Launched at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, the 5050×2020 initiative urges film festivals across the world to make a commitment to gender parity and inclusion.

On 8 May 2019, Sydney Film Festival Director, Nashen Moodley, announced that the Festival had signed the pledge, joining key international film festivals including Berlin, Venice and Cannes.

As part of its commitment, Sydney Film Festival is required:

• To compile statistics of gender of all directors of all the films submitted to selection;
• To make public the gender of all members of selection committees and programmers as well as all programming consultants;
• To make public the gender of executive boards and/or boards of directors and to commit to a schedule to achieve parity in these bodies.

In addition to making the above statistics public, Sydney Film Festival’s commitment to promoting gender equity is activated through its commitment to bringing attention to the work of women in film through its programming, talks, panel discussions and exhibitions.

In 2019 SFF gathered the following statistics:

• Of the films submitted to the festival, 37% are directed by women.
• Of the films selected for the festival (307 in total), 43% are directed or co-directed by women.
• The Sydney Film Festival’s selection committee and programmers comprise 27 females and 18 males.
• The Festival’s board of directors comprises 4 females and 4 males.

The Festival also undertook the following activities as part of its broader commitment to addressing gender imbalance:

• It partnered with European Film Promotion (EFP) and Screen International to program Europe! Voices of Women in Film for the fourth consecutive year, inviting eleven women filmmakers from Europe to Sydney to present their films and participate in a public talk focusing on gender parity in the film industry
• It hosted industry events for visiting international filmmakers to meet local women filmmakers
• It programmed Essential Australian Women Directors: 10 Trailblazers selected by David Stratton.
• It presented FRAME: How Asia Pacific Feminist Filmmakers and Artists Are Confronting Inequalities, a photographic exhibition celebrating the work of women filmmakers
• Both the 2018 and 2019 Opening Night films chosen were directed by women
• It invested in software development to enable it to collect data to track industry submissions and gender data in association with its program.

Sydney Film Festival’s commitments to promoting gender equity in film are supported by the Women’s Giving Collective. For more information on getting involved follow this link.