Cinema: Women at the Cannes Film Festival

Déjà vu all over again? One of the criticisms often levelled at the Cannes Film Festival is that it often features the same filmmakers, while the female directors selected for the festival are few and far between.

The 2024 edition, which runs from May 14 to 25, is not exactly an exception. Of the twenty-two feature films in competition, only four have been directed by women: "All We Imagine As Light", by India's Payal Kapadia, "Bird" by Britain's Andrea Arnold, "Diamant Brut" by France's Agathe Riedinger, and "The Substance" by Coralie Fargeat, also from France. Films directed by women therefore account for just 18.2% of the festival's official selection this year; less than last year, when six of the nineteen films in the competition were directed by women.

As shown in our chart, which looks back at the presence of women at the Cannes Film Festival from 1946 to 2024, it wasn't until the early 2000s that women were guaranteed at least four of the nine places on the jury. Since then, parity has been generally respected among jurors, but this is still far from being the case when it comes to selected filmmakers. Despite recent progress, the presence of female directors in the official selection has remained a minority: only 12% of films presented at the festival between 2003 and 2023.

As for the number of women directors to have left Cannes with a Palme d'Or, they can still be counted on one hand: two in seven decades. In 2021, France's Julia Ducournau received the prestigious award for her second feature "Titane", five years after her first feature, "Grave", won the Prix FIPRESCI at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival. New Zealander Jane Campion was the first woman to win the Palme d'Or in 1993 for her film "The Piano Lesson", a prize she tied with Chinese director Chen Kaige for "Farewell My Concubine".