You are listening to The Next Best Picture podcast, and this is Katie Schaefer's interview with the director of the documentary Half the Picture, Amy Adrienne.

Action for camera.

I felt like I wanted to be a director when I was in high school.

And I realized that it was the director role that would really allow me to get every moment right. And I remember it was so heartbreaking. I just kept going into meetings and meetings and... No, we're not going to accept you into this festival, and no, we're not going to give you money. I thought, okay, it's just me, I'm not good enough. Just got to work harder and be more brilliant. We're a pretty misogynistic town.

It was an environment of sexual favoritism.

I don't really want to make movies anymore, you know?

Over the past 17 years, the number of women directing has actually declined.

Researchers found that directors are overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly male.

We need the needle to move because this is a civil rights issue.

Women aren't being allowed to have opportunities that their male counterparts are getting.

It can create an environment in which we feel like our very femaleness is some kind of disability.

It's not. It's a strength.

Film industry is different.

These are people who are in charge of creating our culture.

There's so much in the culture that's like quietly telling women that their stories don't matter.

And it's really, really powerful when someone says no to that.

Hollywood has the ability to deliver dreams to girls and boys around the world of what they can be

and what this world can be like. That is the power of story.

When you take women, people of color, trans people, and you put them at the center of the story,

you change the world, we found out.

You just put your head down and you just do it.

Exploring contemporary issues through a futuristic lens.

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