Quotes & Sayings About Female Directors

The question I always ask is: 'Where are all the women directors in America?' You know, where's the female Martin Scorsese, the female David Lynch? — Gillian Armstrong

I've worked with so few female directors. — Andrea Riseborough

There are so many female directors coming into the industry and a lot of them have important stories they want to tell that seem to fall a little bit more on the indie level. — Anne Fletcher

I've always been slightly hesitant about generalizing movies made by men and women being different in their nature; I think movies by each director are different. Having said that, I think that it's kind of disgraceful that there aren't more female directors. — Susanne Bier

There are still so few female directors. There are far fewer writers than we'd like to see. — Nina Jacobson

I wrote 'Thelma & Louise' in 1988, and we shot it in 1990. Everyone kept saying, 'This is so groundbreaking ... this is going to change the landscape,' but I don't see that result at all. When we saw some female studio executives, we were hopeful that more women would be hired as directors, but that didn't really seem to happen. — Callie Khouri

A male director doesn't come to situations the same way that a female director would. — Liz W. Garcia

Most people view female directors as female only, that we only deal with women's issues and women characters. Although most of my films have dealt with women, I do have work that deals with other matters, and I'm always open to different stories regardless of gender. — Shahad Ameen

My advice to other female directors would be to pay no heed to naysayers. Women can be united in the fact that there has always been someone in our lives who has told us "it can't be done" or "there is only so much you can do." We are constantly encouraged to think that being born a woman means we were born with limited choices and compromised dreams. — Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy

My advice for other female directors is look for people who really appreciate your vision and are willing to genuinely support you. When it comes time to taking notes on various cuts, if you have a smart producer, listen to her notes! — Linda Hoaglund

There are a lot of female directors in documentary, very talented. But it's always lower budget. — Patricia Riggen

But it's cool working with female directors because I'm a girl, so you do relate to them more. You can talk to them about other stuff like clothes and all that. — Elle Fanning

Why would people have confidence in a female director when there are so few? — Jennifer Lawrence

As a female, you are often being asked by directors to be warmer, softer, flirt more, smile more etc ... None of those things are bad, and obviously we are capable of a variety of human behavior, but it gets really old having to play into somebody's stereotype or ideal. — Trieste Kelly Dunn

Any advice I could give to female directors would be the same as for males: There will be endless difficulties, some seemingly defeating, on your way. That's a given. Just wipe out the very notion of stress. Concentrate on your actors. Obsess about your story and the world it is anchored in. Deal with the hundreds of down-to-earth issues [around] the existence of your film. At some point, everything will be ripe. And you wouldn't be able to stop your film from coming to life even if you wanted to. — Deniz Gamze Erguven

I don't think about the gender thing very much. But when I speak at schools, I've had female students say to me afterwards, "I never envisioned myself being a director, since I've never seen women do it." But after seeing me, they can picture themselves directing, so maybe we'll see more female directors. — Jennifer Yuh Nelson

Never give up. I do believe it is harder for female directors. I have been lucky to receive support from the Sundance Institute for my first film. I'm eternally grateful for their support. I think you need to be surrounded artistically and follow your intuition - always follow your intuition. — Sophie Barthes

American commercial cinema has long been dominated by men, but I don't think there has ever been another time when women have been as underrepresented on screen as they are now. The biggest problem isn't genuinely independent cinema, where lower budgets mean more opportunities for women in front of and behind the camera. The problem is the six major studios that dominate the box office, the entertainment chatter and the popular imagination. Their refusal to hire more female directors is immoral, maybe illegal, and has helped create and sustain a representational ghetto for women. — Manohla Dargis

I get asked why there aren't more female directors all the time. I'm kind of reluctant to talk about it. That's not because I think the question is irrelevant or stupid. It's just that there are so many mitigating factors. — Lisa Cholodenko

Here, we have female directors and producers; in fact, one whole channel is run by a woman. Pakistani TV is progressive, and hence, characters that are shown are of today as well. — Umera Ahmad

