NEW YORK—Chiara Clemente never wanted to move back to New York. “Growing up, I never fully connected to the city, nor did I feel completely comfortable with its chaotic pace,” she says. But after several years of living and working in Rome, the 20-something filmmaker and daughter of artist Francesco Clemente began to crave that energy, and returned to make a film here.

The result is Our City Dreams, which follows a year in the life of five female New York City artists, ranging in age from 30 to 80. While the film ostensibly focuses on the subjects — Swoon, Ghada Amer, Kiki Smith, Marina Abramovic, and Nancy Spero — documenting both their professional triumphs and everyday working practices, it also serves as a sort of blueprint for a young woman trying to find her way in a difficult city. Is it possible to do thoughtful work among such distraction? How do I make my voice heard? And what about love and family?

Like Clemente, many of the five had their own misgivings about New York but felt irresistibly drawn to it. Swoon, the youngest, moved here in 1998 because it’s “the biggest, loudest, dirtiest, most intense city that we have.” Smith relocated from L.A. in 1976 because New York’s “kind of angst was more me.” And feminist pioneer and activist Spero, now 82, returned from Paris with her husband, artist Leon Golub, in 1964, because it was time to “face the music” and admit “that we were Americans, American artists.” Egyptian-born Amer thought it was a place she could finally blend in. And groundbreaking performance artist Abramovic came because she needed a new frontier to conquer.

In the end, Our City Dreams is a search for role models, and anyone who is trying to live a fruitful, creative life, or is trying to find his way in a bustling, anonymous place, will find plenty here to take with him.

The film, which debuted at Art Basel last year, starts a two-week run at Film Forum today. Chiara Clemente will be on hand for a Q&A after the six o’clock screening along with Swoon, Amer, and Spero.

ARTINFO spoke with Clemente about the film just before the New York premiere.

Chiara, how did you select the artists for Our City Dreams?

It began with Ghada Amer in her studio. She spent three hours pulling out books and showing us paintings, and showed us this women’s magazine that pretty much inspired her whole body of work; she really inspired the idea of the film being about women artists. Next was Kiki Smith — I always loved her and her work, and we have this connection of both having fathers who are artists, so she was an obvious choice.

For Marina Abramovic, I was just really interested in the idea of how she arrived in New York: For someone who was such a superstar in the art world in Europe to come to New York to reinvent herself or find new boundaries to break was just interesting to me.

With Swoon, I wanted someone who worked on the streets, a graffiti or street artist, because I feel like that is something that’s so urban and so New York, and growing up it was always around me. That was one of the hardest searches, because it’s harder to find women doing it than men, and she was hard to get to at the time, but she is an amazing person and a great surprise.

Nancy Spero was another surprise. She is probably the one I knew the least about, but after visiting her I was completely blown away. She looks so frail, but she has such a strength: When she talks and looks at you she just blows you away. She really brought the film together, rounded out the story.

Were there other artists you considered or wanted but weren’t able to work with?

One of the obvious choices was Louise Bourgeois. There are so many films on her, but I wanted to approach her and see what she would say. And I got this amazing note from her that I still have — it just said, “Thank you for inviting me to be part of your film. But as I’m, like, 90-something, and three films are being shot at this time, I feel like I need to make a little time to paint.”

Do you think women artists still have a tougher time getting recognition?