What Does a Post-‘Anatomy of a Fall’ Cannes Competition Lineup Look Like? Still Thin on Female Filmmakers

UPDATED ON APRIL 22, 2024: With the addition of two new films to this year’s competition section, both directed by men, this year’s competition slate now includes 21 films, only four of which are directed by women. That tallies to just 19 percent of this year’s competition titles being helmed by women.

Our original story from April 11, 2024 follows.

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Hot off last year’s record-breaking competition lineup — including seven films directed by women, plus an eventual Palme d’Or win for Justine Triet (only the third woman to win the festival’s top prize) — this year’s Cannes Film Festival has returned to old habits. The 77th edition will include (as of today’s announcement) just four films directed by women in the competition section, bringing representation down to 2021 levels (and returning the festival’s female-directed entries to a number that was only hit in 2011).

Among the competition titles announced today: Cannes regular Andrea Arnold will debut her “Bird,” Coralie Fargeat will follow up her horror debut “Revenge” with “The Substance,” documentarian Payal Kapadia has her narrative feature “All We Imagine as Light,” and Agathe Riedinger makes her debut with “Wild Diamond.”

With a current lineup of 19 competition titles, that means that just 21 percent of this year’s lineup includes films directed by women. However, during today’s early morning press conference, festival director Thierry Frémaux was clear that the competition titles are not complete as of yet, and he expects to announce three more in the coming days, bringing the total to 22. (Fun math: If all those new titles were directed by women, it would bring this year’s percentage of competition films to over 31 percent, which would still not meet last year’s high; don’t count on that happening anyway).

Last year’s record-breaking lineup included seven films out of 21 directed by women (over 33 percent of the lineup). Of those films, Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall” went on to win not only the Palme d’Or, but also the Oscar for Best Screenplay, while Kaouther Ben Hania picked up a nod in the Best Documentary category for “Four Daughters.”

In recent years, the festival has continued to make small gains in spreading the wealth in its starry competition section, after stalling out with just four films directed or co-directed by women in the section in 2019 and beyond. Programming more than four women just seemed impossible to the tony festival, even with other wins (including some literal ones) unfolding for female filmmakers elsewhere and at other festivals.

In 2022, the competition section of the festival included five films directed or co-directed by women for the first time ever, including new films from Claire Denis, Kelly Reichardt, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, and Charlotte Vandermeersch. Those picks also raised the percentage of total films directed or co-directed by women in competition to a then-festival high of 23.8 percent.

In 2021, the slightly delayed festival (which moved from May to July) hosted four films directed by women in the section out of a total of 24, which means just 16.6 percent of the section’s films were made by women, including new films from Ildikó Enyedi, Mia Hansen-Løve, Catherine Corsini, and Julia Ducournau, who went on to become only the second woman to win the Palme d’Or with her audacious “Titane.”

Cannes didn’t program four competition titles from women until 2011 (the year after that milestone, in 2012, no women made it into the section). Between 2016-2018, only three female filmmakers made it into competition each year; in 2019, the festival again notched four female directors in competition. (The festival was canceled in 2020, though it did announce which films would have been programmed, had the COVID pandemic not upended the world, though festival brass did not use the usual designations for those films, and there was no “competition section.”)

Notably, this year’s festival’s competition jury will at least be led by a female filmmaker: “Barbie” director and co-writer Greta Gerwig will head up the contingent of international cinema stars who will pick Cannes’ top honor. The rest of her jury will be announced in the coming days. Gerwig is the first female American filmmaker to hold the spot, and she’s only the second female director to lead the jury, following Jane Campion in 2014. Actress Olivia de Havilland was Cannes’ first female jury president, when she held the post in 1965.

In the Un Certain Regard section, six films directed by women made the cut in a section that so far includes 14 titles. They include Louise Courvoisier’s “Vingt Dieux,” Laetitia Dosch’s “Le Proces du Chien,” Ariane Labed’s “September Says,” Rungano Nyoni’s “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl,” Minh Quý Trương’s “Viet and Nam,” and Sandhya Suri’s “Santosh.” The section, generally viewed as the home for more forward-thinking and untraditional features, tends to program a number of films directed by women.

The Special Screenings section includes new films from Yolande Zauberman (“La Belle de Gaza”) and Claire Simon (“Apprendre”), while the Midnights lineup includes just one film directed by a woman (out of four), with Noémie Merlant’s “The Balconettes.” There are currently no films directed by women in the Cannes Premieres section. Other lineup announcements are expected in the coming days.

This year’s festival runs May 14 – May 25 in Cannes, France.

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