Cannes Film Festival: a record number of female directors in competition, but still a long way to go

Thirty years after Jane Campion and two years after Julia Ducournau, a woman may win the Palme d'Or. This year, seven female directors are in the running, among the 21 films selected in the official competition of the Cannes Film Festival. That's a third of the selection. Never has the Croisette counted so many. Last year, they were only five to claim the prestigious trophy and four in 2021 and 2019.

Between 1946, the date of the first edition, and 2018, of the 1,727 films in official competition, only 82 were directed by women, or 5% of feature films, notes the 50/50 collective, an association that works for equality in cinema.

"I am delighted, because the figures are clearly on the rise," confirms Fabienne Silvestre, co-founder and director of the Lab "Femmes de cinéma", a think tank that works on parity and diversity in cinema and audiovisual. "If there are women honored in the list, it creates female role models, it's very important," she continues.

Three French women in official competition

Among the feature films in the race for the Palme d'Or are Club Zero by Austrian director Jessica Hausner, La Chimère by Italian Alice Rohrwacher and the first film by Senegalese Ramata-Toulaye Sy, Banel and Adama. Already nominated in the parallel selection of the Cannes Film Festival "Un Certain Regard" in 2017, Tunisian Kaouther Ben Hania is now in official competition for her documentary Les Filles d'Olfa.

Three French directors are also vying for the prestigious trophy, Catherine Breillat with her film Last Summer and Justine Triet for Anatomy of a Fall. Catherine Corsini's film, The Return, was only retained later after suspicions of harassment on the set.

In the history of the festival, only two female directors have won the prestigious trophy, New Zealander Jane Campion in 1993 for La Leçon de piano and Frenchwoman Julia Ducournau in 2021 for Titane. A feminist collage in a street in Nice denounces this imbalance, reported Nice-Matin Monday: "76 Palmes d'Or, only 2 award-winning directors".

A feminist collage to denounce the lack of parity in the awarding of the Palmes d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival https://t.co/c2EAA6biQq

— Nice-Matin (@Nice_Matin) May 15, 2023

"A festival is a showcase of what cinema produces," says Fabienne Silvestre. Given the European average of women filmmakers, it is very difficult to get to 50% in competition. In fact, women make up only a quarter of directors in Europe, according to figures from the European Audiovisual Observatory. "Things can't be perfect in Cannes, while the environment is not perfect," says the director of the "Women of Cinema" Lab.

For its part, the Cannes institution, which did not respond to our requests, says it is committed "to freedom of expression, parity and diversity" on its website: "The Festival composes each year an official selection as demanding as attentive to diversity and parity". In 2018, he signed the Charter for Parity and Diversity in Film Festivals of the 50/50 collective. In particular, it commits to "making transparent the list of members of selection committees and programmers" to "remove any suspicion of lack of diversity and parity".

The festival's "political positions" criticised

The institution is however strongly criticized this year for having chosen Jeanne du Barry de Maïwenn in the opening film, despite the accusations of domestic violence to which Johnny Depp, its headliner, was the subject. The selection of Catherine Corsini's film, The Return, is also singled out.

In an article published in Libération on Tuesday, the day of the opening ceremony, more than 100 actresses and actors denounced the "political positions displayed by the Cannes Film Festival": "By rolling out the red carpet for men and women who attack, the festival sends the message that in our country we can continue to exercise violence with impunity, that violence is acceptable in places of creation. »

The general delegate of the Cannes Film Festival Thierry Frémaux defended himself by saying he had not followed the media trial of the actor, during a press conference Monday: "I do not know what it is, I am interested in Depp as an actor. "