There are not a few famous actresses who have decided to try their luck also behind the camera in recent years: Jodie Foster, Angelina Jolie, Natalie Portman, Kristen Stewart, Olivia Wilde, Maggie Gyllenhaal… giving rise to a silent revolution in a dominated audiovisual landscape by the male gaze that has now exploded strongly with the name of Greta Gerwig, a performer trained in Indian-American cinema who has built a brilliant parallel career as a screenwriter and director. He began his stage in 2008 co-directing with Joe Swanberg the romantic film Noches y fines de semana. Then he continued solo with the acclaimed Lady Bird and Donetes and now with Barbie he has reached heaven. With a worldwide collection that exceeds one billion dollars, at the age of 40 Gerwig has made history as the first woman to direct alone to reach the number dreamed of by any adult.
In Spain, there are more and more performers who are launching into filming those stories that are not offered to them, occupying the spaces historically denied to women in film and television. They are years of observing the trade between take and take while hiding their personality in the skin of another person. According to data from the Ministry of Culture, Spanish films directed by women grew by 64% in 2022 thanks to increased subsidies. However, the situation is far from equal: of the total number of films released, women only directed 25.5%.
If we look back, we must remember the Valencian Helena Cortesina (1904-1984) as a pioneer in this field. She started as an actress at the age of 16 and at 21 she shot the first feature film directed and produced by a woman in our country. Flor de España o la historia de un torero (1923) combined two of the great booming genres of the time: the adaptation of a bullfighting novel and the zarzuela. She would later be followed by Ana Mariscal (1923-1995) and Margarita Alexandre (1923-2015). Icíar Bollaín (Madrid, 1967) took his first steps in acting at the age of 16 in El sur, by Víctor Erice, and after appearing in titles such as Mientras haya luz or Terra y libertà 1995 with the story of female friendship Hello, are you alone? , which garnered rave reviews. Little by little she has been developing her talent as a screenwriter and producer and has opted to sit in the director’s chair with award-winning productions such as Te doy mis ojos, El olivo, La boda de Rosa or Maixabel. Leticia Dolera (Barcelona, ??1981) has acted in such popular series as Al salir de clase, Los Serrano or El barco and in the films [REC] 3: Genesis, El otro lado de la cama, De tu ventana a la mía or La girlfriend (the latter two, at the command of Paula Ortiz). The Catalan was at the helm of four shorts before making her first feature, Requisites per ser una persona normal (2015), a comedy that won over critics for its naturalness and won three prizes at the Malaga Festival. She is also behind the television series Bloguera en construcción and Vida perfecta – winner of the 2019 Cannes series festival for best series and best female performance. And in the distinguished French contest of this past edition, the actress Paz Vega ( 7 vidas, Lucía y el sexo ) gathered the press to announce what will be her first opera as a director, Rita , the story “costume and nostalgic” of a girl in Seville in the eighties. The film aims to portray the city that the 47-year-old actress lived in during her childhood. In July, Vega finished filming this film, which she has been working on for six years and which includes herself, Roberto Álamo and the young Sofía Abeluz in the cast. The premiere is planned for next year.
Cannes was also the showcase for the premiere of the second feature film of the actress and director Elena Martín (Barcelona, ??1992), who already stood out with success on both sides of the camera with Júlia ist after giving to know beforehand in Les amigues de l’Agata as an interpreter. Seva Creatura, a portrait of the traumas of female sexuality shot in Catalan, was awarded the prize for the best European film of the Cinematographers’ Fortnight. The film will hit theaters on September 8 and “talks about a woman who tries to reconnect with pleasure and understand how her desire works,” commented Martín in an interview with this newspaper.
Marta Nieto (Múrcia, 1982) is another acclaimed actress eager to demonstrate her talent in directing. From an early age she knew that her vocation was acting and she made her professional debut in 2005 in the series Hospital central. We have seen her in more than twenty series and she has worked under Antonio Banderas (El camino de los ingleses), Dani de la Orden (Litus) or Rodrigo Sorogoyen in the short film Madre, nominated for the Oscars. The success of the short was extended two years later into a feature film with the same title that earned her a Goya nomination for best actress and recognition as best female performer in the Horizons section of the Venice Film Festival. Determined to face new challenges, last year Nieto directed the short Son, an intimate story about a trans boy, a subject she wanted to delve into in a film she shot this summer that narrates the day-to-day life of a trans minor from the point of view of the mother, who is also struggling to find herself. “It’s a personal need, although taking command is scary. I feel in the right to try to direct, to not do it well and not to be perfect”, he stated in 2021 shortly before threading the needle. In addition to directing and starring in La mitad de Ana, Nieto co-wrote the dialogues with Beatriz Herzog. “The intuition that led me to want to tell this story about the awakening of an adult woman through the crisis of her daughter was leading me to talk about my own identity conflict as a woman, as a creator and as a mother”, she explains.
Aura Garrido (Madrid, 1989), one of the most popular faces of the small and big screen (El Ministerio del Tiempo, Malnazidos), has experienced a new artistic facet directing the short La Braulia, which was shot in 2021 and which narrates the grief management by two childhood friends. Verónica Echegui (Madrid, 1983), known for her role in Jo soc la Juani, by Bigas Luna, also wanted to take another step in her career. Her first project as a director was the short fiction Tótem Loba, awarded with a Goya in the 2022 edition. The work is a denunciation of the “hyper-normalization of gender violence”, inspired by a personal experience that the author lived to the age of 17.
And a Goya for the best documentary short film is the one obtained in 2021 by the writer, television presenter, model and actress Mabel Lozano with Biografía del cadaver de una mujer, a piece that “gives voice to thousands of women victims of trafficking”. On the 25th of August Navarrese Itsaso Arana premieres in theaters Las chicas están bien, her first foray as a director after a fifteen-year career as a film and television actress. At 37 years old, the muse of Jonás Trueba ( La reconquista, La virgen de agosto, Tenéis que venir a verla ) has launched into writing and directing a “summer tale” about the coexistence between five actresses rehearsing a play theater in a country house secluded from the world and starring Bárbara Lennie, Irene Escolar, Itziar Manero, Helena Ezquerro and Arana herself. “Las chicas están bien is a film about camaraderie and reconciliation between women. Doing it was a dare, a disobedience, a bravery”, he says.
And Oscar winner Penélope Cruz announced in July that she is preparing a documentary directed by herself. Almodóvar’s muse described the future work as a “personal project”: “It is one of the projects that we are developing and that I am directing, and it is the number one priority”. The 49-year-old actress from Alcobendas already launched her own production company, MoonLyon, a year ago, which aims to produce both fiction and non-fiction content. Succeeding at Gerwig’s level is another story, but there is no stopping these women.
