Challenging the status quo: diversity in the audiovisual industry

“And yet something moves!” We’re adapting this sentence by Galileo Galilei to talk about diversity and gender gap in the audiovisual industry – both in front and behind the camera’s lens. That ‘something’ may be the #OscarsSoWhite protest and the new nomination rules for the Academy Awards. As of 2024, nominations must now include minority groups in the cast, plots, and staff. That ‘something’ may be the scandal leading to the Golden Globes’ reorganisation, guilty of not being inclusive enough, and the Berlinale’s choice to become genderless until the second assessment of the Eurimages project. The Council of Europe’s Cultural Support Fund announced it was going to support the co-production of 31 feature films with €8,760,000 – 13 of those films directed by women, representing 49.54% of the granted funds.

Despite Greta Gerwig’s Barbie being the greatest and most recent world box office hit – and the highest-grossing movie at 1.4 billion dollars and eight Oscar nominations – the road ahead is still uphill and peppered with obstacles. According to the Hollywood Diversity Report, which is published yearly by University of California, in 2014 the Academy’s women director nominees represented 4.1% of the total nominations, meaning the male candidates accounted for 95.9%. Ten years down the line, and the picture hasn’t changed all too much, with 14.7% women directors vs 85.3% male directors. According to the World Economic Forum’s 2023 Global Gender Gap Report, we’ll have to wait for 131 years to reach full gender equality. This uphill road isn’t limited to women alone – but impacts all minorities: BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour,), LGBTQIA+, people living with disabilities – who are struggling to find their voice and space, free from prejudices, in an industry which should reflect the multifaceted society we live in. In the wake of this slow change, countless professionals and projects are working daily towards a common goal: changing the status quo. They’re talking the talk and walking the walk thanks to a series of tools aiming to shape the audiovisual industry of the future.

AN INCLUSIVE AND EQUITABLE CINEMA

Canan Turan is pro-diversity in every shape and form of her life as a curator, speaker, film researcher, and filmmaker. She also speaks her truth in her interventions and speeches as well as in her podcast, film.macht.kritisch. A supporter of inclusion and antidiscrimination in cinema and television, the Turkish-German director says: “Many people in the film industry have at least heard and seem to understand social phenomena such as racism, structural discrimination, the exclusion of historically marginalised groups, white privilege, diversity, inclusion, and representation. Over the last four years we’ve seen a considerable increase in awareness and knowledge on these matters, whereas before most of these concepts struggled to be talked about, let alone be acknowledged, in the wider public and cultural sphere as well as in the cinema industry and media. Ever since Black Lives Matter became a global movement promoting social justice and, ultimately, promoted increased diversity and equality in the arts and entertainment, cinema in the public forum has been seen as something which goes beyond art for art’s sake.”

What will the audiovisual industry look like following these changes? Turan confesses that “as financing films in Germany strongly depends on state support, the future is uncertain as the far right is rising. I fear the 2025 general elections could gradually destroy all the results achieved to promote wider diversity, inclusion, and equality in cinema and TV. If the right were to form the government, or even became the leading opposition party, it would have greater political clout to take German cinema back by 20 or 30 years.” Yet all hope is not lost. “If the political landscape allows for it and we can continue doing the work we’re doing – or if we have to find alternatives to public funding – I believe the future of cinema will be shaped by more and more films made by groups which, in the past, have always been outcasts, living in the shadows for far too long. This type of cinema could feature an avantgarde subversive narrative which rams radically and decisively against the walls of racism, white supremacy, the heritage of colonialism, sexism, heteronormativity, ableism, queerphobia and transphobia. A cinema of possibilities which, one hopes, in a not-too-distant future will replace the current cinema of fear which is dividing humanity.”

REPRESENTATION BEHIND AND IN FRONT OF THE SCREEN

The Torino Lovers Film Festival, currently chaired by Vladimir Luxuria, is all about unity, and has been promoting films characterised by this trait for years by looking outside its community’s bubble. Maurizio Gelatti, communication consultant of the Lovers Film Festival, summarises how the event – one of the oldest of its kind in Europe and the third oldest in the world – has changed over the course of 38 editions: “The Festival’s journey has seen it reaching out to people who aren’t part of the LGBTQIA+ community, therefore speaking to everyone. More often than not, society and culture find themselves one step ahead of politics, as cliched as this claim may seem. We hope that a festival such as ours, similarly to Pride marches, won’t be needed any longer to channel our revindications. Over the years, the interest in the themes our festival shows on screen has continued growing because it has been demystified across the board – in politics, society, and the media – and has garnered growing attention. Our films, generally speaking, debunk the misconceptions around stereotypes or eradicate them completely, and do so by focusing beyond tried-and-tested plots and common prejudices.”

