Ana Lily Amirpour: Calling Projects ‘Female-Led’ Is a ‘Very Boring, Uninformed Way of Talking About Things’
Manori Ravindran International EditorAna Lily Amirpour doesn’t want you to call her movies “female-led.” It’s true that all of them to date have been centered around strong female protagonists, including her Venice competition title “Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon,” but they’re much more than that, she says.The Iranian-American director recalls early reports describing her next project, “Cliffhanger,” a reboot of the 1993 Sylvester Stallone action thriller, as merely a “female-fronted” project and instantly recoils.“It’s this very boring, uninformed way of talking about things now,” Amirpour tells Variety at the Venice Film Festival. “It’s just ‘the female-driven thing.’ But it’s not just that.