he walks quickly, not like a man of 90, and his voice is light and direct.

Yorgos Lanthimos. Christopher Nolan. Justine Triet. Jonathan Glazer.

What do these four directors have in common? They were all among the nominees for this year’s Academy Awards, and none of them were born in the United States. Lanthimos is Greek, Triet is French, and Nolan and Glazer are British. Among the nominees, only New Yorker Martin Scorsese is American-born.

The last time only one American-born director made it to that year’s Best Director lineup was back in 1997, when Miloš Forman (Czech), Scott Hicks (Australian), Mike Leigh and Anthony Minghella (both English) received Oscar nominations. Of course, this is only technically true. Joel Coen was the one American in the category, yet it was due to a guild rule that he received sole credit for directing despite his helming “Fargo” with his brother Ethan, who would’ve been the second American among the nominees.

SEEOscars: Justine Triet is 8th...

A lot of people were plenty upset by one Academy Awards nomination snub in particular: that of “Barbie” director Greta Gerwig. One friend on my Facebook page – actor, author and filmmaker Cathryn Michon – put her thoughts succinctly: “Warmest congratulations to the patriarchy of the Oscars. The triumph of an overwhelmingly male director’s branch continues. Greta’s craft, vision and innovation saved your business, you morons.” She continued, “For me, the Oscars have become a ‘Zone of No Interest.’ If Greta isn’t in the running, then the award is meaningless.”

Michon was hardly alone in her ire at Gerwig’s having been passed over. The din built throughout the day on Tuesday until it was deafening, with simple sexism thought to be at the heart of it. Of course, there are also these facts: Gerwig on Tuesday became the first filmmaker in history to have her first three solo features – “Lady Bird,...

Anatomy of a Fall director Justine Triet was nominated as the sole female filmmaker in the best director category during the Oscar nominations on Tuesday morning, which, the director tells The Hollywood Reporter, is something she could have never imagined.

“I cried… the first one [nomination] was for script and I was so happy. But it was after when I watched the name of my editor, I cried, because it was so surprising. I didn’t imagine that Laurent Sénéchal could be involved in this game,” says Triet. “And of course for best director. I was surprised because there are no more women beside me. So of course, I’m so, so lucky and very proud of all these things.”

To be nominated by her peers in the directing category was “really moving” for the French filmmaker. “Most of these people since I was a child I’ve admired so much,...

Barbie director Greta Gerwig was notably snubbed in the best director category during the Oscar nominations on Tuesday. But following last year’s omission of any female filmmaker in the category, Anatomy of a Fall’s Justine Triet received a nomination.

Triet, Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor Things), Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer), Jonathan Glazer (The Zone of Interest) and Martin Scorsese (Killers of the Flower Moon) were nominated in the coveted category Tuesday morning.

Gerwig is a notable snub, as the Barbie director, throughout the awards season, received various best director nominations (the Directors Guild of America, the Golden Globes, Critics Choice) and wins (Palm Springs International Film Fest). She was also on various pundits’ prediction lists for best director, including from The Hollywood Reporter. Frontrunner Alexander Payne (The Holdovers) was also omitted.

Last year, no woman was nominated for best director. The nominees were Martin McDonagh (The Banshees of Inisherin), Todd Field...

After failing to nominate any female directors last year — and on the heels of Jane Campion’s record-breaking win for her “The Power of the Dog” in 2022, which marked her as only the third woman to ever win the Oscar for Best Director, following Kathryn Bigelow (“The Hurt Locker”) and Chloé Zhao (“Nomadland”) — this year’s Oscar nominations have again returned to the land of just one female nominee.

That might not surprise anyone familiar with the org’s history of nominations in this particular category (read: slim), but this morning’s nomination pool did pack at least one surprise: “Barbie” filmmaker (and previous nominee in the category) Greta Gerwig failed to notch a nom, while “Anatomy of a Fall” filmmaker Justine Triet was nominated for the first time in the category.

While both films have proven to be awards juggernauts over the past few months, recent chatter seemed to favor Triet in the category,...

