Cinema: the role of women directors remains a minority but is growing, according to the CNC

Europe 1 with AFP 15:59 pm, March 30, 2023

The place of women directors in cinema remains very minority in France, but continues to grow and has reached for the first time the threshold of a third of films in 2022, according to figures published Wednesday by the CNC. In total, 69 films of French initiative were shot by female directors last year, a total of 33.2% of the films made, according to the Observatory of Film Production published Wednesday by the National Center for Cinematography and Moving Image.

"Long-term feminization"

It is a "historical high" that testifies to a "long-term feminization", according to the CNC. The 30% threshold was crossed for the first time in 2021. In 2018, less than a quarter (23.6%) of films were still directed by women. "The increase in the share of films directed by women (...) is mainly felt on fiction films," says the CNC, with 34% of films directed by women against 28% in 2021.

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Another sign of the rebalancing at work, the average budget of films directed by men or women is clearly reduced, even if most major projects continue to elude them: in 2022 there were three films with more than 10 million euros directed by women.

"These are encouraging figures, but the road is still long," Quentin Deleau Latournerie, of the 50/50 collective, which specializes in the issue of parity in cinema, told AFP. Animation, in particular, remains very masculine, and male directors are more likely to be able to finance a fourth or fifth film than women, he points out for example.