Film career
Kidron began making documentaries in the 1980s. In 1983, she made her first documentary, Carry Greenham Home, with co-director Amanda Richardson. It was filmed during the year that they spent at the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp during the anti nuclear protests. The film was shown at the Berlin Film Festival and, to celebrate Greenham's 25th anniversary, it was revived through The Guardian-backed website, www.yourgreenham.com.
In 1988, she made her first feature film, Vroom, which starred Clive Owen in his debut film. The following year, she came to greater prominence with her adaptation of Jeanette Winterson's autobiographical novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. It won three Baftas, including Best Drama Series/Serial. In 2010, The Guardian named Oranges the eighth best TV series of all time.
Following the success of Oranges, Kidron continued to work for the BBC, making the TV feature film Antonia and Jane, distributed by Miramax in the US, as well as Itch, starring and co-written by Alexei Sayle for Channel 4's 4 Play anthology series. In 1992, Kidron moved to Hollywood to make Used People with Shirley MacLaine and Marcello Mastroianni. The following year, she directed Hookers, Hustlers, Pimps and Their Johns, a documentary about the New York City sex industry. She then returned to the UK to pair up with Winterson for the BBC film Great Moments in Aviation starring Vanessa Redgrave and Jonathan Pryce, which was subsequently renamed Shades of Fear by Miramax CEO Harvey Weinstein.
The 1990s and early 2000s saw Kidron move between Hollywood, New York and London, making features, TV programmes and documentaries. In 1995, she made To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, a drag queen road movie starring Wesley Snipes and Patrick Swayze. 1997 brought Swept from the Sea, a romantic adaptation of the Joseph Conrad story "Amy Foster", starring Rachel Weisz and Vincent Perez, which Variety called "masterfully crafted and heartfelt". Over the next few years, Kidron made a number of TV films both at home and abroad, including Cinderella, Texarkana and Murder, for which she was nominated for a second Bafta. In 2004, she directed the second installment of the Bridget Jones series, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, starring Renée Zellweger, Colin Firth and Hugh Grant.
In 2007, she made a documentary about neighbour and friend, the sculptor Antony Gormley. Kidron and her husband, playwright and author of Billy Elliot, Lee Hall, began work on Hippie Hippie Shake, a film about the Oz magazine trials. The film was shot in 2009 with Sienna Miller and Cillian Murphy; however, Kidron and Hall left during post-production, citing artistic differences with the producers.
Kidron spent much of 2010 in Southern India researching and shooting a documentary on the Devadasi. Sex, Death and the Gods premiered on BBC 4 as part of the Storyville series.
In 2013, Kidron directed the documentary InRealLife, a co-production between Cross Street Films and Studio Lambert. The film explored teenagers and their relationship to the internet. It was this film that acted as a catalyst for her campaign work around children's rights in the online world.
Following a period away from feature films, Kidron produced the Stephen Frears-directed Victoria & Abdul, which was released in 2017. It was the first feature film produced by Cross Street Films, and starred Judi Dench as Queen Victoria and Ali Fazal as Abdul Karim. To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar was re-released in 2019 and was named by The New York Times as among the top ten comedies on Netflix.
In 2025, Kidron appeared in the BBC documentary Hunting the Online Sex Predators, where she met with presenter James Blake to discuss the dangers of social media. She highlighted how users can be just two clicks away from accessing child abuse content online.
