Last month Thierry Frémaux sparked international headlines when he signed a pledge for gender parity at Cannes Film Festival. The head of the fest, along with with his colleagues at the Directors’ Fortnight and Critics’ Week, agreed to compile statistics according to gender, including the number of films submitted; identify the members of selection committees and programmers; and make a commitment schedule to achieve parity on their board. The head of the Annecy International Animation Film Festival is following in their footsteps. Patrick Eveno has also “signed a pledge to promote gender equality and transparency at the festival as well as on the planning organization’s staff,” Variety confirms.
The real trailblazers here aren’t Frémaux or Eveno, but the forces behind the pledge, women’s group Le Deuxième Regard and 5050×2020, a French movement championing gender parity and diversity that launched in the wake of Harvey Weinstein’s downfall.
Eveno pledged to provide “a genre-based breakdown of regular statistics, including the number of films that have been submitted by women; be transparent about the members of the selection and programming committees in order to prevent any doubt about a lack of diversity or parity; set up a timetable of goals to ensure an even gender ratio within the respective terms,” according to the source.
Of the 35 permanent staffers CITIA, the org behind the fest, employs, 21 of 35 are women, and and six out of the 12 company’s divisions are headed by female execs.
“In keeping with our commitment, we wanted to confirm once again our wish to contribute to achieving parity within our institution in all aspects of the events that we organize and the projects that we lead,” said Eveno, who emphasized that CITIA could become an “ally and even an activist in the movement for parity.”
The source notes that just 20 percent of the films in the fest’s official selection this year are women-directed, while “at the same time, women represent more than half of all student badge-holders at this year’s festival.”
“Out of the 740 films that have received awards at Annecy since 1960, only 20 percent were films directed or co-directed by women,” acknowledged Mickaël Marin, the managing director of CITIA and head of Mifa, its affiliated market. “The world has changed and evolved, and we want to take part in these changes.”
The fest organized the Women in Animation World Summit, which took place June 11.
There are plans to get festivals across the globe to sign the pledge. This is a worldwide movement with far-reaching consequences — if the fests are true to their words and stick to the pledge, we could be seeing major changes in how fests are programmed. The pledge should be treated as a binding commitment, and we’re hopeful fests won’t sign as a hollow gesture of support for equality. The fests that sign the pledge will be reviewed next year to see whether they are in fact enacting changes and making progress.