Only seven female directors have been recognized at the Oscars, with only three winning in the Best Director category. Greta Gerwig is a strong contender for the Best Director nomination at the 96th Academy Awards, given her successful film "Barbie." The Oscars have made progress in honoring female directors, with Jane Campion becoming the third woman to win Best Director in 2022.

The 96th Oscars are approaching, and over the course of the award show's 96-year history, seven females have been recognized for their directorial work, and only three of them have won. The Best Director category is notorious for snubbing women, a resolution anyone could come to just by looking at the past 95 awards ceremonies. However, some have slipped through the cracks and received praise for their filmmaking efforts, and one woman has even been nominated twice, 29 years apart.

The nominees for the upcoming 96th Academy Awards have not been...

You’ve heard of Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb and Borat! Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, but even those titles are nothing compared to the verbosity found within those of the legendary Italian director Lina Wertmüller, the current holder of the Guinness World Record for longest title for a film. The film in question? You might want to take a deep breath… 1978’s Un Fatto Di Sangue Nel Comune Di Siculiana Fra Due Uomini Per Causa Di Una Vedova. Si Sospettano Moventi Politici. Amore-Morte-Shimmy. Lugano Belle. Tarantelle. Tarallucci E Vino. Those words (actually five sentences) amount to 179 characters, roughly translating to A Bloody Affair in the Municipality of Sicily Between Two Men Due to a Widow. Political Motives Are Suspected. Love-Death-Shimmy. Lugano Beautiful. Tarantellas. Tarallucci and Wine. Internationally, it was known as Blood Feud, or even more simply,...

When Barbra Streisand’s “Yentl” opened on Nov. 18, 1983, directing was very much a man’s world. In the 1970s, there had been a few inroads for women. Italian director Lina Wertmuller was nominated for best director for 1976’s “Seven Beauties” Stateside, actress Barbara Loden, who was married to Oscar-winning director Elia Kazan, wrote, directed and starred in the acclaimed 1970 indie drama “Wanda,” which won best foreign film at the Venice Film Festival. She never followed up with another movie and died of breast cancer in 1980.

There was also Joan Micklin Silver (“Hester Street”), Claudia Weill (“Girlfriends”), Martha Coolidge (“Not a Pretty Picture”), Joan Tewkesbury (“Old Boyfriends”) and Joan Darling (“First Love”). But those filmmakers ran into brick walls when they tried to set up projects with the major studios. The late Silver told Vanity Fair in 2021 that a studio executive didn’t mince his word: “Feature films are expensive to make and expensive to market,...

Italian cinema is in the spotlight at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles where the screening series “Ennio Morricone: Essential Scores from a Movie Maestro,” programmed in partnership with Cinecittà, is currently playing to sold-out audiences.

The Oct. 6-Nov. 25 event comprises 20 titles, including Sergio Leone’s “The Good the Bad and the Ugly” in a new restored print, “Once Upon a Time in the West” (pictured) and Don Siegel’s “Two Mules for Sister Sara,” plus a selection of other works hailing both from the master composer’s native Italy and the U.S.. Among these are Brian De Palma (“The Untouchables”), Terrence Malick (“Days of Heaven”) and Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight,” for which Morricone finally won the the Oscar for best original soundtrack in 2016.

“Hateful Eight” screened at the museum’s David Geffen Theatre in the 70mm “Roadshow” version with an intermission and an overture.

Cinecittà operates...

Marina Cicogna, a film producer and one of the first women to establish herself in the traditionally male cinema environment in Italy, died Saturday in Rome. She was 89.

Cicogna produced several important Italian films, including Metti, una Sera a Cena by Giuseppe Patroni Griffi and Indagine su un Cittadino al di Sopra di Ogni Sospetto (Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion) by Elio Petri, with the latter winning the Oscar for best foreign language film in 1971. The New York Times called her “one of the most powerful women in European cinema.”

Her extraordinary experience and career were recounted in 2021 in the documentary film Marina Cicogna. Life and Everything Else by Andrea Bettinetti and in her autobiography, Ancora Spero, released this year by Marsilio Publishing.

