Breaking into Hollywood was a slog. Ally Pankiw wants to make it easier for other women
Ally Pankiw set up Breadcrumbs to give up-and-coming women directors the on-set experience needed to break into a male-dominated industry
Six years ago, Ally Pankiw got her first big television breakthrough: she directed the first season of the Netflix comedy-drama Feel Good.
But getting there was a slog. The Canadian writer and director recalls being told repeatedly that she could not land such jobs without first having directing experience in TV – a Catch-22 situation shared by many women and people of colour trying to break into the business.
Frustrated by that common refrain and motivated to push back against Hollywood’s larger diversity problem, Pankiw decided to take action.
She started to bring mentees to her sets, first paying them on commercial shoots from her own rate, then eventually asking film and TV productions to pay them as part of the budget. The idea was for those aspiring directors to shadow her on set and get that first-hand knowledge about an industry that is so often out of reach.
Pankiw’s individual efforts have now grown into Breadcrumbs, a mentorship programme she formally launched in late 2025 that helps up-and-coming women and non-binary directors get access to paid, credited shadowing opportunities on film, TV and commercial sets.
So far, she says, about 25 directors and production companies have signed a pledge to commit to these paid mentorship opportunities, including Nisha Ganatra, the director of Freakier Friday (2025), and Lilly Wachowski of The Matrix franchise.