Judy & Punch (2019)
Senior Programmer Kate Taylor introduces the list of women in the director’s chair at this year’s Festival.
The programme has been announced, the statistics digested, and now the good stuff starts, the chance to see and discuss the films in the Festival. Forty percent of the films in the LFF may have female directors, but who are all these women and what have they made?
An exciting trend across the Festival is the high number of feature films from first- and second-time directors, which gives the whole programme an energy, even more so when considering the bold directions this filmmaking is taking. Exemplifying this crop, Mirrah Foulkes’ extraordinary debut Judy & Punch slides feminist separatist politics into a thrilling fairytale romp, Mati Diop’s hotly anticipated Atlantics pushes forward genre to electrifying effect, and Rose Glass’s Scarborough-set saviour-complex stunner Saint Maud is set to make your jaw drop.
These firestarters join established talents such as Haifaa Al-Mansour, Jessica Hausner, Marielle Heller, Agnieszka Holland, Kasi Lemmons, Anocha Suwichakornpong and Rebecca Zlotowski, who have each built a body of work that defies convention. And we are chuffed that visionaries Kim Longinotto and Céline Sciamma will be surveying their careers in dedicated Screen Talk events, while Nina Menkes, in town to present the restoration of underground classic Queen of Diamonds, will be giving a free performance of her barn-storming lecture ‘Sex & Power: The Visual Language of Oppression’.
In Vitro (2019)
Internationally, South Korea sees a particularly strong year for female-directed work, with four films in the Festival which consider the lives of girls and women in wildly divergent ways: House of Hummingbird, Heart, Maggie, and The House of Us. And looking beyond the auteurist fixation on directors, French cinematographers Hélène Louvart and Claire Mathon delight with two films apiece, while an especially exciting DoP talent to watch is Anna Valdez-Hanks who lenses both Hope Gap in bold inviting tones and Experimenta/Short Film Competition sci-fi In Vitro in stunning monochrome framing. While Rocks sees an abundance of female talent, including many heads of department, and an approach to collaborative screenwriting that puts the film’s charismatic Hackney schoolgirls at its core.
Rocks (2019)
The Treasures section includes the restoration world premiere of Unheimlich II: Astarti, which is a monumental 2k restoration of Maria Klonaris and Katerina Thomadaki’s Super8 opus, and in a break with our own tradition of only screening new restorations, the Treasures strand is screening a new print of Wanda Tuchok’s Finishing School – because really, who could resist a pre-Code girls’ school romp with Ginger Rogers, condemned by the Legion of Decency?
And so below we present every film in the Festival with a female director. Many of these films have tickets still available, and there is a Discovery Pass for Female Filmmakers if you would like to try three films for £30. We hope you enjoy experiencing a multitude of perspectives over the 12 days of the Festival.
#21xoxo / short / Sine Ozbilge and Imge Ozbilge
37 Seconds / feature / Hikari
A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood / feature / Marielle Heller
A Family Affair / short / Florence Keith-Roach
A Line Was Drawn / short / Mairead McClean
A Love / short / Anne-Marie Copestake
A Thief’s Daughter / feature / Belén Funes
Abominable / feature / Jill Culton
Again Once Again / feature / Romina Paula
Algo-rhythm / short / Manu Luksch
An Easy Girl / feature / Rebecca Zlotowski
Antarctic Traces / short / Michaela Grill
Apart / short / Diana / Van Nguyen
Arab Blues / feature / Manele Labidi
Atlantics / feature / Mati Diop
Babyteeth / feature / Shannon Murphy
Be Still My Beating Heart / short / Ruth Paxton
Big Toast / short / Sacha Beeley
Black Bus Stop / short / Claudrena N. Harold and Kevin Jerome Everson
Bombay Rose / feature / Gitanjali Rao
Breast Friends / short / Caitlin Young
Child / short / Talia Zucker
Chlorine / short / Melissa Anastasi
Circus of Books / feature / Rachel Mason
Clemency / feature / Chinonye Chukwu
Cloudberries / short / Ruth Maclennan
Cunningham / feature / Alla Kovgan
Dawn in the Dark / short / Runyararo Mapfumo
Dawn of a New Gay / short / Rosie Gaunt-Mathieson
The Deathless Woman / feature / Roz Mortimer
Desrances / feature / Apolline Traoré
Duck Daze / short / Alison Piper
Duerrenwaid 8 / short / Kirsten Ines Geißer and Carina Ines Geißer
Eastern State / short / Talena Sanders
Entre / short / Ana Bárbara / Marinho Carolina Santos
