Last Friday, Tribeca CEO, Jane Rosenthal, and Chanel hosted a lunchtime soiree, gathering some of the most powerful and disruptive storytellers in Hollywood to celebrate their trailblazing mentorship program Through Her Lens: The Tribeca Chanel Women’s Filmmaker Program. The afternoon featured inspiring conversations between female industry leaders and titans like Patty Jenkins, A.V. Rockwell, and Laura Karpman, and burgeoning talent like Whitney Peak and Nell Verlaque. Soon after, Riley Keough and Gina Gammell screened an episode of the new series that they co-created and co-directed, inspired by Through Her Lens, aptly titled In Process.
Founded 10 years ago now as an extension of the brand’s long-standing, two-decade partnership with the Tribeca Festival, the mentorship program aims to uplift and develop emerging female and nonbinary filmmakers by providing them with invaluable industry support and, most importantly, funding for their projects.
“The very act of us speaking up feels risky,” Rosenthal said to the room. “This program reminds us that our voices matter, that storytelling is activism, and that art is a form of existence.”
Margaret Zhang, Riley Keough and Gina Gammell speak onstage at Metrograph on June 6, 2025 in New York City.
Committed to fostering equity in filmmaking, Chanel packed the lush courtyard of The Greenwich Hotel on one of the first sweltering summer Fridays with creatives from across generations and industries—from Miley Cyrus and Lizzy McAlpine to Mariska Hargitay, Lucy Liu, Olivia Munn, Lola Tung, Nia DaCosta, Francesca Scorsese and more—even facilitating a White Lotus season-three reunion of television darlings Parker Posey and Carrie Coon, befitting of the the humid temperature.
As the room buzzed with fervor for the future of film, the reality, as award-winning writer and director Jenkins pointed out in an impassioned speech, is that female directors make up a staggering low percentage of the industry. Yet, Jenkins, invigorated by the talent and resilience that filled the space, delivered good news and a seed of hope to those who might feel like their dreams and projects aren’t possible in the current landscape. “We have our own money. We have our own producers. We have our own skills. We actually also need to really embrace coming together and not asking for permission or partnership under the old system,” she said. “That’s why I love coming into this room. So grateful to Chanel and Tribeca for doing it. It gives a forum for having these conversations.”
Keough, whose three-episode series was inspired by the filmmaker program, later echoed that sentiment, and championed the need to foster underrepresented talent.
“It’s mentorships. It’s on-the-ground support of women wanting to make films,” she tells Vanity Fair of how to support the next generation of filmmakers. “It’s women knowing that that’s an option, and that they could be supported in doing that.”
Later, Keough and Gammell zipped across town to Metrograph, the downtown cinema, to join Australian Chinese filmmaker Margaret Zhang in an intimate conversation taking the audience behind the scenes of their own creative processes, followed by a screening of an episode of In Process starring actor Ruth Negga and director DaCosta, who was in the audience supporting the cause.
Dozens of festivalgoers and young filmmakers—including bright-eyed recent film school graduates—gathered inside the theater, snacking on chic black boxes of popcorn stamped with the Chanel logo, to listen to the three women discuss the unique challenges and pressures they face as female filmmakers, as well as the importance of keeping the door open for the next class of storytellers.
“As a woman, there is this pressure feeling of, ‘I can’t mess up,’” Keough tells Vanity Fair. “‘I can’t make a shit movie.’ But I think that, for me, I can’t live like that,” she adds. “I think that’s a great talent actually, to be able to be okay with failing, messing up, and not being perfect.”
