Was 2023 the year we saw a seismic shift for women in film? Greta Gerwig made history after the monumental release of Barbie, the first solely female-directed film to bank a billion dollars at the box office. Michelle Yeoh became the first East Asian woman to win the Academy Award for Best Actress Oscar for her stellar turn in Everything Everywhere All At Once.
And Emerald Fennell’s new film Saltburn is already generating incessant award buzz. Of course, there is still work to be done; Chloe Zhao and Jane Campion were only the second and third women to win the Best Director Oscar, back to back in 2021 and 2022 respectively, for Nomadland and The Power of the Dog.
In 2022, only 33% of films featured female protagonists, but change is coming. And with the current backdrop of the film-making community using their collective strength to strike for their workers’ rights via the SAG-AFTRA strikes, women are leading the charge. Spanning established disruptors and emerging game-changers, Hollywood is entering a new era in which a refreshingly diverse array of women's stories shine.
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Molly Manning Walker
Ever since Molly Manning Walker's feature debut How To Have Sex picked up the coveted Un Certain Regard award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, life has been 'nicely hectic'. The 30-year-old’s electric drama follows a teen-girl trio as they let loose on a party holiday to Malia. Ultimately, the trip turns sour as frenemy politics and toxic masculinity reach boiling point.
Protagonist Tara [a career defining performance for Mia McKenna-Bruce] is out to lose her virginity, but being pressured into it raises uncomfortable questions around consent post the #MeToo movement. ‘I was assaulted when I was 16 and I’ve always felt [sexual assault] wasn't depicted on screen in a way that felt true to my experience,’ the West London-born filmmaker says, noting fondly the moment she realised her film had made a positive impact. ‘These two teenagers at a screening came up to me to say thank you for not oversexualizing us or making us comic versions of ourselves.’
The triple-threat writer, director and cinematographer (who was behind the camera on Charlotte Regan’s fiery debut Scrapper) is keenly aware of the disrespect women can face in front of and behind the camera. ‘Lots of gaffers and grips don't trust you and it gets exhausting having to prove yourself again and again.’ That’s part of the reason she established Babe City FC, a 275-strong football team for female and NB members of the film industry. ‘We really support each other and to witness all these new exciting voices coming through – the change feels seismic'.
'How To Have Sex' is out November 3rd.
Emma Laird
When Emma Laird was shooting a nudity scene for Mayor of Kingstown, the Jeremy Renner-led series marking her TV debut, she was struggling emotionally. Iris, her character, is an escort and this pivotal moment was touching on sexual assault and trafficking. She wanted to do these harrowing issues justice but, ‘I just couldn't get there,’ she recalls.
So she turned to one of the four female intimacy coordinators working on the series. ‘I looked her in the eyes, connected with her, and I started crying,’ adds Laird. ‘All of a sudden I was there – connecting with a woman in those moments are important to me.’ The poignant humanity she imbued into that performance has led to the Chesterfield native securing coveted roles in Apple TV’s The Crowded Room and Kenneth Branagh’s latest Poirot adaptation A Haunting in Venice.
At 25, she’s already doing the #MeToo movement proud by speaking up for herself on male-dominated sets. ‘I came from modelling where I just had to say yes to everything so it's been a big shift of learning that I'm not being a bitch,’ she says. ‘Just because you sign up for something, and you're comfortable with nudity, doesn't mean you can't control that environment on set.’
Working with female directors like Mona Fastvold has reinforced her confident mindset. ‘I like women that take no shit, because I've always been a bit of a pushover and a people pleaser,’ says Laird. ‘It's important for me to have women like that to look up to.’
Ursula Rani Sarma
If anyone should be attuned to the ebbs and flows of storytelling, it’s screenwriter Ursula Rani Sarma. From her acclaimed Edinburgh Fringe debut Touched in 1999, to her juicy TV work on female-led series Delicious and Smother, the Irish-Indian writer has spent 20+ years placing audiences on the shoulders of complex characters through her riveting stage and screen work. But she’s been yearning to reflect a greater array of ethnicities and cultural communities through her writing and the timing couldn’t be better.