Exchange Student / short / Natalie Nourigat
Eyes on the Road / short / Stefanie Kolk
The Father / feature / Kristina Grozeva and Peter Valchanov
Fi Dem II / short / Zinzi Minott
The Finishing School / feature / Wanda Tuchock and George Nichols Jr
The Friend / feature / Gabriela Cowperthwaite
Ghost Dance / short / Emilia Izquierdo
Good Heart / short / Evgeniya Jirkova
Grandad Was a Romantic / short / Maryam Mohajer
Harriet / feature / Kasi Lemmons
Heart / feature / Ga-young Jeong
Home Sweet Home / short / Maria Robertson
Honey Boy / feature / Alma Har’el
Hope Frozen / feature / Pailin Wedel
Hot and Tasty / short / Laura Hodkin
House of Hummingbird / feature / Bora Kim
The House of Us / feature / Ga-eun Yoon
Humblebrag / short / Sinéad O’Shea
I Am Mackenzie / short / Artemis Anastasiadou
I Am (Not) a Monster / feature / Nelly Ben Hayoun
I Die of Sadness Crying for You / feature / Nina Danino
If You Knew / short / Stroma Cairns
In Vitro / short / Larissa Sansour and Soren Lind
Instinct / feature / Halina Reijn
Instructions on How to Make a Film / short / Nazli Dincel
Jericho / short / Sarah Andrews and Aaron Hopwood
Judy & Punch / feature / Mirrah Foulkes
The Juniper Tree / feature / Nietzchka Keene
The Kingmaker / feature / Lauren Greenfield
Kitchen Beets / short / Bea Haut
Krabi, 2562 / feature / Anocha Suwichakornpong and Ben Rivers
The Lamb / short / Nina Violić
Lingua Franca / feature / Isabel Sandoval
Little Joe / feature / Jessica Hausner
The Lodge / feature / Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala
Losing Pace / short / Naomi Soneye-Thomas
Lost Tune / short / Shahnaz Sattar
Love Me Tender / feature / Klaudia Reynicke
Love the Sinner / short / Jennifer Sheridan
Lucky Grandma / feature / Sasie Sealy
Made in Bangladesh / feature / Rubaiyat Hossain
Maggie / feature / Yi Ok-seop
Mahalia Melts in the Rain / short / Emilie Mannering and Carmine Pierre-Dufour
Make Up / feature / Claire Oakley
Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound / feature / Midge Costin
Maternal / feature / Maura Delpero
Mensch Maschine or Putting Parts Together / short / Adina Camhy
Miller & Son / short / Asher Jelinsky
Mother of Fire / short / Farah Al Qasimi
Mr. Jones / feature / Agnieszka Holland
Muybridge’s Disobedient Horses / short / Anna Vasof
Nest / short / Sonja Rohleder
Nocturnal / feature / Nathalie Biancheri
Noura’s Dream / feature / Hinde Boujemaa
Oh My Homeland / short / Stephanie Barber
Olla / short / Ariane Labed
Ordinary Love / feature / Lisa Barros and Glenn Leyburn
The Orphanage / feature / Shahrbanoo Sadat
The Other Lamb / feature / Malgorzata Szumowska
Our Sister / short / Rosie Westhoff
Overseas / feature / Sung-A Yoon
Pattaki / short / Everlane Moraes
Pelourinho: They Don’t Really Care about Us / short / Akosua Owusu
The Perfect Candidate / feature / Haifaa Al-Mansour
Perfect 10 / feature / Eva Riley
Portrait of a Lady on Fire / feature / Celine Sciamma
Queen of Diamonds / feature / Nina Menkes
Rain, Rain, Run Away / short / Clémentine Carrié
Rare Beasts / feature / Billie Piper
Rehearsal / short / Courtney Thérond
Relativity / feature / Mariko Minoguchi
Rocks / feature / Sarah Gavron
Roots / short / Hussina Raja
Rose Plays Julie / feature / Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor
Ruptures / feature / Brad Butler and Noor Afshan Mirza
Saint Maud / feature / Rose Glass
The Sasha / short / Maria Molina Peiró
Scales / feature / Shahad Ameen
The Sharks / feature / Lucía Garibaldi
Shooting the Mafia / feature / Kim Longinotto
Sister / feature / Svetla Tsotsorkova
The Sky Is Pink / feature / Shonali Bose
Sojourner / short / Cauleen Smith
Something in the Closet / short / Nosa Eke
Staff Only / feature / Neus Ballus
Stand Still / short / Isabella Wing-Davey
The Stroker / short / Pilvi Takala
Suicide by Sunlight / short / Nikyatu Jusu
System Crasher / feature / Nora Fingscheidt
Tertiary Sound / short / Solomia Dzhurovska and Luca Struijk
That Which Is to Come Is Just a Promise / short / Flatform
They / short / Louisa Rechenbach
Transnistra / feature / Anna Eborn
The Trap / short / Lena Headey
Trouble / feature / Mariah Garnett
Under Covers / short / Michaela Olsen
Unheimlich II: Astarti / feature / Katerina Maria and Klonaris Thomadaki
Us Among the Stones / feature / Dictynna Hood
Video Home System / short / Sharlene Bamboat
Walking with Shadows / feature / Aoife O’Kelly
Watermelon Juice / short / Irene Moray
What Do You Know about the Water and the Moon / short / Jian Luo
White Girl / short / Nadia Latif
White Riot / feature / Rubika Shah
28.09.2019 | BFI London Film Festival's blog
Cat. : BFI London Film Festival PEOPLE