Through Her Lens: The Tribeca Chanel Women’s Filmmaker Program Celebrates 10 Years of Supporting Female and Nonbinary Artists

On a Thursday evening in the penthouse of New York’s Greenwich Hotel, Jane Rosenthal stood in front of a small audience — a mix of emerging filmmakers, program alumni, jury members and mentors — for this year’s Through Her Lens: The Tribeca Chanel Women’s Filmmaker Program.

With the room packed in almost shoulder-to-shoulder, and on the heels of a welcome message from Bryce Norbitz, vp of Tribeca Studios and artist development at Tribeca Enterprises, expressing gratitude for a program that is able to “keep pushing forward opportunities for women, non-binary filmmakers in our industry,” especially when “it’s a challenge.” Rosenthal took a moment to remind the five filmmakers and their teams participating in the program of what they’d already achieved just by being in the room.

“No matter what happens, you’re all part of the Tribeca Through Her Lens family, and you’re all winners,” she told the crowd. “I believe all of your films will get made. That tends to happen.”

That vote of confidence was quickly followed by a note of why the program — now 10 years in — remains so important, particularly amid current industry, societal and political challenges.

“I have a horrible habit of reading news alerts, so while I wasn’t going to say anything at all politically about free speech or what happened last night [to Jimmy Kimmel], and I’m really not going to say it, I’m saying it,” Rosenthal shared with the small penthouse gathering. “11 elected New York City officials were just arrested trying to get into Federal Plaza to look at what’s going on in the ICE detention center that’s just a few blocks from here.”

“It makes me feel we have to use our voices even more and we have to be together even more and find ways that we will defend our free speech,” she continued. “So many of your stories that you’ve told are about that, and I applaud you all. I’d like to raise a glass to you and to thank Chanel for these extraordinary 10 years. Again, without their consistency, there would not be this kind of community and program.”

Soon after, this year’s jurors Kaitlyn Dever, Meghann Fahy, Allison Janney, Payal Kapadia, Issa Rae and Jenny Slate awarded filmmakers Karishma Dev Dube and MG Evangelista with the Through Her Lens grand prize for their short film, Strangers. The film, which was pitched to the jury alongside four other projects, will receive full financing to produce the short with support from Tribeca Studios, while the remaining teams receive development grants. They were all chosen from a pool of over 600 invited or recommended filmmakers this year.

Dube and Evangelista, who have been creative partners for a decade since meeting at NYU and already have feature ambitions for the short, told The Hollywood Reporter that it was an experience in which they felt support and seen.

“It was magical. It’s been great. It’s been scary. It feels like surfing a wave for three days. But we were surrounded by people who just want to help you for no reason except to give you access and because they can,” said Dube. “I think all the projects here have been preparing for this moment for a long time and we felt well received and had the complete attention of people that it takes a long time to get in a room with.”

Added Evangelista, “Tribeca knows how difficult it is to get access to be able to make the kinds of films that we all want to make. It’s something that is quite overlooked, and it’s why we’re so grateful for them. They see the fearless stories and fearless filmmakers more than a lot of other spaces.”

In the lead-up to the announcement, Janney described the selection process as “an incredibly, incredibly difficult decision for us. Each project was really, really unique and gave us hope that each of these films is on a road to meet and affect audiences.” The remaining jurors each chimed in, adding that all the projects were a “great reminder of the beauty of art and progress, and it felt really invigorating at a time that is difficult in the industry and in the world,” and that the winning pitch was a story both “nuanced and complex, making us all question ourselves and our position in society and in a world that reduces people to their immediate identity.”

For Dever, joining the Through Her Lens’ 10-year anniversary program as a juror follows a career that started as a girl and child actor who “didn’t know how to stand up for myself, even in the world, but especially in the industry.” She has since gotten to work with filmmakers like Kathryn Bigelow, but was also just 21 and two days into filming Netflix’s Unbelievable when the #MeToo movement kicked off. “Being in this group of people and on the jury is a really big deal, and it means a lot to me to be chosen in this way. I’ve been to this event before. I’ve admired all of these women for so long,” she told THR.

The Through Her Lens program was carried out across three days of one-one-one sessions with the filmmakers in which each of the five mentors discussed their projects in detail, followed by five group conversations and an extensive question-and-answer session with all filmmakers focused on composition and score with Laura Karpman; filmmaking and navigating the industry with A.V. Rockwell; filmmaking and a career walkthrough with Lucy Liu; producing with Pamela Abdy; and costume design with Colleen Atwood. Mentors included Sarah Paulson, Riva Marker, Frida Perez, Constance Tsang and Odessa Young.

“What they were asking me sometimes was, ‘What do you see on the page that isn’t there that you wish were there? What if this came across your desk? What would make you say yes to this?’” Paulson said of how she served as a mentor to this year’s Through Her Lens cohort. “They are investigating what it means to be alive, and they’re doing it by way of art. There’s a purity to it, and it’s why it’s so beautiful to bear witness to and to offer your time and your attention and your eyes and your ears to.”

The Through Her Lens experience began with a luncheon at Locanda Verde on Tuesday, which featured the filmmakers, press, jury members and mentors, along with new advisory board members Liu, Olivia Wilde and Tessa Thompson, who now serve alongside Rockwell, Karpman, Jane Fonda, Patty Jenkins and Kerry Washington to help advance the program through new collaborations and consultation with filmmakers. The kick-off luncheon also featured major industry names including Katie Couric, Lily Allen, Mariska Hargitay, Mara Brock Akil and Mary Harron.