Cicogna died with Benedetta Gardona, her companion of more than 30 years, by her side.

Ahead of receiving the 2023 David Award for Lifetime Achievement this year, Cicogna...

Explore where to stream the best films of 2023.

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Drylongso (Cauleen Smith)

Writer-director Cauleen Smith made Drylongso when she was in college, 25 years ago, premiering at Sundance in 1998. She has gone on to create dozens of short films, art installations, and more experimental work, focused on similar themes of feminism, racial violence, and Black communities. The low-key hangout movie should have been a stepping stone for Smith, but, as with many other works by Black female filmmaking of the last half-century, it fell out of circulation. – Michael F. (full interview)

Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel

Fingernails (Christos Nikou)

Is love quantifiable? No, but that doesn’t stop Greek filmmaker Christos Nikou from exploring that question over two dull, excruciating hours in Fingernails,...

Execs took part in Netflix showcase panel at Mia Market in Rome.

Netflix VP content for Italy Eleonora ‘Tinny’ Andreatta says she is looking for content that goes beyond the stereotypes about the country that were formed by the success of Italian cinema in the 1960s.

“The biggest challenge we have nowadays is to overcome the big success that Italy had in the 1960s that created some stereotypes about our country. It was so huge,” Andreatta said on a panel at Mia Market in Rome.

“Now the ambition is to relaunch a more modern, more acutal, more true, more out of stereotype image of Italy.

Exec says she is after ‘modern’ and ‘out of stereotype’ content about Italy.

Netflix VP content for Italy Eleonora ‘Tinny’ Andreatta says she is looking for content that goes beyond the stereotypes about the country that were formed by the success of Italian cinema in the 1960s.

“The biggest challenge we have nowadays is to overcome the big success that Italy had in the 1960s that created some stereotypes about our country. It was so huge,” Andreatta said on a panel at Mia Market in Rome.

“Now the ambition is to relaunch a more modern, more acutal, more true, more...

These last few years the Criterion Channel have made October viewing much easier to prioritize, and in the spirit of their ’70s and ’80s horror series we’ve graduated to––you guessed it––”’90s Horror.” A couple of obvious classics stand with cult favorites and more unknown entities (When a Stranger Calls Back and Def By Temptation are new to me). Three more series continue the trend: “Technothrillers” does what it says on the tin, courtesy the likes of eXistenZ and Demonlover; “Art-House Horror” is precisely the kind of place to host Cure, Suspiria, Onibaba; and “Pre-Code Horror” is a black-and-white dream. Phantom of the Paradise, Unfriended, and John Brahm’s The Lodger are added elsewhere.

James Gray is the latest with an “Adventures in Moviegoing” series populated by deep cuts and straight classics. Stonewalling and restorations of Trouble Every Day and The Devil, Probably make streaming debuts, while Flesh for Frankenstein,...

In the entire 95-year history of the Academy Awards, only one woman has been nominated for the Best Director Oscar twice: Jane Campion for “The Piano” (1993 nominee) and “The Power of the Dog” (2021 winner). The other six females to contend for directing are Lina Wertmuller for “Seven Beauties” (1976 nominee), Sofia Coppola for “Lost in Translation” (2003 nominee), Kathryn Bigelow for “The Hurt Locker” (2009 winner), Greta Gerwig for “Lady Bird” (2017 nominee), Chloe Zhao for “Nomadland” (2020 winner) and Emerald Fennell for “Promising Young Woman” (2020 nominee). At the upcoming 2024 Oscars, Campion’s record as the only female to reap two separate director mentions could be matched if “Barbie” director Greta Gerwig earns her second bid.

Campion received her first Best Director nom for “The Piano,” about a mute piano player. The New Zealander lost to Steven Spielberg for “Schindler’s List” but did not go home empty-handed that year, as she won the Best Original Screenplay award.

