Naomi Kawase is a Japanese film director. She was also known as Naomi Sento, with her former husband's surname. Many of her works have been documentaries, including Embracing, about her search for the father who abandoned her as a child, and Katatsumori, about the grandmother who raised her.
Shaji Neelakantan Karun is an Indian film director and cinematographer. His debut film Piravi (1988) won the Caméra d'Or – Mention d'honneur at the 1989 Cannes Film Festival. He was the premiere chairman of the Kerala State Chalachitra Academy, the first academy for film and TV in India and was also the executive chairman of the International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK) from 1998 to 2001. He is best known for his award-winning films Piravi (1988), Swaham (1994), Vanaprastham (1999) and Kutty Srank (2009). He won the National Award for Best Director for his debut film Piravi. He also won two Kerala State Film Awards for Best Director for his films Swaham and Vanaprastham. Currently, he is the Chairman of Kerala State Film Development Corporation.
Andrea Arnold, OBE is an English filmmaker and former actor. She won an Academy Award for her short film Wasp in 2005. Her feature films include Red Road (2006), Fish Tank (2009), and American Honey (2016), all of which have won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Arnold has also directed four episodes of the Amazon Prime Video series Transparent, as well as all seven episodes of the second season of the HBO series Big Little Lies. Her documentary Cow premiered at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival and played at the 2021 Telluride Film Festival.
Simcha Jacobovici is a Canadian-Israeli journalist, New York Times best-selling author and documentary filmmaker.
Catherine Corsini is a French film director, screenwriter, and actress. Her film Replay was entered into the 2001 Cannes Film Festival. Her 2012 film Three Worlds competed in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival.
Keren Yedaya is an Israeli filmmaker. She was born in the United States, but her family moved to Israel in 1975 when she was just three. She trained at the Camera Obscura School of Art in Tel Aviv.
Black women filmmakers have made contributions throughout the history of film. According to Nsenga Burton, writer for The Root, "the film industry remains overwhelmingly white and male. In 2020, 74.6 percent of movie directors of theatrical films were white, showing a small decrease from the previous year. In terms of representation, 25.4 percent of film directors were of ethnic minority in 2020. Of the 25.4 percent of minority filmmakers, a small percentage was female.
Athina Rachel Tsangari is a Greek filmmaker. Some of her most notable works include her feature films, The Slow Business of Going (2000), Attenberg (2010) and Chevalier (2015) as well as the co-production of Yorgos Lanthimos' films Kinetta (2005), Dogtooth (2009), and Alps (2011). In her versatile work for cinema, she has also founded and been director of the Cinematexas International Short Film Festival. In 2014–2015, she was invited to Harvard University's Visual and Environmental Studies department as a visiting lecturer on art, film, and visual studies.
Amy Virginia Talkington is an American filmmaker, screenwriter, and author.
The Cinema of Ethiopia and the film industry in general are relatively recent phenomena in Ethiopia. The Ethiopian film industry is growing but faces many problems that have prevented it from fully flourishing. Historically, live stage theater enjoyed more popularity in Ethiopia, creating a handful of relatively successful stage actors. Ethiopian films began modernizing in the 2000s, implementing Amharic, but due to wide home video and DVD distribution, they are often frustrated by copyright infringement in the presence of piracy. This was reduced in the early 2010s with the intervention of the government and the imposition of policy. Despite recent developments, the Ethiopian film industry continues to lack quality compared to modern world cinema and has a low budget amateurish style.
Salem Mekuria is an Ethiopian-born independent filmmaker, video artist and educator living in the United States.
Mati Diop is a French-Senegalese filmmaker and actress who starred in the 2008 film 35 Shots of Rum. She also directed the 2019 film Atlantics, for which she became the first biracial female director to be in contention for the Cannes Film Festival's highest prize, the Palme d'Or. At Cannes, Atlantics won the Grand Prix. She also won awards for her short film, Mille Soleils (2013) and Snow Canon (2011).
Charlie Buhler is an American director, photographer, and producer. She is best known for her directorial debut, Before the Fire, a pandemic thriller that premiered in 2020 amid the COVID-19 crisis. Buhler's other notable work includes the documentary Rosebud and Eric Stoltz's feature film Confessions of a Teenage Jesus Jerk where she played Jasmine. In 2008, Buhler was the first African American woman to be crowned Miss South Dakota USA. She later represented South Dakota at the Miss USA 2008 pageant.
Maji-da Abdi is an Ethiopian film director and producer.
Zeresenay Berhane Mehari, is an Ethiopian filmmaker. He is notable as the director of critically acclaimed films Difret and Sweetness in the Belly.
Adanech Abebe is an Ethiopian politician and attorney who is serving as the thirty-second mayor of Addis Ababa since 2021. She has been serving as a deputy mayor from 2020 until 2021. She previously was the Minister of Revenue and Customs Authority from 2018 to 2020, when she became the first female to assume the role of the Federal Attorney General of Ethiopia. She is the first woman to hold the mayorship since it was created in 1910.
Mehret Mandefro is an Ethiopian–American film/television producer, writer, physician and anthropologist. She is the group leader of the Indaba Africa, a co-founder of Realness Institute and co-founder of Truth Aid Media and is a board member of advisors for the shared Harvest Fund. She is also a recipient of The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans (2001) and in 2007 sat as one of the 41 distinguished New American panelists. In 2016, she was honoured by Carnegie Corporation of New York as one of America's Great Immigrants.
The Council of Ministers of Abiy Ahmed is the cabinet of the government of Ethiopia during the premiership of Abiy Ahmed since early 2018.
Yewendoch Guday is a 2007 Ethiopian romantic comedy film directed by Henok Ayele and produced by Arkey Sera Production. The film has been domestically successful and gained large viewers in national cinemas shortly since its release on 17 February 2007. Starring with Admassu Kebede and Rekik Teshome, the story revolves around principally the life of carpenter Amero, who was devastated by betrayal of his ex-girlfriend, and later encounters with future love interest Helena, who constantly bothers him into extravagant person.
Larysa Mykhailivna Artyugina is a Ukrainian documentary film director and activist. She is a member of the Union of Cinematographers of Ukraine, the Union of Theater Actors of Ukraine, the creative association Babylon'13 and the Assembly of Cultural Figures of Ukraine. She also heads the public organization New Donbas NGO and produces work on the docUA Platform of Ukrainian Documentaries.
