Emmy Rossum and Regina King attend the Through Her Lens: The Tribeca Chanel Women's Filmmaker Program Luncheon at Locanda Verde on Sept. 22 in New York City. Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImage Halle Berry, Regina King, Celine Song, Aleshea Harris, Gina Prince-Bythewood, Patty Jenkins and H.E.R. were among the artists and filmmakers who attended the 11th annual Chanel and Tribeca Enterprises’ Through Her Lens luncheon in New York City on Tuesday afternoon.
Hosted at Locanda Verde by Tribeca Enterprises co-founder and co-chair of the board Jane Rosenthal, the annual event brought together the latest class of emerging nonbinary and women filmmakers for an intimate lunch with industry heavy hitters. Among this year’s jury is Ryan, Berry, King, Autumn Durald Arkapaw and Ella Rubin, with mentorship from Song, Aleshea Harris, Prince-Bythewood, Ellen Goldsmith-Vein and Fala Chen. Conversation leaders include H.E.R., Jenkins, Laura Karpman, Miyako Bellizzi, Cassandra Kulukundis and Riva Marker.
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“This is at the core of what we do, which is support the independent filmmaking community and artists who want to come together to support the art form and get people a leg in. Everyone who’s involved — the jurors, mentors and [conversation leaders] — are really committing their time, whether it be actresses in front of the camera or creatives behind the camera,” said Rebecca Glashow, CEO of Tribeca Enterprises. “The support is not just in name only. [Program participants] are spending time with all these directors when it’s very challenging to get into this space, and they’re giving them actionable guidance and support.”
Just a day ahead of the luncheon and workshop, which has helped launch the careers of talent like A.V. Rockwell (A Thousand and One) and Nikyatu Jusu (Nanny), the Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount merger cleared one of its biggest and final hurdles. The move will have sweeping implications for the production ecosystem and opportunities for filmmakers, and has come amid a year where lower-budget films — predominantly directed by men — have defined the box office. Meanwhile, new data has revealed the stagnation or recession of women being hired or represented in production, both in front of and behind the camera.
Tribeca co-founder Robert De Niro with Jane Rosenthal. Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImage Inside the lunch, Rosenthal recalled an experience early in her career when there “weren’t many women and there were even fewer women in positions where they could actually make decisions.” In a role where she was able to develop stories, she came across the script for The Burning Bed, the true story of Francine Hughes, a woman abused by her husband for years. The story was eventually made for TV and starred Farrah Fawcett, becoming “part of the national conversation about domestic violence,” the producer and Tribeca co-founder shared.
That was after she initially took it to her male boss at the time, whose response was demeaning and dismissive of her as well as domestic abuse survivors. Rosenthal found a way around him, and it got produced anyways.
“Domestic violence wasn’t new, women had been living with that forever. Their stories weren’t being told. And sometimes people deciding on which stories matters couldn’t even imagine that reality of their lives,” she told the crowd. “That woman taught me something very early. It matters who’s in the room. It matters even more who has the power in the room and who is willing to use that power to say yes.”
“Years later, my dear friend, Paula Weinstein, who produced over 30 movies herself, founded Through Her Lens with Chanel and I. We wanted to create a place where women filmmakers would be given resources, mentorship, access and freedom to tell the stories of their own and on their own terms,” the producer continued. “History is erased when contributions go unrecognized and when women are missing from the decisions about our culture and what our culture chooses to remember. We cannot pretend that we’re in another cycle here. That’s why Through Her Lens matters. For years we’ve talked about giving women a seat at the table. I don’t think a seat is enough anymore. We need our own fucking tables.”
Michelle Monaghan and Sarah Catherine Hook. Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImage For Golden Globe nominee and star of Hulu’s Furious Emmy Rossum, creating her own production company was her way of creating that table amid Hollywood’s historical hiring and representation issues.
“My goal with [company] Composition 8 is to tell stories that investigate contemporary womanhood, and the best way to do that is by hiring more women behind and in front of the camera. We are the majority of the overall population, so I do not understand why we are not reflected as such in the art that we are creating. It doesn’t make any sense to me, but I think the desire is there for it,” she told THR on the carpet ahead of the luncheon. “I’ve always felt like the walls are always going to be there. You just have to decide that you have to make something happen and get scrappy with how you’re going to do it. So it’s amazing to have a program like this that is funding the opportunity to make those connections to do that.”
Rosenthal also points to programs like the larger Tribeca Festival as key to ensuring voices don’t get erased amid an industry shift and studio consolidation. “Festivals can identify new work and new voices that the general audience doesn’t typically find, and we do that by helping curate and identify projects that whatever company then buys or hires their filmmaker. I think that’s why festivals are important,” she noted.
For Daisy Jones and the Six actress and director Riley Keough — who co-created In Process, a limited series inspired by the Through Her Lens filmmaker program — the dynamics of the current moment have left her focused on trying to be “hopeful or else I would stop working,” she joked. “There are so many cool films that are blowing up, and there have been a couple of moments this year of amazing theatrical success. But at the end of the day, in order to be effective, someone has to be on the ground helping shepherd young filmmakers and young women. Chanel’s commitment to that is so amazing, and it is effective. These kinds of things really help people start their careers. When people are saying we need more female filmmakers, that’s how you have to do it. You have to start from the ground up.”
Francesca Scorsese, who says Rosenthal has supported her in her own career, added, “Making connections with all these new creatives and creatives in general in the same industry as you is so important. It’s such a big part of it. You never know who you’re going to meet and who you’re going to be inspired by. When that leads to future partnerships or creative endeavors together, that’s amazing.”
Gina Prince-Bythewood, Regina King and Halle Berry. Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImage The Emmy and Oscar-winning King sits on this year’s jury, in a position that gives her the power to help unlock the gate for the next great female or nonbinary filmmaker. It’s a position she describes as “a little nerve-wracking because there’s a part of you that just wants the opportunity to be available for all of them.” The One Night in Miami director noted that over the next three days, she’ll be “trying to approach it as if I am a juror, but I’m not judging, and that’s a really fine line to walk. It’s not seeing them in comparison to someone else because that’s so hard for us.”
On the carpet, King called this particular industry moment that the program’s filmmakers are launching into “a really interesting time,” adding that “this is not the first of these types of mergers, but there’s a lot of money that was being lost from Warner Bros. before these conversations. The understanding is that they will still operate as separate studios, though that remains to be seen,” she told THR. “You also have the conversation about AI that, in a lot of ways, can be a helpful tool, but in a lot of ways we’re watching when it comes to the arts it already starting to replace artists. It’s terrifying, so I am right now trying to keep my energy high and expectations low.”
Rosenthal described the current state of the studio system as “limping along.” Alongside it, a potentially new pipeline has emerged, championed as the era of the YouTube creator, something Tribeca Festival has already embraced through offerings like the Creators Market. For Rossum, one of the under-acknowledged lessons from this year’s successes is that it’s not going to be different models that save storytelling. Regardless of whatever pipeline Hollywood uses, she said, the solution to finding good stories is the same: Access and hiring.
“It’s not a model problem, it’s a hiring problem. There are lots of incredible, amazing filmmakers that are just not getting those shots. We have to stand alongside them and say, ‘We want to make those movies’ and help them get them made. I made a movie this summer with a first-time feature filmmaker, Hanna Gray Organschi, who’s one of the most exciting directors that I have worked with in the last decade. She is ready to make a huge movie. She’s ready to make lots of movies,” Rossum explained. “We just need more shots to be taken and more people to write checks so that women can tell stories.”
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