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WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
Nora Lee Mandel’s Exclusive Update:
Past Winners of the Tribeca Film Festival’s Nora Ephron Award
All winners of the Nora Ephron Award for women filmmakers at Tribeca Film Festival since its inauguration in 2013 prominently list it in their bios as prestigious. The 2024 winners of the Ephron Award, directors Ana Guevara and Leticia Jorge for Don’t You Let Me Go (Agarrame fuerte) (Uruguay), have much in common with previous winners.
Investigating the recent experiences of previous Ephron Award winners, I noted a similarity: the gaps between their feature films. For Guevara and Jorge, their debut film was 2009, the second one 2013, then this year; their own biographies are like their sister awardees: from the Press Notes: “Between the two of them, they had four children, occasionally teach film, and currently, they are developing new projects.” So the role of the toddler in their Ephron-awarded film is central to the story; the child leads the three women characters through the flashback/time travel to the best time of their friendship. Guevara and Jorge are developing new projects, and I will continue following this directing pair, along with the previous Ephron Award winners.
The COVID pandemic and the writers’ and actors’ strikes short-circuited the plans of Tribeca’s Nora Ephron Award alumnae. Some used the time to concentrate more on their writing; several had babies.
2013 Farah Goes Bang (USA) Writer/Director Meera Menon
Menon joked on Instagram she was in her third trimester so her daughter co-directed Season 4, Episode 7 of HBO/Max’s acclaimed Westworld. From her affinity for Young Adult fantasy with the charming Indo-American Ms. Marvel series (streaming on Disney+), Universal Pictures selected Menon to direct Emily Carmichael and Shantha Susman’s adaptation of bestselling novel A Deadly Education. There is a built-in fan base from the readers of the first book in Naomi Novik’s dark “Scholomance” trilogy about a sorceress at a magical school. Her Ephron award winner is available on Amazon Prime.
2014 Zero Motivation (Israel) Writer/Director Talya Lavie
With Lavie’s daughter now four years old, she was moved since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks from TV comedies to research, write, and secure a producer for Seven Eyes, a feature drama on the story of female look-out soldiers. The sexism women soldiers faced was treated satirically in her award-winning debut, but tragically most of the tatzpitaniyot -- “eyes of the army” -- were killed or kidnapped after their male superiors ignored their advance warnings about suspicious activity by their base on the Israel-Gaza border. Follow Lavie on Instagram. Her Ephron award winner is available on Amazon Prime and through Chai Flicks.
2015 Sworn Virgin (Albania/Italy) Co-Writer/Director Laura Bispuri
Bispuri was scheduled to return to the Tribeca Film Festival to premiere the series she directed - the fourth season of My Brilliant Friend, based on Elena Ferrante’s The Story of The Lost Child, the fourth novel in her tetralogy. But HBO delayed this finale until the fall. Follow Bispuri on Instagram. Her Ephron award winner is available via Strand Releasing on Amazon Prime.
2016 Adult Life Skills (U.K.) Writer/Director Rachel Tunnard
With her co-written Ardman Animation’s Chicken Run 2: Dawn of the Nugget streaming on Netflix, per her social media posts she could watch with her now three-year-old daughter.
She is developing several scripts with co-writers. One project is The First Buckingham Palace Girl Guide Troop, inspired by the true story, what Americans call Girl Scouts, of the unit set up in 1937 for Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret and a dozen plus daughters of the royal household employees that continued through the war.
She is also working on Mis-Shapes, a TV series she describes on her website as “Fargo in the Peak District”, the national park in her native Yorkshire, with Paul Fraser, a champion of bringing more working-class representation to the screen. Follow Rachel Tunnard on: Twitter/X: @racheltunnard or her website. Her Ephron award winner is available on Crackle and Amazon Prime.
2017 The Divine Order (Switzerland) Writer/Director Petra Volpe
Volpe had written and was in the process of casting Golden Years (Die goldenen Jahra), the empathetic misadventures of a couple coping with retirement, but continued COVID restrictions prevented getting back to Switzerland from her NYC base. She chose Swiss director Barbara Kulcsar to take over. Music Box Films distributed it in U.S. earlier this year in theaters and is now streaming.
