According to an analysis by the Women’s Media Center, only little has been achieved among the more renowned film festivals during the first half of this year. This includes the Sundance Filmfestival, the Berlinale, SxSW, Tribeca and Cannes.
“As part of the 5050×2020 pledge, festivals have agreed to be more transparent about their submissions processes, such as revealing the gender statistics of festival programming committees, juries, and filmmakers who submit movies for consideration. If a festival gets a very low percentage of female directors who are submitting films, that’s probably because festival programmers aren’t trying hard enough to find qualified female directors, says Kirsten Schaffer, executive director of Women in Film, a Los Angeles–based advocacy group.”
The fact that a gender-parity program is particularly a matter of curatorial guidelines and commitment, and thus the male perspective of film festival programs owes less to the limited number of works submitted by female film makers, is shown by such film festivals as Crossing Europe in Linz and the DOK Fest in Munich, among others.