Director Donna Dietch on her Iconic Lesbian Romance Desert Hearts Criterion Release

Donna Deitch is a respected television director with a host of credits including her Emmy-winning, Holocaust-themed The Devil’s Arithmetic (1999). But it’s Desert Hearts, the groundbreaking lesbian romance she made 31 years ago, recently re-released and restored by Janus Films and the Criterion Collection, that allows Deitch to remember and also to look ahead.

“There have been so many screenings, so much press. It’s a strange but wonderful thing,” she says.