{"id":588105,"date":"2026-09-02T16:20:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T16:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/588105\/"},"modified":"2026-09-02T16:20:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T16:20:09","slug":"maggie-gyllenhaal-says-film-industry-has-a-systemic-problem-with-sexism-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/588105\/","title":{"rendered":"Maggie Gyllenhaal says film industry has a \u2018systemic problem\u2019 with sexism | Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maggie Gyllenhaal said there is a \u201csystemic problem\u201d that explains why only two female directors are in the running for the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival<\/a> this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s harder for women to get films financed,\u201d said the actor-director, who is heading up the jury of the world\u2019s oldest cinema showcase this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cCould it be possible that the things that women, having had a different experience of being alive in the world, want to make movies about are not always deemed high art?\u201d added Gyllenhaal, whose directing debut The Lost Daughter won a best screenplay prize at Venice in 2021. \u201cWho decides what\u2019s good? Who decides what is valuable?\u201d<\/p>\n

The artistic directors of the film festival have faced criticism since the original lineup revealed that that only one of the 20 contenders for the top prize was by a female film-maker, Danish-Egyptian director May el-Toukhy\u2019s Woman Unknown.<\/p>\n

Since then, the festival has boosted the main competition with NAZA, a new documentary film directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor<\/a> \u2013 two of the four directors behind Oscar-winning No Other Land. The film is produced by the Guardian.<\/p>\n

At the 83rd edition of the festival, Gyllenhaal heads a seven-member jury that also includes Kaouther Ben Hania, the Tunisian film-maker behind The Voice of Hind Rajab, Hong Kong\u2019s Johnnie To, Afghan director Shahrbanoo Sadat, French film-maker Xavier Giannoli, British composer Daniel Blumberg and Italian film scholar Francesco Casetti.<\/p>\n

In the run-up to the festival, there had been some uncertainty whether the jury would speak to the press ahead of the festival opening at all, supposedly due to a \u201cscheduling conflict\u201d.<\/p>\n

A lineup unusually packed with films touching politically sensitive issues \u2013 from Israel\/Palestine and Russia\/Ukraine to a feature film about Rupert Murdoch and a documentary about Elon Musk \u2013 meant that the jury members may also have felt nervous about facing the media on the opening day.<\/p>\n

At the jury press conference at this year\u2019s Berlin film festival, jury president Wim Wenders faced a backlash<\/a> when he said film-makers should \u201cstay out of politics\u201d while fielding questions about Israel and Palestine.<\/p>\n

Asked whether directors should wade into political debates or not, Gyllenhaal said what made cinema political was its ability to generate empathy, even for \u201cthe most corrupt, the most perverse people\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that if movies really are an honest look into other people\u2019s experience, then they are fundamentally, unavoidably political, as well as a lot of other things,\u201d said the director, whose Marilyn Monroe-inspired short film Flesh Impact will screen out of competition later in the event.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Maggie Gyllenhaal said there is a \u201csystemic problem\u201d that explains why only two female directors are in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":588106,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-588105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=588105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/588106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=588105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=588105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=588105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}