All Good Children: An Interview with Alicia Duffy
May 17, 2010 | 1 Comment | ByEmily Seed
All Good Children
Birds Eye View chatted to British filmmaker Alicia Duffy from her home in London yesterday, as she waited for a BBC interview and prepared for her trip to Cannes on Friday, where her first feature film All Good Children will premiere in Directors’ Fortnight. Alicia was first noticed for her 2001 short, the stunning Crow Stone (2001), which won numerous international festival awards, and her second work, 2002’s exquisite The Most Beautiful Man in the World, which was nominated for the short film Palme D’Or at Cannes in 2003, among other laurels. All Good Children tells of two brothers who are sent to France after their mother’s suicide and have to navigate the no man’s land between their tender yet wracked fantasies and a hard adult reality. Certain to come back from Cannes with a UK distributor, we’ll hope to see the film in cinemas later this year.
Alicia is the sole British filmmaker in Directors’ Fortnight this year, and one of only four women filmmakers in the category – watch this space for news of her film’s reception!
Yes it is true that this year has been a great year for women directors. And yes the first woman to win an Oscar for Best Director was Kathryn Bigelow earlier last month. But at the same time we know that since the recession there are less women working in the industry. And just to stress this point further….as Cannes Film Festival announce their line up for 2010, we see that there are in fact no women in the competition category. Although Agnes Kocsis represents women’s cinematic vision with Adrienn Pal in the category of Un Certain Regard, and two female directors appear in the Special Screenings category – Sophie Fiennes with Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow and Sabina Guzzanti with Draquila – L’Italia Che Trema, there are absolutely no women in competition. I was genuinely quite startled as I continued to check through the list of names, but mostly saddened that such a significant festival on the film calendar lacks diversity to such a degree. So many female directors have told BEV that they hope Kathryn Bigelows win represents something of a ‘watershed’ and yet this list suggests otherwise. Lucky that BEV is here eh?
