Mark Kermode on… Kathryn Bigelow, a stylish ruffler of feathers

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From vampire noir to Bin Laden, Point Break to Detroit, the first woman to win an Oscar for best director has never pulled her punches Watching new Jeff Nichols release The Bikeriders , starring Austin Butler and Tom Hardy as 60s Chicago greasers, I was reminded of two other movies: László Benedek’s 1953 Marlon Brando vehicle The Wild One , explicitly cited as an inspiration, and The Loveless , the 1981 feature debut of Kathryn Bigelow , the American film-maker (b.1951) who would go on to become the first woman to win a best director Oscar with her 2008 war drama The Hurt Locker . A symphony of leather-clad posing (with just a touch of Kenneth Anger ), The Loveless was a staple of the late-night circuit in the 80s, often on a double bill with David Lynch’s Eraserhead . Sharing directing credits with Monty Montgomery, Bigelow playfully deconstructed masculinity and machismo in a manner that was one part wry to two parts relish. I remember seeing The Loveless at the Phoenix in East
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Director Nida Manzoor: ‘For teenage girls, everything feels so intense it’s almost violent’

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Known for We Are Lady Parts, her controversial sitcom about a Muslim punk band, the writer-director has made a feature film, Polite Society, that celebrates young female defiance with martial arts-fuelled energy

The muse can be a fickle thing to find, but Nida Manzoor’s inspiration has always been close to home. “My sister, Sanya, is only a year older than me and she is such a big influence on my work,” says the screenwriter and director. “She’s always been a rebel and I hated to see her being told what to do. She’s become my muse.”

Manzoor’s free-spirited sister has long been a theme in her work. Manzoor, 33, rose to prominence in 2021 with her debut Channel 4 series, We Are Lady Parts, which told the story of an all-female Muslim punk band balancing cultural pressures with trying to write thumping tracks lambasting their daily lives. The Manzoor sisters, who were brought up by Pakistani Muslim parents in Singapore and then London, wrote the music for the series together, along with their brother, Shez . The frontwoman of the fictional band is a tattooed, straight-talking singer called Saira, a commanding presence that Manzoor created to mirror Sanya’s energy. “Sanya is now a musician and spiritual life coach who lives in Berlin, plus she is covered in tattoos,” she says admiringly.

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