Female Directors at Cannes Can’t Break the Auteur Glass Ceiling
Cate Blanchett, standing with other women in the industry, read a statement demanding gender parity at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival.
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In 2018, Ava DuVernay, Cate Blanchett, Agnès Varda, Kristen Stewart and over 80 other female filmmakers stood on the steps of the Palais at the Cannes Film Festival to protest gender inequality in the global film industry. That year, only three films in the festival’s prestigious competition section were directed by women.
Thierry Frémaux then signed a pledge from Le Collectif 50/50, the French association dedicated to promoting sexual and gender diversity in the film industry. The pledge outlined steps the festival would take to move toward greater inclusion of women in its lineup, including generating gendered statistics for its annual program, while working toward achieving gender equity in its governing bodies and programming committees.
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Some eight years later, while gains have been made, this year’s competition section includes five female directors, down from last year’s seven (the record for the most women directors ever in the main competition section). At the 2026 festival’s opening press conference on May 12, Cannes boss Frémaux defensively offered: “Films are chosen for their quality, not the gender of their directors.”
When asked about its efforts to reach parity in the festival’s main competition, a spokesperson for the fest who was reached for comment by THR said: “The Cannes Film Festival has been committed to gender parity for several years across all areas directly under its responsibility.”
“The word quota is scaring everybody,” says Fanny de Casimacker, general delegate at Le Collectif 50/50. “People in the industry are always giving responsibility to someone else. We really think that every single step of the film industry has a big responsibility.”
Cannes provided THR with an array of data, such as the fact that the juries have been gender balanced since 2011, their presidents since 2013, and the official selection committee is a team currently composed of five women and four men. On top of that, the permanent staff organizing the fest and the Marché du Film is now over 50 percent female, including in leadership positions.
The percentage of women — out of the total number of directors — who have feature films in the official selection this year (competition, Un Certain Regard, out of competition, Midnight Screening, Special Screening and Cannes Première) is at 34 percent, up 8 percent from 2025. But this number dwindles to just 22 percent in the festival’s marquee competition program, which features films that most often go on to win awards and land top distribution deals.
“We’re having a really hard time breaking through the auteur glass ceiling. There is still the perception that auteurs are men,” says Women in Film CEO Kirsten Schaffer, who notes there are a handful of exceptions, like Chloé Zhao and Jane Campion. At Cannes, a festival that bills itself as the global home of auteurs, female directors can face even more biases.
Faith Elizabeth, founder of U.K.-based female empowerment organization Yes She Cannes, a Croisette fixture since 2018, says the competition section is where the crux of the issue lies. “Competition is considered in a much higher regard in terms of the selection, because they’re competing for the Palme d’Or,” she tells THR. Yes She Cannes holds events aimed at championing female filmmakers and producers, and arranges tangible support systems for those entering the industry.
The 2026 short film competition is close to parity, with four of the 10 films directed by women, while 44 percent of the special screenings are directed by women. Still, Elizabeth questions, “Are [women] going into different categories that are not as prestigious? Although overall, it looks good, are we just upping the numbers by putting more women in smaller selections?”
This year’s Un Certain Regard section has the highest percentage of women directors, with 10 out of the 19 films directed by women. (Un Certain Regard is also opening with the latest film from director Jane Schoenbrun, who is nonbinary.) “What Un Certain Regard shows us is that it is possib