Editor’s Note

When writing, the hardest part is starting. Once you have that first line down, often the rest begins to flow. I was thinking about that while reading the interviews in this week’s Lifestyle with Greta Gerwig, who conceptualised and wrote last year’s hit film Barbie, and Celine Song, who mined her own romantic experiences to write and direct Past Lives. Both women were nominated for a Golden Globe.

As a writer who sometimes spends hours staring at the blank page on screen waiting for inspiration to hit, I hugely respect the creative process that goes into making a film that starts with words on a page. When an author is able to write convincingly from the point of view of a person totally different to them, I’m even more impressed.

Reading a collection of essays this week by writer Lionel Shriver, I found myself empathising with her outrage at fellow writers being accused of cultural appropriation for creating characters with different backgrounds to themselves. She singles out Chris Cleave who, in his novel The Other Hand, writes from the point of view of a 14-year-old Nigerian girl — although he is male, white and British — and gets raked over the coals by reviewers for “identity theft” and “exploiting” his character’s identity. He’s also accused of telling a story that’s not implicitly his to tell. In my view, Cleave has, instead, achieved a remarkable manifestation of empathy.

When I extrapolated these objections to the cinema, I couldn’t help thinking how much poorer a collection of films and television series we would have if the talented writers and directors making them were only able to tell stories in parallel with their own backgrounds.

Thank goodness we’re not there yet. Enjoy our list of film and television to look forward to this year.