Is There Any Way to Fix the Female Filmmaker Numbers?
The Alliance of Women Directors hopes to have the answer.
A portion of this is available for free subscribers, but the full article is exclusive to my Gold Star Crew members.
🌟Supporters like: Psychological Poet, Rhelm, Freejena, Simon Thompson, Nathan Rabin, Deirdre Davidson, Annabelle Foster, Andrea Olcsvary, Amanda Mullen, and Kevin Bannerman💫
Gold Film Mavens can now schedule free consultations with me on Zoom! Looking to get into journalism? Need to learn how to pitch? Want to write a book but don't know the process? Thinking of starting a newsletter? I'll answer whatever expertise I can provide, once a month, for free!
Paid subscribers are the backbone of The Film Maven who support independent journalism, as well as female- and disabled-created content. Paid Film Mavens get access to shout-outs, exclusive articles and series, Zoom mixers, and The Film Maven Discord server.
The Film Maven is partnering with the Alliance of Women Directors in anticipation of their Back to the Set event in Burbank on June 12th and 13th. Film Maven readers can get $50 off a 2-day pass after using the exclusive discount code: bts26tfm! It's gonna be a great event so buy your tickets now.
You'll recall a piece I wrote last week about the dwindling number of female filmmakers we're seeing on-screen today. "This weekend's box office saw a one-two punch from A24's Backrooms, which secured $81 million from 3,442 North American theaters to be #1, followed behind by a third-week jump for Obsession, which garnered another $26.4 million from 2,781 cinemas. Obsession has officially crossed the $100 million mark domestically. Both films are directed by Gen Z directors who made their start on YouTube, 20-year-old Kane Parsons and 26-year-old Curry Barker. Nowadays two things make a trend so articles have started proliferating about this newfound Gen Z/YouTube horror boom...
But stuff like this trickles downward, and with the box office and Hollywood prioritizing white men it's no surprise I'm seeing it in who is writing about it. And this is something Hollywood is noticing, somewhat. At the end of December 2025 USC's Annenberg Inclusion Iniative released their latest study, noting that 'only 9 women worked as directors' on the top 100 grossing movies of 2025. 'This is a drop from 2024’s 13.4 percent and is the lowest since 2018’s 4.5 percent.' (Funny how the lowest numbers were also during a Trump presidency.) This year's Cannes Film Festival also saw a decrease in female filmmakers – 'this year’s competition section includes five female directors, down from last year’s seven' – in spite of what now feels like performative pledges to increase gender parity."
So, in partnership with the Alliance of Women Directors – which, full disclosure, I'm not receiving a penny for. I simply love their mission and want to support – and in anticipation of their upcoming Back to the Set event this weekend, I wanted to see if there was anything that could be done to fix these numbers. Turns out, there is, but it requires a lot of moving parts.
For those who don't know about AWD, it's an organization "founded in 1997 by alumnae of the American Film Institute’s Directing Workshop for Women as a community of peers to share information and support one another’s career advancement." Today, they are a nonprofit "dedicated to achieving gender parity in the entertainment industry by substantially increasing the number of working women and gender-expansive directors."
