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At last night's Academy Awards, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy accepted the Oscar for Documentary (Short Subject) and said, "This is what happens when determined women get together." Obaid-Chinoy won for A Girl in The River: The Price of Forgiveness, a film about a woman who survived an honor killing in Pakistan.
It was a powerful speech, but also one that highlighted just how few female filmmakers ever get nominated. What Happened, Miss Simone?''s Liz Garbus and Mustang's Deniz Gamze Ergüven received nods for their work in the documentary and foreign language categories. They both came away empty-handed.
According to the Comprehensive Annenberg Report on Diversity in Entertainment, women made up only 3.4% of 2014's film directors. (The sample size included 109 movies.) Hollywood has to do better. And so does the Academy. To date, only four women have been nominated for Best Director: Lina Wertmüller, Jane Campion, Sofia Coppola, and Kathryn Bigelow (the first and only winner).
So with that in mind, we've come up with our dream wish list of some of the most talented female directors working today, who, we hope, will find their way to the Oscars as nominees in the not-too-distant future. The list is not meant to be comprehensive, and not everyone on it has been snubbed by the Academy. It's a selection of filmmakers whose work we love. So by all means, feel free to tell us who you'd like to see honoured soon.
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