Politics and the underrepresentation of women at the world’s major film festivals became the breakout topic of conversation at this year’s Venice jury press conference, with Maggie Gyllenhaal stating that she believes “there’s a systemic problem” behind the fact that the world’s oldest cinema showcase has just two titles directed by women in its main competition this year.
“It’s much harder for women to get their films financed,” said Gyllenhaal, the festival’s competition jury president this year, when asked about the dearth of women in Venice’s selection. “Also, could it be possible that the things that women, having had a different experience of being alive in the world, want to make movies about are not always deemed high art?”
“I really am walking in with a question as to why there are so few women in the main competition,” she later added.
This year’s competition has drawn scrutiny for its stark gender imbalance. Just one of the original list of 20 Golden Lion contenders — May el-Toukhy’s Woman Unknown — is directed by a woman, down from six female-directed competition titles last year. The festival later added to the competition with the Gaza documentary NAZA, co-directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, bringing the total to two. Venice artistic director Alberto Barbera acknowledged the disparity when announcing the lineup, calling it a recent low for the festival.
But Gyllenhaal also tipped her hat to Venice for selecting her as the event’s jury chief this year. “Alberto and Julia asking me to be the head of the main jury competition — after the two films in particular that I have made — is a very important thing to consider, too,” she said.
Gyllenhaal’s jury includes Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania, whose acclaimed Palestinian drama The Voice of Hind Rajab won last year’s Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize; Oscar-winning composer Daniel Blumberg; film scholar Francesco Casetti; French director Xavier Giannoli; Afghan filmmaker Shahrbanoo Sadat; and Hong Kong filmmaking legend Johnnie To.
Together they will select the Golden Lion winner and Venice’s other main competition prizes from a field that includes Danny Boyle’s Rupert Murdoch drama Ink, Robert Pattinson thriller Primetime, Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine, Korean auteur Lee Chang-dong’s much-anticipated return Possible Love and NAZA, among others.
Gyllenhaal has a significant history with Venice. Her 2021 feature directing debut, The Lost Daughter, premiered in competition on the Lido and earned her the festival’s best screenplay prize before going on to receive three Oscar nominations. She also has a project in Venice this year. Her Marilyn Monroe-inspired advertorial short Flesh Impact, starring Dakota Johnson, Ellen Burstyn and Peter Sarsgaard, will screen out of competition later in the event.
The press conference proceeded after some confusion during the weekend over whether the jury’s meeting with the media — a staple of all major film festivals — would take place at all. Venice organizers stated on Saturday that the jury presser might be scrapped due to a “scheduling conflict” involving a jury member; but by Sunday, the festival said a solution had been found, and the briefing would be held as usual.
The brief interregnum stirred industry speculation about the role politics might play at the 83rd edition, as various global conflicts — the war in Gaza, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the U.S.-Iran war — loom in the background of the world’s oldest film festival. Festival chief Barbera has described this year’s lineup as the “most political” of recent years.
Venice’s blue-chip festival peers, meanwhile, showed earlier this year the two directions a major cultural event might take amid this globally fraught moment. In February, the Berlin festival became engulfed by political discord and social media point-scoring after jury president Wim Wenders told reporters during the opening press conference that filmmakers “have to stay out of politics.” But the Cannes Film Festival later went ahead in May with plenty of carefully calibrated political statements from filmmakers but notably less acrimony.
Gyllenhaal was asked near the outset of the Venice press conference whether she feels filmmakers have a responsibility to be political amid the world’s current challenges.
“We could say, ‘How are we possibly here talking about movies right now, when the world is in a state of emergency?’” she replied. “To me, the answer has something to do with empathy. I think that film allows an opening into an opportunity to find empathy inside of ourselves. Personally, I don’t believe that there is any subject or any filmmaker that shouldn’t be heard. I think we can challenge ourselves to hear stories about the most corrupt, the most perverse people, because it opens up the opportunity to find empathy for those people — and even to look at the ways in which we might have a little bad guy inside us, a little perversity inside us, a little corruption inside us, fight it as we might.”
She added: “I think that if movies really are an honest look into other people’s experience, then they are fundamentally, unavoidably political, as well as a lot of other things.”
The 83rd edition of the Venice Film Festival officially opens Wednesday evening on the Lido with a ceremony that will fete George Clooney with a Golden Lion for lifetime achievement and conclude with the world premiere of Boyle’s Ink, starring Jack O’Connell, Guy Pearce, and Claire Foy. The festival concludes with an awards ceremony on Sept. 12.
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