Only 11.6% of narrative feature film directors are women, according to a new research study, though female representation is higher in territories including Germany (18.7%), the UK (18.5%) and Australia (18.3%).
The study, authored by Dr Stacy L Smith, collated by the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative and released during this week’s Women in Film conference at the UK’s University of Oxford, covered more than 4,500 films from 11 countries that earned at least $1m at the global box office.
In the study, the countries with the lowest percentage of women directors were India (4.9%), Japan (4.7%) and the Republic of Korea (9.1%). Canada, France, Japan, the Republic of Korea and the UK all showed increases in representation over the past decade. In the UK, 32.3% of directors were women in 2024, a 6.6 percentage point increase from 2023 and 24 percentage points higher than 2015.
The race/ethnicity of women directors was also evaluated in the study, with 67.5% of all women directors across the 11 countries being white. Films from India, Japan and Republic of Korea almost exclusively had non-white women in the directing role, while in Australia, Germany, the US and the UK women of colour were between 17.7% and 29.8% of female directors. The overall percentage of women of colour working behind the camera increased from 2.5% in 2015 to 5.7% in 2024.
The study also looked at the levels of women directors among narrative features screened at the Berlin, Cannes, London, Sundance, Toronto and Venice festivals between 2015 and 2024. Over the six festivals, 27.8% of all directors were women. Sundance featured the highest percentage of women directors (34.7%), followed by Berlin (30.3%) and Toronto (29.4%).
Commenting on the study’s findings Dr Smith said: “The results of this report demonstrate that there is still a steeper climb to the top leadership position in film for women no matter what country they work in. The encouraging finding across this analysis is that there has been change in some countries and particularly in the UK.”
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