Ava DuVernay, Kristen Stewart, and 80 More Women Are Making a Powerful Protest at Cannes
Ava DuVernay, Kristen Stewart, Jane Fonda, Marion Cotillard, and Salma Hayek are among the 82 women planning a powerful protest gesture tonight at the Cannes Film Festival, in an effort to highlight how difficult it is for women to climb the professional ladder in the film industry. According to Variety, the group will walk up the steps leading to the festival's Théâtre Debussy, pause midway, and silently face the central Palais building. Actress Cate Blanchett, who is this year's Competition Jury president, and Belgian film director Agnès Varda will then read a joint statement.
The number of women participating—82—is an important detail. It represents how only 82 films directed by women have been selected for the Cannes competition, compared to a whopping 1,645 films directed by men. The dramatic gesture was organized by 5050×2020, a French equality movement, and is scheduled to take place just before the premiere of Girls of the Sun, a film by Eva Husson. Husson is the only French woman director in the competition this year, and she told Vanity Fair that it's critical to initiate conversations around gender inequality in film.
"It’s high time. It’s healthy. It’s scary. It’s exploding in the face of a lot of people," she said. "The patriarchy has not seen it coming so they feel really threatened by it. It’s a huge paradigm shift."
The festival has been reckoning with ways to address issues of sexual assault, particularly because Harvey Weinstein allegedly assaulted or harassed multiple women during the festival in the past. As a response to the Weinstein allegations, Cannes worked with the French government to launch a hotline where women could report sexual assault or harassment at the event.
But many people have pointed out that Cannes still needs to figure out its own gender gap issues. This year, only three of the 21 directors competing for the prestigious Palme d'Or prize are women. The festival also faced backlash for including a film by Lars von Trier, the Danish director who had been banned from the festival for seven years after making anti-Semitic remarks and whose production company has been accused of sexual harassment.
After Saturday night's dramatic statement, women will continue staging acts to call attention to gender disparity. On Monday, Vanity Fair also reports that women are planning to ask members of the Directors’ Fortnight and Cannes Critics’ Week panel to sign a pledge that calls for more inclusion and diversity.
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