By Agnès HUBERT
There is no denying that, over the past few years, the Cannes Film Festival has established itself as a platform for highlighting women’s struggles within the film industry and for repeatedly calling on institutions and industry stakeholders to take meaningful action toward lasting change.
This was reflected in the events and discussions organized by initiatives such as MeToo Cinema and the 50/50 Collective. It was also evident in this 79th edition through the screening of films directly addressing women’s rights and gender-related issues: The Marie-Claire Affair, the powerful film by Lauriane Escaffre and Yvo Muller about the Bobigny trial led by Gisèle Halimi in 1973; films portraying women resisting social and gender-based violence, such as La Más Dulce by Laila Marrakchi, about Moroccan women who travel to Spain to pick strawberries, and Mémoire de fille by Judith Godrèche, based on Annie Ernaux’s work and exploring the trauma of a young girl’s sexual awakening; and films examining the social pressures surrounding motherhood, such as Ton Animal Maternel by Valentine Maurel.
These films presented strong and complex female characters. My personal Palme d’Or would go to Clarissa, the Nigerian film by Ari and Shuko Essini featuring the outstanding Clarissa Vaughan, which revisits themes from Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway within Lagos’s upper-class society. Africa was particularly well represented this year, notably through Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo’s Ben’Imana, which highlights the courage of women and mothers involved in Rwanda’s reconciliation process. Equally significant were films portraying men through more nuanced and non-toxic forms of masculinity, with Lukas Dhont’s delicate Coward serving as the finest example. Together, these works challenge stereotypes and open up new spaces of freedom and representation.
Women directors also dominated several of the festival’s parallel sections. At the Directors’ Fortnight, 100% of the awards went to female filmmakers: Je vois des immeubles tomber comme la foudre by Clio Barnard, L’Espèce explosive by Sarah Arnold, and Shana by Lila Pinell. The prestigious Carrosse d’Or was awarded to Claire Simon in recognition of her career as a director. Her film Writing Life: Annie Ernaux Through the Eyes of High School Students will be screened at Bozar on June 3 and 7.
At Critics’ Week, four of the five prizes were awarded to women directors: Blerta Basholli and Nicole Borgeat for DUA, Zou Jing for A Girl Unknown, Aina Clotet for Viva, and Marina Atlan for La Gravida. In the Un Certain Regard section, two of the five winning films were directed by women: Sandra Wollner’s Everytime, while the Best Actress Award was jointly awarded to the three actresses of Siempre Soy Tu Animal Materna, mentioned above. Finally, the Caméra d’Or went to the first Rwandan film ever to receive an award at Cannes: Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo’s Ben’Imana.
Another positive development concerns institutional measures aimed at promoting gender parity throughout the film industry. The French Minister of Culture, Catherine Pégard, noting that the proportion of women directors has remained stagnant for a decade despite bonus incentives for productions meeting gender-equality targets, announced that the CNC (National Centre for Cinema and the Moving Image) will introduce financial penalties for productions that fail to include sufficient numbers of women across key production positions.
The measure will be implemented gradually between January 1, 2027 and 2030, with the objective of achieving 40% female representation in senior production roles. Beginning in 2027, productions employing fewer than three women across fifteen designated leadership positions will face a penalty. The threshold will increase to four women in 2028, five in 2029, and so on. These rules will apply to all films accredited by the CNC, regardless of nationality. Conversely, productions meeting the 40% target will benefit from financial bonuses.
In addition, a legislative proposal aimed at combating sexist and sexual violence within the cultural sector is expected to be voted on by the French Parliament in the near future. The bill would translate into law the nineteen recommendations made by the parliamentary commission of inquiry established in 2025 to investigate gender-based and sexual violence in the film industry.
Words, Words, Words…
Despite these advances, despite the committed speeches delivered during the festival’s opening and closing ceremonies by Eye Haïdara, Isabelle Huppert, Barbra Streisand and Demi Moore, and despite an apparently broad consensus on the issue—symbolized by the choice of Thelma & Louise as the official poster of this 79th edition—the reality remains more complex.
