While strides have been made, women still underrepresented at BIFF

BUSAN — Director Zhang Yimou, president of the jury at this year's Busan International Film Festival (BIFF), heads a majority-female panel for the second consecutive year. This time, however, the gender balance drew a public acknowledgment at the festival's opening ceremony.

“It's an honor to be working with so many women on the jury,” Zhang said on Tuesday, adding that the panel would “deliver excellent results.”

As in the inaugural Competition section in 2025, four of the seven jurors are women. But among the filmmakers whose work they will judge, women remain in the minority. Four of the 13 films in competition are directed by women, down from six of 14 last year.

The disparity echoes concerns raised at other major film festivals. At Venice last month, Maggie Gyllenhaal, who headed the competition jury, pointed to a “systemic problem” after being asked about the lack of women directors. Only two of the 21 films in competition were directed or codirected by women.

Speaking at Busan, the actor-turned-director emphasized that greater representation also meant a wider range of stories reaching audiences.

“When women are given an opportunity to express themselves freely, they make different work,” she said at a press conference on Wednesday. “They write different kinds of books, they make different films.”

“I think that's true because we have a very different experience of being alive in the world.”

Gyllenhaal said that while many of the films that shaped her career were made by men, they often required her to see the world from a perspective different from her own.

“They often require a little bit of translation,” she said. “I had to learn how to translate in order to watch all of these movies because none of them were about me.”

That ability to understand unfamiliar perspectives, she added, was “an incredible gift.”

The lack of women directors also shaped her career choices, Gyllenhaal said.

“When I was young, there were so few women directing films that if you were a person who loved movies and a storyteller and a woman, it felt like the natural thing to do when I was young to be an actress,” she said.

“And then I think I hit the edge of what I was able to do as an actress. And so it just sort of spilled over into writing and directing.”

The imbalance is also evident in Korea's film industry. Women accounted for 24 percent of directors working on Korean films released in 2024, according to the Korean Film Council's annual gender statistics report. Women also made up 34.7 percent of screenwriters and just 8.9 percent of cinematographers.

BIFF does not have a quota for films directed by women in its selection process, according to organizers.

The festival's programmers could not be reached for comment, but a BIFF spokesperson said the festival was “working to promote diversity.” The festival is also hosting a discussion on Saturday, bringing together women filmmakers to discuss their experiences and opportunities in the industry.

For veteran Hong Kong filmmaker Ann Hui, who received this year's Camellia Award for her contributions to advancing women's standing in cinema, the changes over the past five decades have been substantial.

Hui, who began her career in television in 1975, recalled adopting masculine clothing and behavior to assert herself on set.

“It's almost like pretending to be a man when I'm on set,” she told reporters.

Younger women directors, she said, no longer face the same pressure to conceal their femininity. Hui herself initially pursued genres associated with male directors, including crime films, to prove women could make them too, before turning to stories that interested her personally.

“I didn't choose the story because the protagonist is a woman,” she said. “I chose her because I liked [the story].”

BY KIM JU-YEON [[email protected]]