‘We're living through an era now where it feels I have a real opportunity to put diverse women at the heart of my stories,’ says Sarma. She’s not wasted anytime as she transitions to the silver screen with In The Shadows. Reinvigorating the sports biopic, Sarma has zoomed in on Ramla Ali, a Somali woman who became the first ever British female Muslim boxing champion, in the face of civil war and family disapproval. ‘All of the odds were stacked against her but every time somebody put her down, she just kept getting back up again,’ Sarma says. ‘This is a story that young girls and women need to see, especially those who aren’t part of the mainstream population.’
With Letitica Wright in the lead role, no doubt more British stars will be queuing up to bring her stories to life, but Sarma is intent on using her power as a writer, producer, mentor and teacher to inspire even more Irish women of colour to be counted too: ‘I'm delighted my daughter will grow up seeing us on screen and going, ‘these are our stories to claim.”’
Nia DaCosta
Nia DaCosta is making history. Not only is she the youngest director to helm a Marvel film (her highly-anticipated superhero sequel will hit the big screen next month), but she is also the first Black female filmmaker to do the job too. DaCosta is the personification of work ethic. The Brooklyn-born filmmaker has barely taken a breath since making three movies back to back since 2017: first her Sundance darling debut Little Woods (2018), followed by the hit horror reboot of Candyman (2020), produced by Jordan Peele, and her much-anticipated superhero sequel The Marvels.
But this inspiring path was not a given. ‘Once I did Little Woods, I felt limited in terms of the things I was being offered,’ the 33-year-old recalls. ‘Usually it was a sad black woman in a period setting so I had to make a concerted effort in meetings to say I want to be doing something more dynamic.’ That assertiveness clearly paid off and now she’s one of the most sought-after filmmakers in Hollywood.
With two franchise films under her belt, however, DaCosta is back in London (where she had studied at Central School of Speech and Drama and cut her teeth directing episodes of crime series Top Boy), preparing to shoot Hedda, her adaptation of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler. Currently on hold due to the strikes, DaCosta believes this action will only end when studios ‘address what are systemic and existential issues in our industry’ As a WGA member she’s fully supportive, but she just can’t wait to get back to filmmaking on her own terms. ‘Hedda is mine,’ she says. ‘There are no big brands, big studio or celebrity personalities. As an artist in my own right, I need to have the experience of doing it for myself.’
'The Marvels' is out on November 10th.
Nathalie Emmanuel
Few TV stars have successfully made the leap into mainstream cinema like Hollyoaks and Game of Thrones alum Nathalie Emmanuel. 'Nobody would see me; they were like, ‘[soap stars] are not real actors.’ But she proved ‘them’ wrong, breaking through as a bonafide star on the big and small screens. As a biracial Black woman, Emmanuel refuses to be pigeonholed by her identity, her early filmography–or even her inability to drive.
‘It’s a point of pride for me that I've done four movies where driving is pretty high on the agenda,’ she chuckles. Unfair pay and inequality in the film industry is, of course, no laughing matter. Like her peers, Emmanuel is furious that WGA and SAG-AFTRA members have been forced to strike to secure economic and creativity security for their work. ‘It's making the people that make art, and are essential to the art, poor,’ she says. ‘Our performances as actors and writers, that's our art and it should be protected and compensated.’
As Emmanuel steps up as a producer, making short films and developing a feature, she draws on her past experiences to make sure working conditions are fair. 'There [have] been incidents of misogyny where I've said to the producer, "we're not doing that anymore so you need to talk to whoever you've got to talk to, because I'm not doing it anymore." That’s me at 34 having matured as a person, as a woman.'
It’s her ‘ultimate goal’ to forge an intersectional space for cinema to truly thrive. ‘The more diverse thoughts, you’re only better for’ the actress says. ‘That's what I always want to see. The talent is there. You just have to look for it.’
This article originally appeared in the November 2023 issue of ELLE magazine.
