FOR FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION, EQUALITY AND DIVERSITY

Montée des marches de 82 femmes de cinéma © Loïc Venance / AFP

A reflection of creation, a mirror on the world, the Festival invites filmmakers from around the world to bear witness to their times. By selecting them, the Festival offers them a canvass of free artistic and political expression, which contributes, edition after edition, to redrawing the world film map. It’s also in full awareness of this issue that the Festival determines its Official Selection, which is both demanding and attentive to diversity and equality. It’s with this same consciousness and this same desire to make all voices heard that people from all over the world are brought together to sit on its juries and that the Festival is organised.

GENDER PARITYFigures

ORGANISATION, COMMITTEES, JURIES

For several years now, the Festival de Cannes has been committed to respecting gender equality in every area it directly oversees.

The Festival de Cannes team: 54% of the permanent staff organising the Festival de Cannes and the Marché du Film are women.

The selection committee: in terms of gender, the official committee that selects the films is equally represented (5 men, 5 women). The student films in the La Cinef section are selected by a woman, as are the young filmmakers at the Résidence.

The Juries: the juries and chairs of the various juries (In Competition, Un Certain Regard, Caméra d’or and Short films and La Cinef Jury) have been equally represented since 2011 and 2013 respectively.

La Résidence : since the Festival’s reorganisation of La Résidence in 2022, the number of women selected for a single session can be no less than half of the participants.

SELECTING THE FILMS

The Festival de Cannes relies on the expertise and choices of an equally represented committee to select its films.

In order to preserve the artistic independence of its selection, it does not apply a quota policy, but remains equally mindful of developments in production worldwide. In particular, during the selection process, the Festival pays close attention to the percentage of female-directed films selected so that this is broadly consistent with the percentage of female-directed films submitted to the official selection. Over the last 5 years on average, 26% of feature films submitted to the Festival were directed by women, and 27% of feature films selected for the Festival were directed by women.

PARITY STATISTICS 2019-2023

Some recent benchmarks

2022

Eric PIERMONT / AFP © Iris Knobloch - Présidente du Festival de Cannes

Nomination of Iris Knobloch, first woman to become President of the Festival de Cannes.

2021

Cristophe Simon / AFP © Tang Yi, Palme d'or

Women directors distinguished themselves in a historic manner at the awards by taking home the four most prestigious prizes from the different competitions: the French director Julia Ducournau won the Palme d’or for Titane, the Hong Kong director won the Short Film Palme d’or for Tian Xia Wu Ya (All the Crows in the World), the Croatian director Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic won the Caméra d’or for her debut film Murina and the Russian director Kira Kovalenko took home the Un Certain Regard Prize for Razzhimaya Kulaki (Unclenching the Fists).

2021

The Marché du Film proposed a collection of programmes under the “impACT” banner, the goal of which is to give rise to conversations and debates on the questions of inclusiveness, diversity, responsibility and sustainability in the film industry. The goal is to supply professionals with the necessary knowledge and tools to work towards multifaceted and pluralistic filmmaking, one whose content is meant for all participants.

2020

Spike Lee - President of the Feature Films Jury © Pascal Le Segretain / Getty Images

Spike Lee’s statement: “I’m honoured to be the first person from the African diaspora (USA) to be president of the Jury of Cannes and of a major festival.”

2020

Parity is ensured among the Festival’s selection committee, which now has 5 women and 4 men.

2018

In May 2018, on the occasion of the launching of the 50/50 charter for parity and diversity in cinema, a climbing of the steps by 82 women was symbolically organised with a powerful speech from Agnès Varda, Honorary Palme d’or winner in 2015, and Cate Blanchett, president of the Jury that year.

2018