European cinema is a man’s world, says report
- According to the European Audiovisual Observatory, only 16.3% of European films were directed by women between 2003 and 2012
The European Audiovisual Observatory’s latest pan-European report, “Female directors in European film productions”, used the institution’s Lumiere database to discover that only 16.3% of the European films produced between 2003 and 2012 were directed by female filmmakers. As for the admissions these films took, they accounted only for 8.9% of the total number of European tickets.
The Observatory analysed the 9,072 European films released during the first decade of the millennium, which sold 3.2 billion tickets across the continent. The report also revealed that films directed by male directors recorded on average twice the number of admissions recorded by films directed by female filmmakers.
The number of female-directed movies increased over the ten years, with a proportion of approximately 14% of films at the beginning of the period and more than 17% in 2012.
The Netherlands is the country most open to female directors, where their films represent a little more than 25% of the total number of domestic productions. Finland, Sweden, Austria, Norway and France follow with percentages of more than 20%. Denmark, Belgium and the Czech Republic also have percentages higher than the European average of 16.3%.
The report gives a list of the most successful films directed or co-directed by women directors. The leader is Beeban Kidron's Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2004), with 20.4 million admissions; this was followed by Slumdog Millionaire [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Danny Boyle
film profile], co-directed by Danny Boyle and Loveleen Tandan, with 17.7 million admissions, and Arthur Christmas [+see also:
trailer
film profile], co-directed by Barry Cook and Sarah Smith, with 6.9 million. France has three female directors in the top ten: Lisa Azuelos (LOL [+see also:
trailer
interview: Christa Théret
film profile]), Isabelle Mergault (You Are So Beautiful [+see also:
trailer
film profile]) and Anne Fontaine (Coco Before Chanel [+see also:
trailer
film profile]).
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