Female directors have had a hard time at the Academy Awards. Over the first 95 years of the Oscars, only seven women have ever been nominated for Best Director: Lina Wertmüller in 1977 for “Seven Beauties,” Jane Campion in 1994 for “The Piano” and in 2022 for “The Power of the Dog,” Sofia Coppola in 2004 for “Lost in Translation,” Kathryn Bigelow in 2010 for “The Hurt Locker,” Greta Gerwig in 2018 for “Lady Bird,” Emerald Fennell in 2021 for “Promising Young Woman,” and Chloé Zhao in the same year for “Nomadland.”

That Fennell and Zhao were nominated in that same year is history in and of itself. That is the one and only time that more than one woman has been nominated for Best Director in the same year. But could that be about to change this year? There are a number of strong contenders who could be looking to join that short list of female directors to earn Best Director bids.

Directed by Martin Scorsese, Goodfellas is arguably the greatest film of its decade. Among the best at the very least, and in fact, it's commonly considered among the most seminal pieces of American cinema regardless of decade or director.

Plenty of that acclaim is due to the performances of its star-studded cast: Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Lorraine Braco, for example. This is perhaps the single greatest product from everyone involved, with Pesci and Braco picking up nominations at the Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress, respectively. And the former actually walked away with a golden statuette, which you might recall via his world-famous acceptance speech.

But just because those two were the only ones nominated at the Oscars for their efforts, it’s worth noting that each performer herein filled the shoes of their respective, real-life counterparts to absolute tees. It’s...

The Locarno Film Festival will pay tribute to Italian producer and director Renzo Rossellini by presenting him with a lifetime achievement award, organizers said Thursday.

The award ceremony in the Swiss town’s Piazza Grande on Aug. 10 will be followed by a screening of Federico Fellini’s La città delle donne (City of Women, 1980), on which Rossellini served as a producer. On Aug. 11, Rossellini, whose half-sister is Italian star Isabella Rossellini, will take part in a festival panel conversation.

“As producer for master filmmakers of the caliber of Federico Fellini, Lina Wertmüller, Werner Herzog, and Francis Ford Coppola, but also as assistant director (for his father Roberto and, among others, François Truffaut and Claude Chabrol) and director in his own right, Renzo Rossellini has never ceased his quest to pass on his knowledge of the cinema, teaching generations of students and cineastes with passion and commitment,” the Locarno fest said.

Italian producer, director, and film and TV industry pioneer Renzo Rossellini is being honored with the Locarno Film Festival’s lifetime achievement award.

The Swiss fest dedicated to indie cinema will pay tribute to the consummate filmmaker and renaissance man – who as a producer shepherded works by master directors such as Federico Fellini, Lina Wertmüller, Werner Herzog and Francis Ford Coppola – with a screening of Fellini’s 1980 work “City of Women” on its 8,000 seat open-air Piazza Grande venue on Aug. 10, followed by an onstage conversation the next day.

Rossellini who also worked as assistant director for his father Roberto and, among others, François Truffaut and Claude Chabrol – and is a director in his own right – “Has never ceased his quest to pass on his knowledge of the cinema, teaching generations of students and cineastes with passion and commitment,” the fest said in a statement.

“Film is a tool for learning...

Nanni Moretti always dresses impeccably — whether tuxed-up for the Cannes red carpet for his eight competition appearances since 1978 (his ninth, for A Brighter Tomorrow, will come May 24) or walking the Croisette in the casual chic (cashmere sweaters and chinos with open-collar shirts in dark gray or plum) that appears to come naturally to Italian men of Moretti’s generation. But the mantle of elder statesman of Italian cinema seems to hang on the 69-year-old director more like an ill-fitting suit.

It’s hard to deny Moretti’s position as a successor to the great neorealists — Vittorio De Sica, Federico Fellini, Roberto Rossellini — and the generation of New Wave heroes of the 1960s like Michelangelo Antonioni, Bernardo Bertolucci and Lina Wertmüller who reclaimed and restored Italian cinema after the ravages of fascism. His list of awards and acclaims alone — the Palme d’Or for The Son’s Room in 2001, Cannes best director in 1994 for Dear Diary,...

