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At a Tribeca Film Festival talk last week, Jodie Foster declared that she's a "little sick" of commenting on "the woman thing." Foster was onstage with Julie Taymor, another female director, and explained how both of them were growing tired of discussing the state of their gender in the industry. "But we can't ignore it," Taymor noted. Foster concurred: "It's real." She added: "For whatever reason, I don't think it's a plot, I think [people] still see women as a risk."
While the problem is, as Foster said, a "real" one in Hollywood at large, the festival itself gave a number of women a platform to shine. One-third of all the feature films represented at Tribeca were directed by women. Compare that to the mere 3.4% of major studio releases that are directed by women, according to a recent study. The Festival also played host to a Daring Women Summit, which yielded the stage to luminaries like Samantha Bee and Donna Karan. (Refinery29 was a media partner for the event, and our chief content officer, Amy Emmerich, appeared on one of the panels.)
Women also came alway with some of the festival's prizes. Ingrid Jungermann won Best Screenplay in a U.S. Narrative Feature Film for Women Who Kill. Priscilla Anany was the recipient of the Best New Narrative Director award for Children of the Mountain.
It's nearly impossible to see everything at a festival like Tribeca, but here are some of the women who stood out based on my viewing.
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