The Competition
Women's Work: Essential Films by Female Filmmakers
•
2h 0m
Directed by Claire Simon | 121 mins | 2016
The Competition begins, significantly, with the image of a locked gate—that of La Fémis, one of the most prestigious film schools in the world, offering hands-on training from working professionals and accepting only 40 students per year from hundreds of applicants. This Wiseman-esque documentary from Claire Simon, one of France’s premiere nonfiction filmmakers, observes the process whereby those lucky 40 are selected—a process that is revealed to be highly personal, idiosyncratic, and subject to the vagaries of taste and personal prejudice. Funny, penetrating, and surprisingly suspenseful, The Competition offers not only a unique opportunity to see the inner workings of an institution at the very heart of the French film industry but an invitation to look at the assumptions and roadblocks that shape any national film industry, and higher education in general.
A Metrograph Pictures release.
Up Next in Women's Work: Essential Films by Female Filmmakers
-
Swept Away
Leaving October 1
Directed by Lina Wertmüller | 114 mins | 1974
A battle royale of the sexes/classes begins when vacationing socialite Mariangela Melatoand her Communist servant Giancarlo Giannini find themselves stranded alone together on a Mediterranean island in Wertmüller’s kinky, anarchic r... -
Dream Life
Directed by Mireille Dansereau | 85 mins | 1972
The first female-directed narrative fiction feature to come out of Quebec, Dansereau’s sensual and beguiling Dream Life centers on Isabelle and Virginie (Liliane Lemaître-Auger and Véronique Le Flaguais), two single young women who meet through thei... -
I Am Not a Witch
Directed by Rungano Nyoni | 93 mins | 2017
A young Zambian girl is accused of being a witch and then pressed into soothsaying service by a slick government official in this strikingly shot deadpan satire. Skewering superstition and corruption, it’s a feminist exposé of exploitation done with dazz...