Even Martine de Biasi, a South Tyrolean director and podcaster, speaks to a vast audience. “I’m queer, antiracist, feminist, humanist – I believe we’re all the same. And that informs the people I interview as well as my thoughts.” A self-portrait which she gives us when talking about her work on Film in the Alps, her podcast offering a look behind the scenes and into the thoughts of filmmakers. De Biasi is currently working on a project with Katharina Burger dedicated to queer families, and her commitments shines through even behind the camera. Becoming Me, for example, is a documentary depicting the journey of Marian, a transgender man.

“I want to show people’s humanity, people who, oddly enough, are labelled as being different in our society. It always works, and it especially works in a South Tyrolean context which is still very provincial. As a director, I try and change the behaviour and feelings people feel towards the ones they exclude.” And she does that thanks to her role on the Board of the Film Association of South Tyrol (FAS), whose aim is to promote indie cinema in South Tyrol, obtain better production and working conditions, and stimulating filmmaking in the region. “We’re working to improve how women work in the sector as well as improving the sector itself.”

INCLUDING ALL VOICES

Alexia Muiños Ruiz work aims to include all voices. She’s the Director of the European Women’s Audiovisual Network programmes – a pan-European organisation supporting gender equality in the European audiovisual sector which also acts as an international community allowing women working in the industry around the world to connect. “The world has changed: we can’t just talk about women but have to talk about all minorities. We do that by implementing clear programmes and strategies. We’re partners with numerous associations and institutions committed to transforming the European sector into a more equal and inclusive one. Let’s not forget that our films equate to our culture, an inheritance passed down through the generations. We must include all voices, all diversities, so they can leave their mark for the future generations.”

And one can never let down their guard when doing so. “Unlike in the past, today gender equality isn’t on everyone’s lips. People talk more about green shooting, sustainability, AI. But gender equality is still important – despite there being more women filmmakers in many countries, we still see how only 1% in the industry detains all the power. And that 1% is made up of men. This trend won’t change unless there’s significant political will to do so. Simone de Beauvoir said it herself, that the rights we’ve fought so hard for aren’t eternal. We must fight for what we believe in throughout our entire lives.”

DIVERSITY AS PART OF THE PROCESS

Diversity comes as easy as breathing for Weina Zhao and Anouk Shad. Together with Malina Nnendi Nwabuonwor, they’re the cofounders of Gewächshaus – a network made for and consisting of BIPOC filmmakers in German-speaking countries (Austria, Germany, and Switzerland). Its goal? To promote diversity behind and in front of the camera by making their stories mainstream. How? By building a community and networking, empowering people, raising awareness and providing training and consultancy services on how to go about it. Zhao and Shad underscore how “we don’t need to be more conservative than reality. Cinema should be the world as we want it to be. It should be the result of our creativity.”

Diversity needs to be part of the process from the get-go, and not an add-on. However, that’s often not the case. The cofounders highlight how “you can’t add diversity to a project at its tail end. We’ve been contacted by projects which were at an already advanced stage – that’s just too late. That’s what many tend to do: work as they’ve always done, to then get rubberstamped by diversity consultants. It doesn’t work like that. Diversity needs to be included right from the start, and be present from the script to the team, from production companies through distribution strategies to the target audience. It has to be a natural part of the process.”

That’s exactly what Prisma did in Italy. The Prime Video series created by Alice Urciuolo and Ludovico Bessegato focuses on the life of a group of teenagers from Latina, near Rome. Their lives are used to depict timeless topics, from gender identity to sexuality. One of the teenagers is Carola, who has a prosthetic leg. The actress who portrays her, Chiara Bordi, does too. Something which is seamlessly woven into the plot without being forced and which, most importantly, doesn’t define her as a person. The prosthetic limb is only one of the character’s traits. “Change takes time. Deconstructing what we’ve always heard is incredibly hard. If we were brought up by hearing something on repeat, and our society compounds that message, we will never be rid of stereotypes and prejudices. Changing the view we have of the world is complicated. Even just considering that something which is not part of your life – or rather, has been kept away from your reality –can overlap with it, for example working in a certain job, being able to enter a certain world,” as the actress said in her interview with THR Roma.* “A TV series or a person won’t be enough to trigger change. We, as a society, need other tools. We need people to be aware, we need basic education – and that can be provided at school, as banal as that may sound. Change won’t happen overnight, and I’d like for it to be different. But it isn’t. The right thing to do is contribute towards change.”

The future of diversity and gender equality in the audiovisual sector will be defined by individual and collective efforts to change every cog in the productive and social structure we’re currently operating in. It will be a long journey on an uphill path filled with obstacles. Yet change is possible, as proved by the everyday wok of professionals who are committed to revolutionise the current worldview. One story at a time.