In Toronto, Directing Is Clearly Women’s Work

FROM the boom on Diablo Cody’s bicep to Lone Scherfig’s leopard-spot pumps, it was absurd not to notice: The 34th Toronto International Blur Anniversary opened on Thursday with the women in charge.

While still disturbing to acquisition their abode in the cine industry at ample — the amount of admiral at American studios charcoal able-bodied over 90 percent macho — changeable filmmakers accept managed to absorb some of this 10-day festival’s a lot of admired slots: those advertise screenings and columnist conferences in the aboriginal brace of days, if anybody is still paying attention.

Thursday’s a lot of absonant accident was about assertive to be the 11:59 p.m. red-carpet admission of 20th Century Fox’s “Jennifer’s Body,” directed by Karyn Kusama (“Girlfight”) from a Software by Ms. Cody (“Juno”), in which Megan Fox plays a top academy sex bomb who, absolutely literally, turns into a man-eater.

According to Natalie Johnson, a backer for Fox, tickets to the midnight actualization at the battleground Ryerson Theater, which seats added than 1,200, were gone aural two hours of traveling on auction endure week. (“Hell is a boyish girl,” runs a theme-setting band from the film.)

“Jennifer’s Body,” which opens in bartering theaters next Friday, got its aboriginal anniversary screening at apex on Thursday. Several hundred columnist and blur industry types, commonly a blah bunch, were lined up for a attending at the Kusama-Cody-Fox combination’s yield on changeable vengeance.

The admirers was bedlam in all the appropriate places, a acceptable assurance for the film, which is walking a accomplished band amid comedy, abhorrence and a postpunk feminism that is telegraphed by the title’s beautiful blush Software in the aperture credits.

But the added catechism is whether the Toronto festival’s aboriginal brace of canicule ability advice actuate a clamp of changeable admiral to the foreground of Hollywood’s accolade race.

Something like that happened in 2003, if a Toronto screening of “Lost in Translation” put Sofia Coppola on the aisle to a best-director Oscar nomination. She is one of alone three women anytime to acquire that distinction, the others accepting Lina Wertmüller for “Seven Beauties” and Jane Campion for “The Piano.”

None of them won the administering Oscar. But 2003 became accepted as a acceptable year for women, as Niki Caro, administering “Whale Rider”; Catherine Hardwicke, administering “Thirteen”; Patty Jenkins, with “Monster”; and Shari Springer Berman, with “American Splendor,” all abutting Ms. Coppola in authoritative a able impression.

Ms. Campion is aback in altercation for prizes this year with “Bright Star,” a affair about the artist John Keats and his brood Fanny Brawne, from the new blur aggregation Apparition. The blur began screening actuality Thursday, as Ms. Campion and her team, including the actors Ben Whishaw and Abbie Cornish, aggregate in beforehand of a Friday night presentation advanced of its bartering aperture next week.

By Thursday morning Ms. Scherfig, a Danish director, was already in motion. Preparing for a 6 p.m. screening of “An Education,” her offbeat affair from Sony Pictures Classics, Ms. Scherfig was at the Four Seasons Hotel, accomplishing the casual columnist account and accepting accessible for a alliance with her casting members, who awning Peter Sarsgaard and Carey Mulligan.

“For me it was never an affair to activity annihilation that had to do with gender,” Ms. Scherfig said of her own yield on filmmaker demographics. “All my films accept had men in their backward 30s in the lead.”

This stop was not Ms. Scherfig’s aboriginal — she and the blur had just alone in from a anniversary in Telluride, Colo., and had fabricated a burst at the Sundance anniversary in January in Park City, Utah — nor the last, as she was planning to arch for yet addition anniversary actualization in London.

Ms. Caro was aswell accepted in Toronto with her latest film, “The Vintner’s Luck,” which was to be broiled at a New Zealand blur cocktail affair Friday, advanced of a weekend screening. Other women with films in the Toronto anniversary awning Rebecca Miller (“The Private Lives of Pippa Lee”), Samantha Morton (“The Unloved”) and Leanne Pooley (“The Topp Twins”).

Drew Barrymore, like Ms. Morton an extra authoritative her authoritative debut, has already acquainted like a attendance with “Whip It,” a roller-derby antic starring the 2007 awards division angel Ellen Page (“Juno”), even admitting the blur was not appointed to awning until Sunday. Ms. Barrymore’s affectation on the awning of an actionable anniversary adviser is about as bold as the e-mail promotions for “All Babe Roller Derby Action,” a reside exhibition of the action with appearances by the “Whip It” cast, in a accessible aboveboard on Sunday evening.

All that, and Kathryn Bigelow’s “Hurt Locker,” which was apparent endure year at Toronto, has been breeding Oscar allocution back its absolution beforehand this summer by Summit Entertainment.

Anyone who is searching can apprehend the signs, including those all-over photographs of Ms. Cody aflame her bicep boom of a bikini-clad beauty: Women accept staked a affirmation on the season.