With ‘Woman of the Hour,’ Anna Kendrick Makes Her Thrilling—and Deeply Thoughtful—Directorial Debut

Kendrick, who has been navigating the entertainment industry for more than two decades (earning Tony and Oscar nominations for High Society in 1998 and Up in the Air in 2009, respectively), did not take on directing duties lightly. She was already attached as an actor and executive producer when the production faced some delays and ended up needing a new director. “I started to have this thought that wouldn’t go away: What if I pitched myself to direct the movie?” she says. “The more I tried to push it away, the more it persisted. And I started to feel heartbroken at the idea of anybody else doing it.” Still, the stakes felt high. “I am also aware that if I say something idiotic in front of the crew, there’s my own shame. And then there’s this weight of, God, are they all thinking this is why people don’t like women as leaders or directors? That was really scary.”

The thought brings Kendrick back to a period in her career when she worked hard to seem like “more of a boy than the boys.” “In my early 20s, when I would talk to guys about movies, the only movies I would reference were mob movies and exploitation films,” she says. “I learned that language so that I could get them to take my opinion seriously.”

When Kendrick got the job directing Woman of the Hour, however, she resisted making the movie too graphic or shocking—the qualities that would impress those guys she used to hang around. That visual discipline is just one part of what makes Woman of the Hour look and feel so much like the work of a veteran. Additionally, Kendrick worked closely with her cinematographer, Zach Kuperstein, to establish a consistent visual language that made the female victims of Rodney’s violence, some shown in flashbacks, actually feel seen rather than objectified. “We shot on lenses that had a lot of character,” Kendrick says. “I wanted the beauty of the film to come from the women, the setting, and their performances. And I wanted to put them in nature, in these beautiful settings, because we have such a limited amount of time to get to know them. And I wanted the space that they occupied to speak to the vastness and complexity of their lives beyond this one violent moment.”