New Delhi, May 15 (FN Representative) Expressing optimism about the rising representation of women filmmakers in global cinema, American director Greta Gerwig has called for continuing the steps required to achieve gender parity in the entertainment industry.“In my lifetime of making movies, it has changed and it has got better,” Gerwig, the director of ‘Barbie,’ which was nominated for the Oscar award for Best Picture this year, said ahead of the opening of the 77th Cannes Film Festival last night, referring to the slowly and steadily rising number of women directors in contemporary cinema. “And it’s not done yet,” Gerwig, the head of jury at the Cannes festival’s prestigious competition section this year, told a press conference of the jury. “But it is certainly moving in the right direction,” she added.“Every year I cheer more when there are more and more women being represented. I think it is about the long arc of moving this,” explained Gerwig, the director of such acclaimed movies telling women-centric stories as ‘Lady Bird’ (2017) and ‘Little Women’ (2019). “Fifteen years ago I couldn’t have imagined the number of women represented today not only in international festivals, but also in distribution. I am hopeful that it is just continuing,” she added. “I am pleased to follow in the footsteps of (New Zealand filmmaker) Jane Campion who was head of the jury in Cannes ten years ago,” said Gerwig, the first American woman director to become the president of jury at the Cannes festival. “I have been making movies and going to film festivals for almost 20 years.” The nine-member Cannes competition jury presided over by Gerwig has five women members, including Lebanese filmmaker Nadine Labaki, who directed the Oscar-nominated ‘Capernaum’, American actor Lily Gladstone, the lead actor in ‘The Killers of the Flower Moon’ by Martin Scorsese, French actor Eva Green, and Turkish screenwriter and photographer Ebru Ceylan, who co-wrote Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Palme d’Or-winning film, ‘Winter Sleep’.
“I truly believe that maybe one of the tools to truly change something in the situation we all live in right now, which is a situation I think is not that great, is really through art and through cinema and through making films that will talk about what is happening in the right way, in the right perspective, and maybe propose a more tolerant way of seeing things and seeing each other as human being,” said Labaki. Legendary American actor Meryl Streep was honoured with an honorary Palme d’Or, the top prize of the Cannes festival, at the event’s opening ceremony on Tuesday.‘The Second Act’ by French director Quentin Dupieux, which tells the story of a doomed film production involving Artificial Intelligence, opened the influential film festival in the presence of the Who’s Who of the global film industry. ‘All We Imagine As Light’ by Mumbai-born filmmaker Payal Kapadia, the first Indian film in Cannes competition in three decades, is vying for the Palme d’Or. Women-led and women-centric movies dealing with gender justice and equality represent Indian cinema at the Cannes festival this year. Among the Indian movies in official selection include ‘Santosh’ by British-Indian debutant director Sandhya Suri. ‘Santosh’ tells the story of a widow appointed into her husband’s job as a police constable in rural India who suddenly finds herself pulled into an investigation into the rape of a low-caste girl.Kolkata-born British-Indian artist Poulomi Basu’s virtual reality film ‘Maya: The Birth of a Superhero’ co-created with British artist CJ Clarke is part of the inaugural Immersive Competition section at the Cannes festival.The Cannes festival runs up to May 25.