Female filmmakers aren’t that unusual anymore, but Kathryn Bigelow is still in a class by herself. One of only four women in Oscar history to be nominated for the Best Director award, she was the first to claim the statue—in 2010 for The Hurt Locker, a pulse-pounding thriller that followed a bomb disposal unit deployed in Baghdad during the Iraq War. Besides being known as a director who really means it when she says, “Action,” Bigelow, 60, also admirably seeks out material that allows her to open a window into important current events.
“I’m interested in social commentary,” she says. “What’s most galvanizing for me is the opportunity to be topical and relevant and entertaining.”
Her latest effort is the much-buzzed-about Zero Dark Thirty (out December 19, 2012), a fact-based flick about the unsung heroes who worked to find Osama bin Laden. Billed as an account of history’s greatest manhunt for the world’s most dangerous man, it promises to keep you on the edge of your seat with your eyes wide open.
