For the ninth edition of Les Arcs European Film Festival, from the 16th to the 23rd of December 2017, the “Lab Femmes de cinema” has updated the study.

The study analyses the period 2012-2016 (inclusive)

Click on the front page to download the complete PDF of the 2017 study

The quantitative study: what the numbers show

In Europe in 2016, one out of five films was directed by a woman (20,4%) while they were 19,4% in 2015. Thus, we notice an admittedly soft but general improvement since last year in terms of the proportion of women directed films.

 On the 2012-2016 period, the three closest-to-parity countries were Sweden (30%), Norway (29%) and Netherlands (27,8%). The three farthest-to-parity countries were Italy (10%), Turkey (10,5%) and the United Kingdom (11,9%).

 Regarding all the released films of the 2012-2016 period, the proportion of women filmmakers among first and second generation films (21,3%) is higher than the proportion of women filmmakers among third and more generation films (15,8%). Thus, the difference of proportion reaches 5,5 points on European average.

The qualitative study

Quota policies are the most efficient in terms of results. In Sweden, after the implementation of this type of policy, the proportion of women filmmakers went from 16,7% in 2012 to 38% in 2016.

 “Hierarchization” policies, that evaluate the requests for grants according to the number of women involved in the project, and which are less controversial than quotas, are more and more used, in particular in Northern, Western and Southern European countries.

 In 2016 and 2017, an awakening on the topic of gender equality in cinema has spread to several countries. Denmark, Italy and the UK have notably implemented active politics about the situation.