Dalida’s famous refrain, Paroles, paroles (“Words, words”), resonates throughout discussions about women’s place at Cannes. In the Official Competition, the numbers remain disappointing: only five films directed by women out of twenty-three selections, and only one award recipient. This actually represents a regression compared to 2025, when seven women-directed films were selected.
Across all festival sections combined, films directed by women accounted for only 30% of the total selection—below the 33% reached in 2023 and significantly behind other major festivals such as the Berlin International Film Festival, which has achieved parity.
This reflects a continuing structural problem: fewer films directed by women are submitted to selection committees because women still face greater obstacles in securing financing and generally work with smaller budgets. As Gaëtan Bruel, President of the CNC, noted:
“The average budget of films directed by women is 44% lower than that of films directed by men, and women direct fewer than one quarter of the films released in theaters.”
It also means that broader cultural change remains slow. It has become increasingly evident that film themes are strongly influenced by the gender balance among those occupying decision-making roles in production.
This year, this tendency was particularly visible given the prominence of war-related narratives. Among the competition films were Emmanuel Marre’s Notre Salut, examining the role of Vichy civil servants in collaboration with Nazi Germany; László Nemes’s Moulin, depicting Jean Moulin’s arrest and torture by Klaus Barbie; and Lukas Dhont’s Coward, focusing on the psychological and moral consequences of war. Other notable entries included Pavel Pawlikowski’s Fatherland, portraying Nobel Prize winner Thomas Mann’s return to devastated Germany in 1949; Jarvis’s moving Bola Negra, set against the backdrop of Francoist Spain and the moral compromises imposed by dictatorship; and Andrey Zvyagintsev’s The Minotaur, which won the festival’s Grand Prix for its tragicomic portrayal of a family serving as a metaphor for contemporary Russia. During the award ceremony, Zvyagintsev publicly called on Vladimir Putin to “put an end to this carnage—the whole world is waiting for it.”
Outside the competition, audiences also saw The Battle of De Gaulle: The Iron Age by Antonin Baudry, Atonement by Reed Van Dyk, exploring the painful aftermath of the Iraq War for both an Iraqi family and a Marine implicated in killings, and Daniel Auteuil’s The Third Night, recounting the rescue of 108 Jewish children from the Vénissieux camp before the Nazi occupation extended into the so-called Free Zone.
In contrast, films portraying difficult everyday realities and women engaged in ordinary acts of resistance were overwhelmingly directed by women. Examples include Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet’s The Life of a Woman, Marie Kreutzer’s Gentle Monster, which deals with the trauma of discovering that one’s child’s father is a pedophile, and Jeanne Herry’s Garance, in which Adèle Exarchopoulos portrays an alcoholic actress struggling to overcome her addiction.
This overview would not be complete without mentioning Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s deeply moving Suddenly—the director of Drive My Car once again delivering a profoundly humanistic and tender work, elevated by the remarkable performances of Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto. Finally, one can only hope that the message of Fjord, the Palme d’Or winner directed by Cristian Mungiu, denouncing fanaticism and all forms of exclusion—whether civil or religious—will be heard.
Conclusion
Has this year’s festival quietly advanced the portrayal of women as active agents of their own destinies while pushing back against the outdated stereotype of women as decorative accessories? To a significant extent, yes.
The films presented addressed, both subtly and explicitly, issues of coercion, domination, and the many forms of violence inflicted upon women, sexual minorities, and children. These questions extend far beyond cinema itself, because what remains after the final credits roll are the images and narratives that shape our understanding of ourselves and others—whether they inspire shame or pride.
The discussions surrounding the festival also helped expose the rise of masculinist, racist, and sexist ideologies promoted around the world by extremist political and religious movements. This reflects an important symbolic awakening within creative communities.
That said, it was revealing that the controversy surrounding Canal+’s announced exclusion of certain artists led to the emergence of two opposing camps: on one side, artists—directors, actors, and screenwriters; on the other, financial interests, including investors and industry organizations.
The tension between artistic freedom and economic power remains one of the defining challenges facing contemporary cinema.