Acting Actresses
With one exception all the films in this section feature great actresses PLAYING actresses. They explore the fraught realities of performance, where ambition, desire and artistry collide.
Featuring a remarkable performance from Tyne Daly, A Bread Factory centers on a local theater company caught between art, commerce, and community life. Daniel Hui's Demons packs a wicked bite in its portrait of Vicki's surreal journey to break free of an abusive director's grasp. Two recent French dramas, Just a Sigh and La Petite Lili, center on actresses drawn into webs of romantic desire., while the psychologically probing films. The Queen of Fear and We Go Way Back, are intimate portraits of actresses in the midst of personal and professional crises.
The one exception is a fascinating rarity, Directing Actors with Jean Renoir, in which the famed director works with actress Gisèle Braunberger, conducting a masterclass in how to craft an authentic performance for the screen.
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A Bread Factory - Part 1
Directed by Patrick Wang • Drama • With Tyne Daly, Elisabeth Henry • 2018 • 122 minutes
Part 1: The acclaimed new work from filmmaker Patrick Wang (In the Family), featuring a remarkable performance from actress Tyne Daly, is the story of The Bread Factory, a community arts center in the small t...
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A Bread Factory - Part 2
Directed by Patrick Wang • Drama • With Tyne Daly, Elisabeth Henry • 2018 • 120 minutes
Part 2: The acclaimed new work from filmmaker Patrick Wang (In the Family), featuring a remarkable performance from actress Tyne Daly, is the story of The Bread Factory, a community arts center in the small t...
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Demons
Directed by Daniel Hui • Drama • With Vicki Yang, Glen Goei, Vikneshwaran Kobinathan • 2018 • 84 minutes
Aspiring actress Vicki thinks she has gotten the role of her life in Daniel’s new play. But her debut lead role only casts her into endless torture at the esteemed director’s hands. When she ...
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Directing Actors by Jean Renoir
Directed by Gisèle Braunberger • Documentary • 1968 • 22 minutes
Actor Gisèle Braunberger sits across a small table from Jean Renoir. She leans forward, focusing intently on the director, her hands rhythmically fidgeting, as he outlines the premise of the script page he is about to work through ...
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Just a Sigh
Directed by Jerome Bonnel • Drama • With Emmanuelle Devos, Gabriel Byrne • 2017 • 105 minutes
In the short break between performances in Calais, stage actress Alix, played by the stunning Emmanuelle Devos (Desplechin's CHRISTMAS TALE), makes a quick escape to Paris. On the train, she meets a mys...
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La Petite Lili
Directed by Claude Miller • Drama • With Ludivine Sagnier, Nicole Garcia, Bernard Giraudeau, Jean-Pierre Marielle, Robinson Stévenin, Julie Depardieu, Yves Jacques, Michel Piccoli. • 2003 • 100 minutes
Ludivine Sagnier stars as Lili, the love and muse of an idealistic young filmmaker in this mod...
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Mia Madre
Directed by Nanni Moretti • Drama • With Margherita Buy, John Turturro • 2016 • 107 minutes
Acclaimed Italian auteur Nanni Moretti finds comedy and pathos in the story of Margherita, a harried film director (Margherita Buy, A Five Star Life) trying to juggle the demands of her latest movie and a...
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The Queen of Fear
Directed by Valeria Bertuccelli, Fabiana Tiscornia • Drama • With Valeria Bertuccelli • 2018 • 107 minutes
Robertina, one of Argentina’s most acclaimed actresses, only has one month left until the premiere of her career-defining one-woman play. Instead of preparing and rehearsing, however, she s...
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Shit Year
Directed by Cam Archer • Drama • With Ellen Barkin, Luke Grimes, Bob Einstein • 2011 • 95 minutes
A renowned actress, Ellen Barkin, abandons her successful acting career for a secluded life in the hills where reality becomes inseparable from unhinged obsessions in a hallucinatory struggle to rec...
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Starlet
Directed by Sean Baker • Drama • With Dree Hemingway, Besedka Johnson • 2012 • 103 minutes
Starlet explores the unlikely friendship between 21 year-old aspiring actress Jane (Dree Hemingway) and elderly widow Sadie (Besedka Johnson) after their worlds collide in California’s San Fernando Valley....
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We Go Way Back
Directed by Lynn Shelton • Drama • With Amber Hubert, Maggie Brown, Kate Bayley • 2006 • 79 minutes
Lynn Shelton's debut feature draws on her past as a stage actress but WE GO WAY BACK is no autobiographical drama. Kate (Amber Hubert) is a struggling actress who has given up her happiness and he...
