Claudia Weill

Claudia Weill is an American film director best known for her film Girlfriends (1978), starring Melanie Mayron, Christopher Guest, Bob Balaban and Eli Wallach, made independently and sold to Warner Brothers after multiple awards at Cannes, Filmex and Sundance. Girlfriends would be one of 82 films made by a female director to compete at Cannes. In 2019, Girlfriends was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". It's My Turn (1980 for Columbia Pictures)—with Jill Clayburgh, Michael Douglas, and Charles Grodin—won her the Donatello, or International Oscar for best new director. Earlier work includes 30 films for Sesame Street, freelancing as a camerawoman, and numerous documentaries, notably The Other Half of the Sky: A China Memoir, a documentary about the first women's delegation to China in 1973, headed by Shirley MacLaine, nominated for an Academy Award and released theatrically and on PBS.