There's Never a Great Time to Be a Woman Director, Now Seems Worse

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This post was written in partnership with theAlliance of Women Directors in anticipation of their Back to the Set event in Burbank on June 12th and 13th. Film Maven readers get $50 off a 2-day pass after using the exclusive discount code: bts26tfm! It's gonna be a great event so buy your tickets now. 

I've spent a lot of time talking about female filmmakers this week. Not specific ones, mind you, but their mere existence in the landscape we're living in. Female filmmakers have been struggling to gain a foothold since movies were invented, and it feels like for the all the progress that gets made there's always an upheaval that makes them start back at zero. And, right now, it feels like female filmmakers are entering the negative.

This weekend's box office saw a one-two punch from A24's Backrooms, which secured $81 million from 3,442 North American theaters to be #1, followed behind by a third-week jump for Obsession, which garnered another $26.4 million from 2,781 cinemas. Obsession has officially crossed the $100 million mark domestically. Both films are directed by Gen Z directors who made their start on YouTube, 20-year-old Kane Parsons and 26-year-old Curry Barker. Nowadays two things make a trend so articles have started proliferating about this newfound Gen Z/YouTube horror boom.