Female directors in European cinema - Key figures published by the European Audiovisual Observatory

European Audiovisual Observatory has published a new report on gender of directors of European films.

The report aims at helping to quantify the gender imbalance among film directors in Europe. It first provides a general overview of the gender of directors of European films. Then, it looks at the volume and share of films by gender of director, including information on film genres.

These are the key insights from the report:

Female directors represent 21% of all directors of European films produced between 2003 and 2017. Women tend to direct fewer feature films compared to their male counterparts: 49% of all women directors included in our sample only directed one single feature since 2003.
Overall, only 17% of European feature films were directed by women between 2003 and 2017.
The share of films by female directors in Europe is growing slowly, reaching 19% in 2017.
The prevalence of female directors is higher in documentary than in fiction and animation.

The analysis draws on data from the European Audiovisual Observatory's LUMIERE database, which collates annual admissions to theatrically released films from a variety of sources, including national film agencies.
The study sample comprises a total of 21.054 European feature films produced between 2003 and 2017 and theatrically released between 2003 and 2018.

Click here to read the full report.