Adriana Chiesa, the pioneering Italian sales agent who has been a fixture at Cannes for 40 years, has sold her film library to Italy’s Minerva Pictures.

The 85-title Acek library comprises a broad mix of prominent works by revered directors such as Lina Wertmuller’s “Swept Away” (pictured) and “Summer Night With Greek Profile, Almond Eyes and a Scent of Basil” and cult movies including Lamberto Bava’s gonzo horror “Macabro,” revenge Western “Garringo” by Rafael Romero Merchant, and Asia Argento’s directorial debut, “Scarlet Diva,” on which Chiesa and Minerva chief Gianluca Curti jointly served as executive producers.

“I am particularly happy because I know that Gianluca appreciates the value of my library and will carry on its legacy with all the love and respect that it deserves,” Chiesa told Variety. She added that she will now continue her production activity, making documentaries such as “Water and Sugar: Carlo...

Belgian directors Felix Van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch’s Italian-language drama The Eight Mountains and veteran Marco Bellocchio’s Exterior Night topped the 68th edition of Italy’s David di Donatello Awards on Wednesday evening.

The Eight Mountains won best film as well as best non-original screenplay, photography and sound.

Based on the novel of the same name by Paolo Cognetti, it stars Luca Marinelli and Alessandro Borghi as two men from different backgrounds who form a life-long bond during summers spent together as children in a remote mountain village.

The film world premiered in Competition at Cannes last year where it co-won the Jury Prize. Read the Deadline review here.

It is the second time in the history of the awards that a film by non-Italian directors has clinched the best film prize.

The last time was in 1971 when the Dino de Laurentiis-produced epic Waterloo by Russian director Sergei Bonderchuk,...

Signed, sealed and delivered, Book Club: The Next Chapter is an unabashed love letter to four great movie stars. As a vehicle for their talents, it’s less of a sure thing. If you can see past the clunky plot contrivances, strained hijinks and one-liners that don’t land, and focus on the Italy-set comedy’s Mediterranean glow and the dazzling quartet of go-getters at its center, the movie might fit the bill as a celebratory pairing with Mother’s Day brunch.

The tagline on the key art encapsulates the sequel’s problems: “Slightly Scandalous. Totally Fabulous.” That qualifying “slightly” signals the softer cadence of this reunion. In the 2018 hit, Diane Keaton, Jane Fonda, Candice Bergen and Mary Steenburgen transcended the often tepid humor with their rat-a-tat delivery; here, returning director Bill Holderman, again working from a screenplay he wrote with Erin Simms, struggles to find a rhythm, and flat...

The best Guy Ritchie movies highlight the filmmaker's stylish and distinct direction. Ritchie rose to fame thanks to his acclaimed and cult-favorite crimes movies that allowed him to become a sought-after Hollywood director. After some notable missteps, Ritchie seemed to have found a career niche of jumping between big studio movies and the smaller crime movies that helped him find his initial success. This means his filmography is a mixed bag, however, wherein the least successful entries pale in comparison to the best Guy Ritchie movies.

Guy Ritchie has directed a number of critically and financially successful films over the years, but the director's career hasn't been without mishaps. This has created a unique string of hits and misses. However, even some of Guy Ritchie's movies that didn't hit big at the box office have gained more fans over the years and become underrated favorites. Fans might have their idea...

Before Kathryn Bigelow snagged the first female Best Director Oscar, only three women had ever been nominated before, the first of whom was Lina Wertmüller in 1975 for her controversial Italian masterpiece Seven Beauties. An iconic art house director who began to gain prominence in the 70s, Wertmüller’s films tend to ride a unicycle down a tightrope between brutal political realism and flashy fantastical expressionism. While she passed away in 2021, past interviews show her candid about the major influences in her life, which range from Russian theater to the Flash Gordon comics, which she singled out for their cinematic framing. Watching any one of her films, it becomes remarkably impressive how deftly she navigates between genre and tone without giving the viewer whiplash, but what is it about Seven Beauties specifically that the Academy couldn’t even ignore a highly controversial foreign language film directed by a woman in 1975?...

