Sally El-Hosaini
Age: 37-38
Nationality: British Claim to fame:
Turning the urban crime genre on its head Her story: The British tradition of “gritty realism” may have hit highs through the work of fellow British women Lynn Ramsay, Clio Barnard and Andrea Arnold, but in lesser hands it has also been done to death.
Last year, Welsh-Egyptian director El-Hosaini burst onto the scene with “My Brother the Devil”, a film that at first appears to be a fairly conventional, if well-constructed, urban drama about two brothers drawn towards a life of crime. But then the plot veers into totally unexpected territory, transforming the narrative into a bold and vital deconstruction of contemporary masculinity. This makes sense of – and more than justifies – the long struggle El-Hosaini faced to get the film made.
Miranda July
Age: 39
Nationality: American
Claim to fame: giving the indie wunderkind a female face
Her story: The strand of independent cinema forever doomed to be described as “quirky” and “eccentric” has a chequered history, with directors such as Charlie Kaufman and Michel Gondry representing its zenith, but many below them giving it a bad name. Either way, it has tended to be men who are permitted to express their quirks on film – until the arrival of Miranda July with her 2004 film “Me and You and Everyone we Know”.
July has had her fair share of critics – I myself came down hard on her 2011 release “The Future” – but her idiosyncratic filmmaking voice is uniquely hers, and against a landscape of male-constructed manic pixie dream girls, uniquely refreshing.
Celine Sciamma
Age: 32
Nationality: French
Claim to fame: subverting gender expectations
Her story: The press treatment of Angelina Jolie’s daughter Shiloh makes clear that media coverage of childhood gender nonconformity is not exactly enlightened. And whilst we can only dream of Celine Sciamma’s “Tomboy” reaching the kind of audience exposed to that level of tabloid dross, it remains a startling film about a ten year old girl who moves to a new town and announces to her new friends that she is a boy.
Before this, Sciamma’s debut “Water Lilies” screened at Cannes at the age of 25. With a striking minimalist style both indebted to French tradition and uniquely hers, Sciamma has won over the critical fraternity without compromising her focus on young female sexuality.
Lucia Puenzo
Age: 39
Nationality: Argentinian
Claim to fame: narrating the intersex experience
Her story: Not dissimilarly to Sciamma, Lucia Puenzo announced her arrival with 2007’s XXY, a film about an intersex teen facing adolescent struggles both familiar and unique. The film scooped the Critics Week Grand Prix at Cannes, and Puenzo was back on the Croisette this year, with her third feature “Wakolda” screening as part of Un Certain Regard.
A well-received drama about a Nazi physician who develops an unhealthy obsession with an aryan Argentinian family, it is evidence that Puenzo’s storytelling scope remains as wide as ever.
Written by Jon Hines