We definitely have to support other female directors because there's not enough of us. — Gia Coppola

I'm still confounded by how few female directors there are. I don't get it. — Stacey Snider

In October 2011, Jocelyn Goldfein, one of the engineering directors at Facebook, held a meeting with our female engineers where she encouraged them to share the progress they had made on the products they were building. Silence. No one wanted to toot her own horn. Who would want to speak up when self-promoting women are disliked? — Sheryl Sandberg

I believe young female directors in particular should always remind themselves of the truths of their own stories and not let outsiders influence the authenticity of their films. — Shahad Ameen

Hmm, can I be obvious and say there is probably a double standard for male vs. female directors? Sadly, I think that's actually the case. And it probably stems from the fact that there are proportionately so many fewer women directors than men ones that each project is perhaps more closely scrutinized for its content. — Lynn Shelton

I do believe female directors, as well as our female writer, can bring out male vulnerability that some men can't because they can't face it. — Ben Kingsley

I don't really consider myself a female director, and I don't want to do so for other women. Female directors are just directors. — Alante Kavaite

When I was in college, my graduation thesis was called 'Female Directors.' I interviewed all of the important female directors from Mexico. There were four. That was it. — Patricia Riggen

My advice to female directors is not to wait until you feel like your ideas have been pre-certified or until you think you've gotten some approval for them. Then it's too late! Follow your gut. That's hard to do, but the only way to be original. — Abigail Disney

The biggest challenges are always getting into the rooms that you need to get into and having people open to the types of stories that I want to tell. And I feel that just being a female director and doing that is a big deal in this country. On my third movie I worked with a French DP. I asked him has he ever worked with a woman director before? He said in France a third of directors are women; so you can't avoid them. So I realized that the US is behind. — Kasi Lemmons

I've definitely gotten to work with female directors, and I feel lucky because of that. I just feel like more voices should be represented. — Zoe Kazan

Sexism is real and it persists in film and television. I've seen female directors openly undermined by male cinematographers in front of the entire crew — Liz W. Garcia

Female directors really do need to support each other. Too many times I've been led to believe that my direct competition was other women, as if there can be only a handful of successful female filmmakers a year. That conversation, that perception, needs to change. Women are the people who have helped me make films I love, and I want to be that kind of strength to other women. — Jennifer Phang

We're long past having to defend or explain why women should be on boards, given all the data that shows how companies with female as well as male directors perform better. It's unfortunate when companies with a large percentage of women constituents don't reflect that in their boardrooms. — Anne M. Mulcahy

Talent has no gender. People are hiring young male directors right out of film school, off of a student film or off of a film at Sundance for millions of dollars. You can do the same with a female. It's not a risk about the work if you respect the film that they made. — Gina Prince-Bythewood

There are many amazing female directors that made work in more skewed times, so we should be thankful for the boundaries they pushed through. — Jillian Mayer

It felt amazing to be one of a handful working female directors in Hollywood. — Tamra Davis

I don't understand why there aren't more powerful female directors. I don't have the answers, but I hope that things may start to shift and that studios will employ more women to handle strong and interesting material. — Sam Taylor-Johnson

There are a lot of male directors who are directing female-driven pieces. I think that its good to get the girl's point of view and they should write stuff that they know. — Jerusha Hess

When I was making films [early in my career] there were very, very few female directors, and there were certainly no women on set, which made taking one's clothes off all the more difficult — Helen Mirren

Yeah, I've worked with a couple of female directors, now, and I think that they're amazing. As good or better than guy directors. — Alia Shawkat

In the beginning, I found myself dealing with a show business dictated by male white supremacists and chauvinists. As a black female, I had to learn how to tap dance around the situation. I had to ... find a way to present my point of view without being pushy or aggressive. In the old days, the only women I saw in this business were in makeup, hairdressing, and wardrobe departments. Now I'm surrounded by women executives, writers, directors, producers, and even women stagehands. — Diahann Carroll