In January she returned to Switzerland to direct her script of Heroine (Heldin), starring Leonie Benesch, of last year’s Oscar-nominated German film The Teachers’ Lounge, as a dedicated nurse. Shooting in a real hospital with cinematographer Judith Kaufmann in their third collaboration, Volpe told Cineuropa: “My film is inspired by a non-fiction book, long conversations with carers and my research on location in a hospital. The movie makes visible what the abstract term ‘staff shortage’ means in concrete terms for carers and patients.” International release is planned for 2025. Her superb limited-series Labyrinth of Peace (Frieden) is streaming on Chair Flicks. Her Ephron award winner is available on Amazon Prime.
2018 Little Woods (USA) Writer/Director Nia DaCosta
DaCosta seems to have avoided blame for The Marvels (2023) as the lowest-grossing entry in Disney’s “Marvel Cinematic Universe” ($84 million in North America and $206 million globally). Most analysts attribute that to audience fatigue with the company’s endless movie and TV permutations. I also credit “the glass cliff” phenomenon, where women are elevated to positions of power in a business when things are going poorly. (Available on Disney+, AppleTV+, and Amazon Prime)
After her Hollywood studio flicks, DaCosta returned to a smaller stage. She told Vanity Fair her “epic” adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s 1891 play Hedda Gabler is an “esoteric psychological thriller”, starring Tessa Thompson, of both her award-winning debut and The Marvels. Amazon MGM Studios Orion Pictures will distribute the drama. Her Candyman and Ephron award winner are available on Amazon Prime.
2019 Initials S.G. (Iniciales SG) (Argentina) Co-Writer/Co-Director Rania Attieh
Attieh turned to mentoring over the past year, as an adjunct assistant professor in Film at the Columbia School of the Arts, and for Tatino Films international writing labs in partnership with Netflix. She is also working on female-centered original scripts and adaptations of novels for producers. Her Ephron award winner is available on FlixLatino via Amazon Prime.
2020 Asia (Israel) Writer/Director Ruthy Pribar
While she was developing her second film What Is To Come, Pribar participated in a Torina Script Lab for emerging filmmakers to hone her new screenplay Fugue and pitch it to producers, sales agents, distributors and other professionals in independent filmmaking. Her Ephron award winner is available on Amazon Prime and through Chai Flicks.
2021 as of yet (USA) Writer Taylor Garron/Co-Directors Chanel Monét James and Taylor Garron
Garron continues her comedy career, with TV writing and gigs from Brooklyn to Los Angeles. Follow her on Instagram or Twitter/X @taylorgarron. Chanel Monét James is in pre-production on a limited-series Middletown about the dedicated employees of a small-town cinema. Follow her on Instagram or her website. Their Ephron award winner is available on Amazon Prime.
2022 Huesera: The Bone Woman (Mexico) Director/Co-Writer Michelle Garza Cervera/Co-writer Abia Castillo
Executive Producer Pablo Cruz told Produ he recruited Garza Cervera among “Mexican directors who had never had an opportunity on TV and people that I have been following and really like their work” to direct episodes for inaugural series on a new Mexican streaming service Vix+. Marea Alta was promoted as a “youth thriller”, filmed in Baja California. Continuing to co-write with Castillo, she also directed the episode “The Hand” of the revived contemporary horror anthology series La Hora Marcada (The Marked Hour). Follow Garza Cervera on Instagram. Their Vix+ series are available through Amazon Prime. Their Ephron Award winner is streaming on digital platforms through XYZ Films.
2023 Boca Chica (Dominican Republic) Director Gabriella A. Moses
While her Ephron Award winner is not yet streaming, Moses is developing her next feature film Leche, as writer and director. The project has received support from the Sundance Institute’s Creative Producing Lab, and other programs. Follow Gabriella Moses on Instagram
My Perspectives on female filmmakers at Past Tribeca Film Festivals:
My coverage of female filmmakers and of Nora Ephron Award winners at 2023 Tribeca Film Festival.
My coverage of Nora Ephron Award at 2022 Tribeca Film Festival.
My coverage of female filmmakers and Nora Ephron Award winner at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival,
My 2020 Tribeca Film Festival coverage of features by female filmmakers.
Contact Nora Lee Mandel at mandelshultz@yahoo.com or @NLM_MavensNest on most social media.
updated 4/23/2025
Nora Lee Mandel is a member of New York Film Critics Online. Her reviews are counted in the Rotten Tomatoes TomatoMeter:
Complete Index to Nora Lee Mandel's Movie Reviews
My reviews have appeared on: Film-Forward; FF2 Media; Lilith, FilmFestivalTraveler; and, Alliance of Women Film Journalists and for Jewish film festivals. Shorter versions of my older reviews are at IMDb's comments, where non-English-language films are listed by their native titles.
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