The power of women filmmakers emanates from the law. If it hadn’t been for incentives and aid to the films that women direct, write, produce and execute from other trades, we would not have seen this increase in women filmmakers. Be careful, we are not just talking about directors. For the first time there are women running completely masculinized departments such as the camera department. It turned out that the equality policies of the Zapatero government with Bibiana Aído at the helm they were necessary and well designed. When the director general of the Swedish film institute Anna Serner introduced radical measures to achieve parity in the cinema of his country, many male producers complained: “It’s not that we don’t want to, it’s that there are no female filmmakers.” To which she replied: “There are women, but you have to look for them.” This has also been demonstrated in Spain. Now we see the fruits with that rich harvest.
It does not mean that we have reached the end of the road. If you are a young woman and you plan your first project, you will have many suitors because for the first and second feature films the aid is more substantial. The hard part will come later, when the points drop and you are one more of the bunch. Then the financing will become difficult, especially if your film is neither the comedy nor the police that the platforms and chains are looking for. The industry has restricted the range of theme options in recent decades. Some believe that because of algorithm, others that because the adult audience that watched the dramas got lost with the pandemic and has not returned.
Be that as it may, that especially hurts women. We make films that generally propose a vision of the characters that escapes clichés, simply because we see reality from another perspective and explore new conflicts, historically less told. That enriches the portrait that we make up of society, brings variety, risk, surprise, diversity. But we pay a price, that of making a more independent cinema, more from the margins of the industry, with a smaller budget.
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It’s a shame because women filmmakers offer a portrait of fictional women and also of the less conventional, richer men. When we female directors do casting, we do not prioritize beauty, youth and we do not relegate women to secondary roles as a partner, girlfriend, mother of the male protagonist or worse, victim of a bloody murder or rape that triggers the conflict. There are handfuls of examples. I think they are not necessary.
The future? Public television is in all European countries the key to good cinema. RTVE has been fundamental in shaping our most risky, most prestigious cinema, also promoting co-productions with Latin America that drew a shared and solid fictional landscape. But RTVE is very short of resources and its purchases of rights, instead of increasing, decrease. What would be desirable would be for the new government to bet on reinforcing the budget for public, national and regional television, as a counterweight to such a fickle and conservative market that mainly affects the cinema that we women filmmakers propose.