The good news: Telefilm Canada’s goal of closing its movies’ off-screen gender gap by 2020 has resulted in tangible change. The bad news: the gap is still stubbornly wide on Telefilm’s big budget projects. As Screen Daily reports, a new study from Canada’s largest film financier found women are still significantly underrepresented behind the scenes on its films of CAD $2.5m or more.

Of the 124 films Telefilm had in production from April 1, 2017 to March 31, 2018, 44 percent had a female director, 48 percent had female producers, and 46 percent had female screenwriters. While this isn’t complete parity, it’s still extremely impressive and praiseworthy.

However, on films with CAD $2.5m budgets or higher, the number of women falls dramatically. Twenty-nine percent of the movies had a woman director, 44 percent women producers, and 32 percent women screenwriters.

Women tended to fare better on documentaries — where budgets are usually smaller — and in the micro-budget Talent To Watch program. They comprised 63 percent of doc directors, 75 percent of screenwriters, and 44 percent of producers. Fifty-nine percent of Talent To Watch directors and producers were female, as were 65 percent of screenwriters.

Credit: Telefilm Canada

The study also noted that the percentage of dollars invested in projects with a woman in a key production role decreased as budgets increased. On films of CAD $2.5m or more, the percentage of dollars invested in women-produced fare was 31. Women-directed films received 18 percent and women-written 21 percent. However, the numbers rose sharply on films below the CAD $2.5m line: 48 percent of investment dollars were allotted to women-produced films, 39 percent to women-directed, and 43 percent to women-written.

Credit: Telefilm Canada

“These results are encouraging and positive change is happening, however, the greatest challenge lies with bigger-budget films, where there is a significant gap” said Telefilm Canada acting executive director Jean-Claude Mahé. “We need the industry’s collaboration to increase the number of projects led by women in this budget realm.”

He continued, “That’s why, last year we allocated additional funds for women-driven projects in development, increased our promotional efforts, and we are now reviewing new incentives aimed at ensuring that more women-led projects budgeted at over $2.5 million enter the pipeline this year.”

In fall 2016 Telefilm Canada announced that, by 2020, half of its funding would go to films directed or written by women. Several other Canadian organizations have adopted similar measures to ensure gender equality: the National Film Board promised to reach parity in key creative roles for animation, interactive, and documentary projects by 2020, and half the scripted episodes airing on public broadcaster CBC are helmed by women.