Are Women Directors Losing Ground?

Twenty-seven-year-old Georgina Garcia Riedel's How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer is less autobiographical and experimental, but since it's a gentle story about three generations of strong-willed women trying to find love in a small town, it's still a hard sell. Even with stars Elizabeth Pena and America Ferrera, it has yet to find a distribution deal.

"I just want to get it out to theaters," says Riedel, who thought the number of women at the festival this year was "sad." She made it this far by bypassing the system altogether. "I'm female, young, with only one short ‑- I wasn't naive enough to think if I shopped around my script it would happen. A couple of agents and managers read it, but nobody was clamoring for it. I took it to people who would love the script, who love me and who would give me money: my family." Her parents put up the initial budget, expecting her to get finishing funds from other sources, but then she couldn't get those either, so they put up the total cost.

Ferrera, who made a splash at the festival two years ago with Real Women Have Curves, directed by Patricia Cardozo, has now worked with three women directors, including Catherine Hardwicke (who won the director's award in 2003 for Thirteen) on the upcoming Heath Ledger vehicle The Lords of Dogtown.

"It's a wonderful experience to see people of my own species being successful and having opportunities," she says. "In working with women, their styles are just as different as any male directors."

For the documentary filmmakers, the barriers to entry are also getting taller instead of going away, because funding is tighter and there's more pressure to be commercially successful ‑- which puts the playing field at the same split level that it is for dramatic filmmakers.