Kate Winslet Gets Candid at the Munich International Film Festival: “It’s Hard to Make Films As a Woman, and It Is Hard to Make Films About Women”

Leave it to the dynamic Kate Winslet to say what needs to be said—before the European premiere of her film Lee, about war photographer Lee Miller, Winslet said of both starring in and producing the film that “It’s hard to make films as a woman, and it is hard to make films about women,” per Deadline. 

While accepting an award at the Munich International Film Festival, Winslet explained that the release of Lee had been pushed back, and explained why: “We chose to delay the release of Lee because of the strike, and because I wanted to be able to talk about the real, true labor of love that it was for me and my producing partner Kate Solomon to make this film,” she said. Winslet added “I hope with this film people will be more open-eared and more open-eyed to wanting to absorb stories of phenomenally important historical figures like the formidable Lee Miller.”

Miller, according to Deadline, was a model turned photographer turned war correspondent. “She took a series of iconic and often harrowing pictures during World War II,” the outlet writes. The Munich premiere “had an added resonance, given Miller is known for herself featuring in an iconic shot, in a bathtub in Hitler’s abandoned residence in the German city.” 

Lee begins with Miller and her Bohemian friends enjoying life in pre-war France, but, as the war unfolds, the film takes viewers inside the horrors of wartime, as captured by Miller and her friend and fellow photographer David E. Scherman, played in Lee by Andy Samberg—including inside the Dachau concentration camp.

“Getting the balance right throughout the film was constantly something that we were aware of, not taking the audience too far into the heart of darkness too quickly,” Winslet said. She continued “It was just so important to us to make sure that we weren’t trying to emulate images of the camps that have been done brilliantly by other filmmakers in the past. We had to really be determined to make sure we were only seeing it through [Miller and Scherman’s] eyes.”

Lee is due to hit theaters in the U.S. on September 27.