Prior to becoming an actor, Giancarlo Giannini, who on March 6 will be getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, studied electronic engineering, a skill he’s been known to put to good use even on movie sets.

“I was meant to start working on the first artificial satellites, or on the first computers at Ibm,” the Italian film and theater thesp recalls. But then Giannini enrolled in acting school and soon was given major roles, first by Franco Zeffirelli and then by Lina Wertmüller, with whom he went on to make nine movies that brought them both international fame.

“I owe it to Lina that I will be getting the star. The only other Italian actor who has one is Rudolph Valentino,” he notes.

Before traveling to Los Angeles, Giannini spoke to Variety about his career journey and what he learned from Anna Magnani, Marlon Brando and Marcello Mastroianni.

The nominations for Best Director at the 95th Academy Awards continue a disappointing trend from years gone by. January 24, 2023 saw the nominations for 2023's Oscars announced by previous Best Actor nominee Riz Ahmed and M3GAN's Allison Williams, which highlighted the likes of Everything Everywhere All at Once, The Banshees of Inisherin, and All Quiet on the Western Front as the front-runners for the biggest award ceremony of the year. While the Oscars celebrate all aspects of film, the Best Director category is one of the most coveted awards, but 2023's shortlist of directors highlight a disappointing and unfortunate trend returning to the Academy Awards.

For the 95th Academy Awards, five acclaimed directors have been nominated to take home the coveted trophy. The category consists of Daniel Kwan and Daniel Schienerts (the "Daniels") for Everything Everywhere All at Once, Todd Field for Tár, Martin McDonagh for The Banshees of Inisherin,...

Hey, remember 2020 quarantine? That’s a joke — of course you do. Not only was it the most disruptive worldwide event of the last five years, it has also been exhaustively mined for content. Only three years out, it already feels like all the articles, books, social media posts, paintings, films, and TV shows that could be made about quarantine have already been made. Such is the nature of our rapid-fire online world. If you want to say something about the pandemic lockdown, it’d better be inventive. Like, a-Zoom-seance-killed-all-my-friends inventive.

Unfortunately, “Life Upside Down” makes no such contributions. This second feature from the writer-director Cecilia Miniucchi (“Expired”) uses the expected pandemic filmmaking gimmicks — actors filmed their scenes on phones and computers as Miniucchi directed them remotely — to produce a cringe-inducing melodrama. In this undercooked tale of middle-aged romance, there is nobody to root for and nothing of interest. All there...

The Oscar nominations revealed Tuesday did not include any female directors, extending a trend across this season’s awards landscape. It means the modest streak of women winning the Directing Oscar will end at two, after back-to-back wins the past two years with Jane Campion (The Power of the Dog) in 2022 and Chloé Zhao (Nomadland) in 2021.

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This morning, the names called were Martin McDonagh (The Banshees of Inisherin), Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (Everything Everywhere All at Once), Steven Spielberg (The Fabelmans), Todd Field (Tár) and Ruben Östlund (Triangle of Sadness).

Earlier this season, the mostly apples-to-apples Directors Guild also went with McDonagh, Kwan & Scheinert, Field and Spielberg, but...

Female directors were once again shut out in the director category at the Academy Awards after two years of seeing progress in the space, with women winning the prestigious award in back-to-back years.

The nominees this year are Martin McDonagh (The Banshees of Inisherin), Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (Everything Everywhere All At Once), Steven Spielberg (The Fabelmans), Todd Field (Tar) and Ruben Östlund (Triangle of Sadness).

That means there were no women nominated despite a buzzy awards year for female filmmakers, like The Woman King‘s Gina Prince-Bythewood and Women Talking‘s Sarah Polley, or Till‘s Chinonye Chukwu, She Said‘s Maria Schrader and Aftersun‘s Charlotte Wells.

Last year, Jane Campion became the first woman to receive multiple Oscar nominations for best director, having previously been recognized for 1993’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner The Piano. She became the third woman in history to win the best...