Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go is British-born filmmaker Kim Longinotto's 13th directorial credit since 1976. Her films have won international acclaim and dozens of premiere awards at festivals worldwide, including most recently a Sundance World Cinema Documentary Jury Prize for Rough Aunties. Other awards include the Amnesty International DOEN Award at IDFA for The Day I Will Never Forget, which premiered on HBO in 2003, and the Grand Prize for Best Documentary at the San Francisco International Film Festival and a BAFTA Award for Divorce Iranian Style (1998). Her film Sisters in Law, set in Kumba, Cameroon, premiered and won two prizes at Cannes including the prestigious Prix art et Essai Award, as well as a Peabody Award. She also won Outstanding Documentary at the San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Film Festival for Shinjuku Boys (1995).
Longinotto studied camera and directing at England's National Film School, before working as the cameraperson on a variety of documentaries for TV, including Cross and Passion, an account of Catholic women in Belfast, and Underage, a chronicle of unemployed adolescents in the English city of Coventry. In 1986, she formed the production company Twentieth Century Vixen. Take a look at six of Kim Longinotto's documentary films at Bright Lights Film Journal: Rebel Girls.
