Marleen Gorris

Marleen Gorris
Marleen Gorris (1982)
Born	(1948-12-09) 9 December 1948 (age 68) Roermond, Netherlands
Nationality	Dutch
Occupation	Film director, screenwriter
Known for	Antonia's Line (1995)

Marleen Gorris (born 9 December 1948) is a writer-director from the Netherlands. Gorris is known as an outspoken feminist and supporter of gay and lesbian issues which is reflected in much of her work. In 1995 she won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film for Antonia's Line, this made her the first woman to direct a movie that won an Oscar for Best Foreign Film.

Marleen Gorris was born on 9 December 1948 in Roermond in the Netherlands. She was born to Protestant working-class parents in the very Catholic southern part of the Netherlands. Gorris studied drama at home and abroad. She studied Drama at the University of Amsterdam and has an MA in Drama from the University of Birmingham, England.

She began working as a filmmaker with almost no previous experience in the cinema and made an auspicious writing and directorial debut in 1982 with A Question of Silence. The Dutch government gave her the funding to finance the project.

It was not until the age of 30 that Gorris began writing scripts. Gorris took her first effort to the Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman, hoping to interest her in directing it. Akerman, however, told Gorris that she must make the film herself. The result, A Question of Silence (1982), caused considerable international controversy with its story about three unacquainted women who murder a randomly chosen man, the film was hailed by some as a logical case study of what happens when women are driven to the brink by a male-dominated society, while others decried it as a juvenile revenge fantasy.