Women-directors in the contemporary global world

The article analyses the strategies of establishing women-directors “voices” in the contemporary global world. The author pays special attention to festival movements, because a festival is not only a “public place” and the main place for the distribution of women -directors' films, but also the place where new names are opening and new themes are explored. The gender issues developed by Western feminist criticism are at the centre of this research, as well as “scandal” as the main mode of women's achievement of power and confession. The article provides statistics of the involvement of women-directors in the film industry in various countries and analyses new tendencies in women's cinema. It also answers the questions: why women's cinema is a global phenomenon in our time and how women use media for establishing their political and aesthetic positions? The author addresses these questions primarily in the context of the United States, Russia, France and Scandinavia, which have a rich tradition of feminists' movements and world-famous film directors.