Marleen Gorris

Marleen Gorris is a Dutch lesbian filmmaker, trained in drama at the University of Amsterdam and the University of Birmingham, who made her directorial debut with A Question of Silence (1982), a controversial feminist thriller she made after Chantal Akerman, whom she'd hoped would direct it, told her she had to direct it herself; the film won the Golden Calf for Best Feature Film at the Netherlands Film Festival. She followed it with Broken Mirrors (1984) and The Last Island (1990) before her best-known work, Antonia's Line (1995), a multigenerational epic about women's lives in a Dutch village that is also a feminist and subtly queer work, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film -- making Gorris the first woman ever to win in that category. She went on to direct Mrs. Dalloway (1997), starring Vanessa Redgrave. She has been openly lesbian throughout her career and has spoken about the feminist politics embedded in her filmmaking.