Venice female directors row puts Alberto Barbera on the spot

Venice female directors are set to be a flashpoint at this year’s film festival after Italian film organizations criticized artistic director Alberto Barbera over a competition lineup with only one woman-directed film among 20 titles, according to Variety.

The criticism centers on the Golden Lion race, where Danish-Egyptian filmmaker May El-Toukhy’s drama “Woman Unknown” is the sole film directed by a woman. Variety reported that the figure marks a steep fall from last year, when six of 21 competition films, roughly 29%, were directed by women.

Several Italian film organizations, including Women in Film Television and Media Italia, challenged the selection in an appeal published Monday in Italian newspaper La Repubblica and shared on social media. Referring to the Italian films on Venice’s main stage, the groups said that seven male directors represent Italian cinema in and out of competition, calling it “a one-dimensional selection: entirely male.”

Why are groups criticizing Venice over female directors?

The groups argue that repeated imbalances in festival selections should prompt scrutiny of how artistic quality is judged. In their appeal, they said quality is not a fixed, neutral measure above history, but a concept shaped by culture, power and perspective.

The appeal said that when festival lineups are heavily unbalanced year after year, “we cannot simply conclude that women directors ‘are not good enough.’” The signatories urged the festival world to question whether its tools for judging cinema still suit the present.

The organizations behind the statement include Italian film directors’ associations ANAC and 100autori, the Italian directors’ guild Air3, the European Women’s Audiovisual network and Italian documentary directors’ organization Doc/it, according to Variety. ANAC and 100autori are also behind the Venice Days sidebar.

What has Alberto Barbera said?

Barbera rejected the idea that Venice is biased against women directors in an interview with Variety after the lineup was announced. He said Venice has awarded top prizes to more female directors than Cannes, Berlin and other festivals since 2000.

Variety noted that three women have won the Golden Lion in the past five years: Chloé Zhao for “Nomadland” in 2020, Audrey Diwan for “Happening” and Laura Poitras for “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” in 2022. Last year, Italian filmmaker Maura Delpero won the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize for “Vermiglio.”

Barbera also pointed to the three women chairing this year’s main juries: Maggie Gyllenhaal for the competition jury, Valérie Donzelli for the Horizons jury and Carolina Cavalli for the Luigi De Laurentiis Venice Award for a debut film.

He told Variety that the festival had hoped to find more women-directed films for competition, but fewer were submitted. According to Barbera, women-directed fiction films made up 24% of submissions this year, down from 30% last year.

Barbera said the festival found the submitted women-directed films to be of lower quality and could not include more in competition. He added that Venice opposes selecting films by gender and uses quality as its “only rigid criterion.”

How do the other Venice sections compare?

The Horizons section, which focuses on emerging voices and edgier work, includes eight women-directed films among 19 titles, about 42%, according to Variety.

Venice Days, curated by Gaia Furrer, has 14 films directed by women out of 25 titles in its main selection. Its lineup opens with Hungarian filmmaker Lili Horvát’s English-language debut “My Notes on Mars,” starring Mackenzie Davis and Rupert Friend.

Critics’ Week, which showcases first features from around the world, includes two women directors among seven competition features. The Venice Film Festival is scheduled to run Sept. 2-12.

This story draws on original reporting from Variety.