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🇨🇭 Switzerland /Culture & Society

Maggie Gyllenhaal uses gallows humor to challenge Venice’s shortage of women filmmakers

From Neue Zürcher Zeitung · () German

Translated from German and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

Analysis Named sources Context piece
  • Jury president Maggie Gyllenhaal used sarcasm to criticize the fact that only one of 21 competition films at Venice was directed by a woman.
  • Festival director Alberto Barbera defended the selection as based solely on quality, while citing the small share of submitted films made by women.
  • The article argues that women directors face greater difficulty securing financing and carry more commercial risk when their films fail.

“I guess it is now finally clear that men make better films than women,” Maggie Gyllenhaal said with a sardonic smile at the opening of the 83rd Venice International Film Festival. The jury president was responding to a question about whether the festival’s lineup represented a backlash, with only one woman director among 21 competition films.

Festival director Alberto Barbera tried to laugh off the remark, then corrected the journalist by saying there were two films by women in the competition. In fact, only one, “Woman Unknown” by Danish director May el-Toukhy, came entirely from a woman director. The later addition “Naza” was co-directed by Israeli filmmaker Rachel Szor and her colleague Yuval Abraham, making the total one and a half by the article’s calculation.

I guess it is now finally clear that men make better films than women.

· Maggie GyllenhaalShe used the sarcastic remark to criticize the Venice competition’s lack of women directors.

Gyllenhaal described the imbalance as systemic. “I really do think it is much harder for women to get financing for their films,” she said after the sarcastic line. She added that there was confusion about what the industry values, and that it would take time to accept that many women, in her view, make films differently from men.

I really do think it is much harder for women to get financing for their films.

· Maggie GyllenhaalShe followed her sarcastic comment with a serious explanation of what she sees as a systemic problem.

Barbera said in July that the selection had been made “without prejudice” and based only on quality. He said women directed just 24 percent of the submitted feature films, and that those films were not good enough for the competition. Italian industry associations responded with an open letter.

The festival’s recent history complicates the picture. Six of last year’s 21 competition films came from women directors, and women accounted for 44 percent in 2020. The Golden Lion also went to women three years in a row between 2020 and 2022, to Chloé Zhao, Audrey Diwan and Laura Poitras. Yet a study published in December in the Journal of Cultural Economics found that hiring male directors is still treated as the safer choice. Even their failures are more likely to be dismissed as isolated mishaps.

without prejudice

· Alberto BarberaThe Venice festival director described the selection process in response to criticism of the lineup.
About this summary

Originally published by Neue Zürcher Zeitung in German. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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