Six Italian movie our bodies have hit out on the lack of girls within the Venice Movie Competition’s major movie competitors this 12 months in an open letter.
The tribune, printed in Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper over the weekend, follows within the wake of the competition’s unveiling of the 2026 Official Choice, wherein only one movie by a feminine director — Might-el Toukhy’s Girl Unknown — made it into the 21-title major Competitors.
The letter signed by 100autori, Anac, Air3, Doc/it in addition to the Italian branches of the European Ladies’s Audiovisual Community and Ladies in Movie Tv & Media, targeted on the Italian-selected titles.
It famous that Italy was represented within the prestigious Competitors and Out of Competitors sidebars by seven male administrators however that none of their countrywomen had made the lower.
“It’s a one-dimensional, male-dominated choice,” learn the letter.
It added that Alina Marazzi’s The Woman with the Leica, about real-life German-Jewish warfare photographer Gerda Taro, and Anna Foglietta’s empty-nester couple drama Un Storia, which can each premiere within the Orizzonti sidebar, supplied hope of a extra balanced reflection of “humanity.” “We maintain them shut with a breath of affection, alongside the opposite feminine administrators scattered all through the competition, and alongside the a whole bunch of younger girls throughout each self-discipline in movie faculties, girls who usually outshine their male friends when it comes to numbers, expertise, vitality, urgency, and energy,” learn the letter. “Not one of the choice committees at these faculties, nonetheless, type all-female lessons; as a substitute, and rightly so, they search a measure of human stability.”
It’s not the primary time that the Venice Movie Competition has been in scorching water over the shortage of girls in competitors.
There was outcry in 2018 after only one lady landed a spot in competitors, prompting that 12 months’s jury president Guillermo del Toro to referred to as on the competition to goal for a 50-50 gender cut up by 2020 in the primary competitors. The competition additionally signed “50/50 by 2020” competition pledge that very same 12 months, committing to extra transparency and gender equality within the choice course of.
In current editions, Venice gave the impression to be shifting in that course. There have been Golden Lions for Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland (2020), Audrey Diwan’s Taking place (2021) and Laura Poitras’ All of the Magnificence and the Bloodshed (2022), whereas 2025 noticed six high-profile female-directed photos in competitors led by Kaouther Ben Hania’s The Voice of Hind Rajab and Mona Fastvold’s The Testomony of Ann Lee.
Venice Movie Competition head Alberto Barbera informed Deadline in an interview within the wake of Thursday’s announcement that he and his choice group had scouted exhausting for female-directed movies, however that each the numbers and high quality had decreased.
“The share of fiction movies submitted by girls this 12 months was 24% in opposition to 30% final 12 months. It’s a countertrend in comparison with current years wherein the variety of female-directed movies grew,” he mentioned.
“This 12 months it’s decreased. I don’t know why. It’s inexplicable as a result of the pursuit of gender equality appeared like an unstoppable development. As an alternative, the variety of movies has decreased, and sadly, the standard of the movies has additionally decreased. In all probability, the budgets obtainable for movies have decreased.
The open letter addressed the thorny query of the subjectivity of judgments of high quality.
“High quality is just not some divine, impartial, or goal class hovering above historical past; we all know full properly that it’s a idea that shifts and evolves. Artwork is a battlefield of our bodies, tears, blood, and energy — not some pure empyrean realm the place the angels of high quality flutter about, devoid of gender,” it learn.
“Each choice is the product of a particular perspective, tradition, and creativeness, in addition to preferences, sensibilities, limitations, errors, and a definite editorial stance. To assume that high quality might be divorced from all that is to disregard how the cultural canon is constructed and the place artwork originates,” it learn.
“Exactly for that reason, the standards we use to judge artwork have to be consistently referred to as into query. When, 12 months after 12 months, the result’s such an unbalanced illustration, we can’t merely conclude that feminine administrators ‘aren’t ok.’ We should ask ourselves whether or not the instruments we use to view cinema are nonetheless suited to the current day.” The signatories appealed to the competition to double down on its 2018 pledge to attain parity by 2020, even when the deadline has lengthy since expired. “Eight years have handed since that signing — six because the goal date we set for ourselves — a time after we acknowledged that cultural change doesn’t occur spontaneously however requires consciousness and duty. It’s to this consciousness and duty that we now enchantment… For this male-dominated world is a daunting place, and this competition, which views the realities of that world by means of an virtually completely male lens, is, in its personal method, scary too.”
