A few years ago in, Italian womenswear label Miu Miu initiated an ongoing series of short films featuring all female directors using the platform to tell captivating and pertinent stories from a female perspective. Each year, the brand commissions and releases two films for both their summer and winter collections. This year, for their 16th installation of the series, the brand has tapped Saudia Arabia’s first female filmmaker Haifaa al-Mansour to direct their freshly-released film entitled “The Wedding Singer’s Daughter.” The film is set during the 1980’s in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and speaks on the strict gender segregation rules of Saudi Weddings.

The storyline features a cast of women draped in their traditional black abayas driving to the hall of the wedding location, and reveals the sparkle of the glamorous heels, dazzling dresses and wild hair once they arrive and are in an all female presence. As they prepare for this celebration,  all eyes are on the wedding singer to keep it going until the electricity suddenly cuts out. Mumbles begin and guests start to complain, the singer experiences a slight panic until she is saved by an unlikely heroine: her young daughter who manages to save her mother’s dignity. “Weddings are the actual mirror of society in Saudi Arabia: segregated, fragmented, along gender and class. I wanted to tell the story of those people and capture that tenderness,” says the director, “It’s very important for women to tell their stories, and sometimes it’s hard. In the film, the daughter uses her nimble mind to quickly solve the problem just like an independent film-director. For me the little girl represents the future, and the future belongs to the outsiders.” The film can currently be seen along with the brand’s repertoire online MiuMiu.com.

Tags: Fashion, Fashion Film, Miu Miu, Miu Miu women's tales

In 2011, Miu Miu debuted The Women’s Tales, a series of short films that Miuccia Prada commissioned from international female directors, each of whom explored various aspects of the feminine experience in their work. And today Le Donne della Vucciria, set entirely in the city of Palermo, is making its world premiere at Venice Days. Above you’ll find the trailer. The renowned Palestinian actress Hiam Abbas is the director of the short.

This will be followed by The Door by Ava DuVernay, the first African-American woman to win an award for Best Director at Sundance. The Door is a celebration of the transformative power of the bonds between a number of different women.

The two short films present a different vision of a woman´s world and its metamorphoses. The clothes from the collection, in fact, are no mere accessories or ornamental elements; they symbolize renewal, accompanying the stars of the short films on a path leading to personal “rebirth”.

There’s more to Miu Miu Women´s Tales than just visuals, a series of talks will be devoted to the theme of female creativity. On August 30 and August 31 festival audiences will be able to watch several leading ladies in film and the arts at large as they engage in three dialogues moderated by journalist and filmmaker Monica Maggioni. The three conversations cover different creative stages in filmmaking: directing ,production and acting.

The idea for the talks was born from the need to stimulate reflection on women’s experiences working and expressing their creativity in various sectors of the film industry. Miu Miu presents the voices of quite different personalities who have had first-hand experience of the risks and the rewards of a career in film in a “man’s world”.

Tags: Miu Miu women's tales