What is it with female directors and the Oscars? In 78 years, only three women -- Italy's Lina Wertmuller ("Seven Beauties"), New Zealand's Jane Campion ("The Piano"), and Hollywood's Sofia Coppola ("Lost in Translation") -- have been nominated for best director.

Since 1956, when the foreign-language-film category went competitive, out of 250 best picture nominees, five were directed by women: Randa Haines of "Children of a Lesser God" and Barbra Streisand of "Prince of Tides" did not land directing nominations. But during the same period, in the foreign category, 15 foreign-language nominees were directed by women.

"Almost every other country has more women percolating in their film industries than we do," says author Cari Beauchamp ("Without Lying Down"), who also is an activist for the organization Films Directed by Women, which erected a poster on Sunset Boulevard reading, "Unchain the Woman Directors!"

No woman has ever won an Oscar for best director. On the foreign-language side, however, German director Caroline Link directed two nominated films, including the 2003 Oscar winner "Nowhere in Africa." It followed the 1996 win by "Antonia's Line," directed by Marleen Gorris of the Netherlands. This year, the sole female director among all the Oscar-nominated feature films is Cristina Comencini, the Italian writer-director of "Don't Tell," which Lionsgate will release next month.

"Don't Tell" is one of those rare movies that reflects a particularly feminine sensibility. Comencini was inspired to write her 2004 novel "Beast in the Heart" after reading a newspaper story about a brother and sister dealing with child abuse as adults, after their father's death. "Something had happened a long time in the past," Comencini says. "They rebuilt a new life. They were trying to understand what happened in a detached way. They got through that and recovered."

Comencini recognizes that her subject is not new. Yet Italians embraced her novel and then the movie, which won five prizes at the 2005 Venice International Film Festival, including best actress for Giovanna Mezzogiorno. "Italian audiences identified with this kind of passing through a pain to reach a truth in yourself," Comencini says. "I did not want to make a scandal about something. I wanted to explore the dark places in all of us, to understand how this kind of thing could happen. Every human being has basically a bad side and a good side. It's a contradiction: As adults, we can do the best thing in the world and love our children, or we can have an attraction to young bodies and do a bad thing. If you can see it, you can stop it, and decide to be a human being."

According to Comencini, an elegant blonde who turns 50 this year, it isn't any easier for women in the Italian film industry, which has long held up just two great female directors, Wertmuller and Liliana Cavani, Comencini says. "There are very few cases, as in the states."

What are the barriers? They take place inside women themselves, she says: "First of all, it is difficult for women to assume a sense of importance and authority. Women are scared by power. You can choose to use your authority in a different way, by not losing your female way of speaking to people. But when you are young you have more fear and can't face this kind of thing."

Secondly, Comencini points out, to direct a movie, you must have lots of free time: "It's the same with all women who work. Every woman has too much to do -- that's common in all parts of the world." When she was raising three children, Comencini had limited time, but somehow she has managed to write five novels and write and direct nine feature films. She is now writing a script about Clara Schumann, wife of classical pianist Robert Schumann and the mother of seven children. "She was the daughter of a man (piano teacher Friedrich Wieck) full of strength," Comencini says.

Comencini is the daughter of director Luigi Comencini ("The Scientific Cardplayer") and, like Coppola, growing up as the daughter of a successful film director was an enormous advantage. "We were four girls in a family with no brothers," she says, "so it made no difference if you were a boy or a girl. Our father spoke to us all in the same way."

Comencini came of age in Rome during the '60s and '70s, a great period in Italian film. "My father was part of the big family of cinema," she says. "Writers came to our big house and garden, discussing characters and dialogue, writing together, speaking, laughing, screaming, acting out the characters in the movie. I was seduced by this kind of life."

But when she finished studying economics in college, she stayed "far away from the world of my father," she says, and chose instead to write novels. Two female mentors helped her to make her way in the world. Screenwriter Suso Cecchi d'Amico, who wrote for director Luchino Visconti, and writer Natalia Ginzburg, to whom Comencini sent her first novel, under a fake name. Ginzburg offered to help her publish without knowing who she was -- and after she identified herself, edited the book. That is why Comencini believes strongly in giving back to young women coming up in the film industry. "We have to encourage young people and help to give them confidence," she says. "Just to see Sofia Coppola's achievements shows them a way to do that. It's important that the prizes consider more women."

Comencini's first movie, in 1989, was a low-budget adaptation of her children's novel "Zoo," filmed among the animals and statues at Villa Borghese and starring 13-year-old Asia Argento. "Like a circle that started with the world of my father," she says, "I went away and came back."

While filmmaking was a comfortable, familiar world, stepping onto the set that first day was hard, Comencini says: "If you have an important name, everyone is judging you. You are afraid at the same time that you are confident."

She turned to her sister Paula, who was her art director, and said, " 'I can't do this!' She said, 'Go do it.' I decided to put the camera in a place. It was a quite unconscious knowledge. I do this when I write, I just know the characters and write their stories."

From the start, Comencini also relied on two men. Comencini learned from her father, whose truthful feedback wasn't always pleasant. "He was very severe with my movie," she says. "He provided a critical point of view. I needed this. He had so much authority. My first movies were always too long and slow. He tried to really improve the sense of rhythm inside a movie." Ailing with Alzheimer's disease for some years now, the older Comencini is no longer able to see his daughter's movies, "which is painful for me," she says. "I lost my teacher."

Her husband also pitched in. While it was possible to write at home when her children were in school, every two years when it came time to direct a movie, he took over on the home front. "You can't waste time," she says. "You get tired, but you can face it."

Right now, as she does stateside pre-Oscar publicity for "Don't Tell," Comencini still feels the pull of her family responsibilities. Her last child at home, her 14-year-old son Luigi, "wants me to come home," she says.