BREAKING BOX-OFFICE RECORDS AND LEADING HISTORY-MAKING STRIKES, WOMEN ARE SETTING THE AGENDA IN FILM IN 2023. HANNA FLINT CELEBRATES THE WOMEN RESHAPING CINEMA
WAS 2023 THE YEAR WE FINALLY 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 for her stellar turn in Everything Everywhere All at Once. And Emerald Fennell’s new film Saltburn is already generating incessant awards buzz. Of course, there is still work to be done; Chloé Zhao and Jane Campion were only the second and third women to win the Best Director Oscar, in 2021 and 2022 respectively, for Nomadland and The Power of the Dog. In 2022, only 33% of films featured female protagonists, but perhaps change is coming. And with the current backdrop of the film-making community using its collective strength to advocate for its 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.
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 what she calls ‘nicely hectic’. The 30-yearold’s electric drama follows a teen-girl trio as they let loose on a holiday to Malia in Crete. 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 after the #MeToo movement. ‘I was assaulted when I was 16 and always felt [sexual assault] wasn’t depicted on screen in a way that felt true to my experience,’ the west-Londonborn film-maker says, noting fondly the moment she realised her film had made an impact. ‘Two teenagers at a screening came up to me to say, “Thank you for not oversexualizing us or making us comic versions of ourselves,”’ she recalls.
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 partly why she established Babe City FC, a 275-strong football team for women and non-binary members of the film industry. ‘We r
