As talented as she is, Ava DuVernay says she doesn’t get offered “a lot” of directing jobs.
The Selma director has won a number of awards for her work behind the camera, but she insists she still doesn’t get calls for a wide range of movies.
“I don’t get offered a lot, and what I do get offered is usually historical or something to do with women and Black people,” she said: “I’m not getting John Wick 3, even though I’d love to make it.”
The 46-year-old filmmaker — whose miniseries about the Central Park Five case, When They See Us, airs on Netflix on Friday, May 31, 2019 — has called for more women to step behind the camera as she knows there are many out there who are very capable.
She added: “I have a good friend who directed second unit on Star Wars and is kicking a–. I have a friend who’s on ‘Westworld’ right now. Are there enough of us? No. Certainly not for a lack of women being interested in or capable.”
DuVernay doesn’t care about awards and big film festivals.
She told The Guardian newspaper: “Every filmmaker is told they should care about these things [awards]. But the primary inventors of that point of view are White, cis men. When I went to Cannes I was really thinking about my dress, even though I love watching films with other filmmakers and can even say I’d like to show my work there sometime. But I know people who’d cut off their left arm to play at certain festivals and be in certain rooms. I’ve tried to care about it, but it has no relationship to the things I make and why I make them.”
