Say hello to Kate Winslet’s directorial debut, Goodbye June

Winslet will take her first step behind the camera for Netflix later this year.

By Matt Schimkowitz  |  February 16, 2025 | 7:21pm
Photo by Andreas Rentz (Getty Images)
Film News Kate Winslet
Say hello to Kate Winslet’s directorial debut, Goodbye June

Kate Winslet will paint someone else like one of their French girls for a change. Per Screen Daily, the Academy Award-winning actor has begun preproduction on her directorial debut entitled Goodbye June. Based on a script by Winslet’s son with Sam Mendes, Joe Anders, Goodbye June follows a fictional family of fractured siblings who reconvene after a tragedy. Anders is no stranger to working with his famous folks, appearing in Mednes’ 1917 and the Winslet-led BAFTA-nominee Lee. He also acted in an episode of I Am… starring Winslet called “I Am Ruth,” in which she plays a mother trying to get her daughter off social media. The film is shooting in the U.K. and will be released as a made-for-TV movie on Netflix.

Previously, Winslet had felt that she was “letting women down by not directing. Having previously produced Lee and risked drowning for James Cameron multiple times, Winslet said she resisted directing movies for years because directing movies is a lot of work.

“So many people will say to me on film sets ‘Why aren’t you directing?’ and I’ll go, ‘no, no, no, please don’t say it. Stop saying it. Why does everyone keep saying it?'” she told the How To Fail podcast last year. “People say it to me often and I know why I haven’t done it: because it’s a very long time, and it’s a huge commitment, and I have always had a family. I had Mia when I was 25 years old, so there’s just no way I would have ever been able to have it.”

“But the more I’m not doing it now, with the need to change the culture, the more I feel like I’m actually letting down other women by not doing it. I’m really starting to feel that in quite a loud way.”

Now that she’s wearing the puffy director’s pants, Winslet can finally let herself off the hook.

 
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