If you can manage a children’s birthday party…

There’s a saying that goes, If you can manage a children’s birthday party, you can manage a film production. Do women owe their success to their ability to organise and multitask? Does the maternal instinct come out in the ability to nurse a project and make sure everyone onboard is happy? Or, more discouraging, is it simply that the lack of money and prestige in documentaries has been keeping men away?

FILM asked six distinctive, experienced and internationally oriented women producers about what drives them, their watershed projects and daily challenges, and what they think it is women, in particular, can do.

Originally published in FILM Magazine in November 2012