Abstract

Emphasizing practitioner’s agency, in this instance the subjective rationality of Bier, this chapter looks at the director’s changing self-understandings in the course of her career. Now in her mid-50s and with three decades of experience to reflect on following graduation from the National Film School of Denmark in 1987, Bier’s narrativization of her career over a longer period of time offers a good deal of insight into the problems facing women filmmakers. Emerging from conversations with critics and journalists, the reflexive story points to a strategic shift from film to TV production as a means of circumventing recurring and ever more frustrating challenges. Bier’s status as a winner of an Emmy (for the mini TV series The Night Manager), an Oscar for Best Foreign Feature Film and a Golden Globe (both for Hævnen/In a Better World [2010]), and an Audience Award at Sundance (for Brødre/ Brothers [2004]) makes the purported experience of gender-based constraints all the more telling.