Berlin International Film Festival / Velvet Creative Office

The Berlin Film Festival has released its comprehensive Gender Evaluation report showing the gender ratios for films in this year’s program among other key statistics.

The in-depth report (48 pages in total) highlights the festival’s values on transparency and gender distribution, which goes back to its first annual analysis of the “participation of female directors in the Berlinale programme” starting in 2004.

For 2019, the festival’s survey outlines its analysis of 265 films in the program and concludes that:

• 98 films are made entirely by female directors (37%).
• 146 films are made primarily or entirely by male directors (55.1%).
• Only 9 films had director teams with an equal gender ratio (3.4%).

Other films submitted either had no information regarding gender that the festival could analyze, and 1 film was without a director.

However, of the films analyzed, there are 17 in total vying for the Golden and Silver Bears this year. The ratio of films directed by women is 41.2%.

The survey goes further to show the proportion of men and women on the basis of films that were registered. These figures indicate the count of individuals involved “in the realisation” of films rather than the total figure (therefore when calculating individuals the numbers are higher than the submitted films).

In total there were:

• 191 female directors (45%).
• 224 male directors (52%).
• 13 individuals not classified as men or women (3%).

This year’s Berlinale commences on February 7th and will run for 10 days concluding on Sunday February 17th.

Do you think this year’s selection is more diverse than previous years? Are you going to attend the Berlin Film Festival this February? Share your opinion with us on Twitter: @filminetwork