That level of name recognition in support of a pipeline program is rare even in Hollywood, but it is one way Through Her Lens can distinctively help “enrich the culture” with “incredible works by very, very talented women and nonbinary people,” said Rae. “The system is flawed. There’s a lot of quality work, there’s a lot of un-quality work, and sometimes you do need kind of a filtration system. A program like this, especially participating in it for my first time, and seeing the work that has come out of it — it is essential to see the unseen and to give a co-sign that the industry can look at to be like, ‘This is a person worth taking a shot on.’ And the range of talent is just incredible, honestly, so I’m so glad it exists.”

On the carpet, Rosenthal told THR that early on in the program’s existence, “you were explaining what it was and you were asking favors.” In the 10 years since, the producer is now fielding requests to participate by some of Hollywood’s biggest and most influential women and nonbinary creatives. “People want to be part of this community and it’s intentional. It’s an intentional community because people get something out of it,” she added.

Over the last decade, Through Her Lens has supported upwards of 50 films as well as hundreds of women and nonbinary writers, producers and directors, who Rosenthal noted have gone on to different distribution deals and accolades across various platforms. Alongside bringing on mentors like Bigelow, Catherine Hardwicke, Rashida Jones, Leslye Headland, Effie T. Brown, Glenn Close, Gina Prince-Bythewood, Ilene Chaiken, Amma Asante, Misha Green and more, the program has supported the work of creatives like Rockwell (A Thousand and One Years) and Nikyatu Jusu (Nanny).

“It really shows that what Tribeca and Chanel are doing is working,” said Fahy. “I think now more than ever, it makes us feel hopeful, and I think that’s something we talked a lot about today when we were in our deliberation. It’s more important than ever to have events like this, which exist to inspire women and nonbinary people to continue.”

On the rooftop of the Greenwich Hotel Thursday night, the Tribeca co-founder noted that part of how the program, which she co-founded with the late Paula Weinstein, is successful is by putting the art of pitching at its core. “When you think about what you have to do in the industry to get a project made, you’re always having to go pitch. Some people are good pitchers and can’t execute, and some people can execute but can’t pitch,” she explained. “It was a combination of what a group of us came up with in terms of, how do you help somebody? And you’re always in front of a jury somewhere.”

“Paula Weinstein and I have been producers who have had doors slammed in our faces, projects we wanted to make for years and years, and were pushing. So we looked at how you can try to make it in the system,” she continued.

For Liu, Through Her Lens’ program process isn’t “necessarily about winning. It’s really about being in the room and learning. Competition is always going to be something that happens in the industry, but it is important to know that it shouldn’t be something that should lead you. It should help you to become more empowered by knowing that there’s going to be competition, and that’s how it works. You hone it and you become better.”

Rosenthal also points to the program’s consistency, made possible by the support of those like Rebekah McCabe and Chanel, as well as the commitments of programming staff, alumni and other filmmakers and artists, “especially in these times, when we don’t support the arts in this country, when we’re censoring the arts in this country — we’re censoring and erasing our culture in this country.”

“We all get stronger, so our program gets stronger. Then you have people like [co-chair and CEO of Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group] Pam Abdy come, and she’ll look at every one of these filmmakers. Kerry Washington talks about somebody she met here who’s then become a writer on one of her shows,” Rosenthal explained. “With this program, when you look around this room, everybody here that’s new will connect with other people that have been in the program before. Even the advisory committees stay connected. No matter where you are in your career, you can turn to somebody, even when you’re not feeling as hot as you were.”

Across the program’s three days, Rosenthal repeatedly emphasized that “in the beginning we thought we were building a program. Ten years later, it’s a movement.” Successful movements, she acknowledged to THR on Thursday, don’t just share ideological goals, but challenge members to refine and grow in their shared vision and values. With Through Her Lens, they do so with a sense of safety. “It’s about being together where we feel like we’re in a safe space to take care of each other,” the Tribeca co-founder told THR. “And you’ve got to be able to push. But some of the more difficult films I’ve done have come because the comedian needs to be safe to be able to do those crazy things.”

For actor, writer, director, producer and comedian Ilana Glazer, showing up for an event that safely centers the voices of women and nonbinary creatives in the country’s current social and political moment is a way regular people and artists can speak up and make their support clear.

“We’re in a moment where authoritarianism is quickly descending upon us and I think the majority of American people’s human rights are in danger. I always go back to what Nina Simone says: the role of an artist is to reflect the times,” they say. “Just showing up — for activist events, for artist events, for your community — is the way to do it right now. I really still believe in making calls to your government officials, but showing up to celebrate joy and beauty like we are today is just as important.”

The safety and rights of women and nonbinary people in and outside of Hollywood has been precarious, but increasingly so for other groups over the last few weeks. Still, Rosenthal isn’t waning in her support of artists and stories from within these communities, regardless of where the rest of the industry may be going.

“We’re not about putting square pegs into square holes. We’ve never been about that. It’s about how you push those boundaries, and how you find the filmmakers who push those boundaries,” she explained of the program. “I will continue to support women and diverse communities to the end of the earth. Certainly [Tribeca Film Festival co-founder Robert DeNiro] and I did that before we started the festival, and we’ll continue it long after.”

With 10 years of Through Her Lens under her belt, Rosenthal said this kind of work remains her purpose, with the hope that the program can continue on — though on Thursday night, as the event wound down, she was not completely sure what that future of Through Her Lens would look like.

“There is something about how this has grown so organically and authentically. I’ve been overwhelmed by the people that come to this program who want to be a part of it. And I think that eventually, in the coming years, it will be incumbent on this community to come together and say, how do we grow the next stage of it?” she told THR. “But right now, in this pretty gorgeous place to be sitting, right there [points across the skyline] you’ve got an ICE detention center, so it’s hard to think about literally anything else but right now.”