Half the Picture

At film school, women wouldn't say out loud that they wanted to study direction. They would have been ridiculed right away, says Penelope Spheeris, director of the cult film Wayne's World, in Amy Adrion's documentary. Although many years have passed since the premiere of her best-known film, not much has changed. In Half the Picture, Jill Soloway, Miranda July, Lena Dunham and Ava DuVernay discuss their experiences, their mothers who taught them to be self-confident and the producers who demanded a guarantee that they would see naked breasts in their completed films. And they try to understand why they're aren't offered the same opportunities as men. When there's room for more stories told by women, we will gain heroines that I know from my own life, who are active and take initiative and don't simply react to what men do, Jessica Chastain said in Cannes. It's time to listen to her.