At the heart of the prestigious Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF), away from the red carpets and the glitz of the spotlight, a sobering conversation took place at the TIFF Lounge in Tokyo Midtown Hibiya. Afghan filmmaker Shahrbanoo Sadat and Serbian director Jelena Maksimović gathered to discuss the future of women’s cinema—a future they argue is currently being strangled by institutional inertia, financial gatekeeping, and a profound, often unconscious, bias that permeates the global film industry.
For these filmmakers, the gender gap in cinema is not merely a matter of creative representation; it is a structural failure rooted in the development stage, where funding decisions are made long before a camera ever rolls.
The Architecture of Exclusion: Where Discrimination Begins
Shahrbanoo Sadat, whose latest feature No Good Men opened the 76th Berlinale, brought the weight of her experience as a jury member for the Venice Film Festival to the Tokyo stage. Her critique was surgical: the lack of women in major competition slots is not a reflection of a lack of talent, but a symptom of a rigged system.
"The discrimination did not start at the festival, but it started at the development level," Sadat asserted. By the time a film reaches the selection committee of a top-tier festival, the gender ratio has already been decided by years of financial gatekeeping.
The panel, moderated by film scholar Takasaki Ikuko, moved quickly past the theoretical discourse of feminism to address the brutal reality of the industry’s "financial mafia." For both Sadat and Maksimović, the pursuit of funding often forces women into a cycle of conformity. To secure the backing of major institutions, directors are frequently expected to mold their visions to suit the sensibilities of the men who hold the purse strings.
A Global Struggle: From the Balkans to Kabul
The conversation highlighted that while the cultural contexts differ, the mechanisms of exclusion remain eerily similar. Jelena Maksimović, whose film Until the Day Ends was a standout in Venice’s Orizzonti section, drew parallels between the regressive practices of her home country and the broader European film establishment.
"Even in Yugoslavia—which was a very progressive country—there were a lot more male directors," Maksimović noted. She traced the evolution of the Balkan film industry, noting that while the region has moved into more progressive times, the financial hurdles for women remain steep.
In Serbia, the struggle is compounded by political volatility. Maksimović detailed how Film Center Serbia, once a reliable engine for local filmmakers, saw its funding abruptly slashed by the outgoing government as retaliation for the creative community’s support of student-led anti-corruption protests. The protests, sparked by the tragic collapse of a train station canopy in Novi Sad, eventually led to the government’s downfall in the October 25 snap parliamentary elections.
"Luckily, a few days ago the students won," Maksimović said. "We’re very happy at the moment, but there’s a huge fight in front of us." Despite the political victory, she emphasized that the systemic damage—the lack of financial resources and the difficulty in securing co-production deals—will take years to repair. For women in Serbia, the challenge is double-layered: they must navigate a landscape where male filmmakers have historically enjoyed privileged access to a limited pool of resources.
The "Cultural Mafia" and the European Paradox
Shahrbanoo Sadat offered a harrowing look at the pressures facing filmmakers in Afghanistan, describing a "cultural mafia" of older men who maintain an iron grip on the industry. For a woman, breaking into this circle requires, in her words, "capitulation, submission, and compromise."
To survive, Sadat turned to the European film industry—a system often lauded for its diversity and progressive values. However, she found that the "European model" is not the panacea many assume it to be.
"Filmmaking in Afghanistan is a crime—it’s not as extreme as that—but the discrimination is fundamental, it’s in the system," Sadat said, referring to European funding bodies. She argued that the gender gap in these institutions is treated as a "normal" fact of life, a baseline expectation that women must overcome to even be considered for competition. This systemic inequality is the primary reason, she claims, that of the 20 films in the Venice competition this year, only one—May el-Toukhy’s Woman Unknown—was directed by a woman.
Official Responses and the "Quality" Fallacy
The discourse reached a boiling point when the panel addressed the persistent excuse used by festival leadership: the "quality argument."
When asked by an audience member why the Tokyo International Film Festival also featured a dearth of films by women, the conversation inevitably circled back to the controversial comments made by Venice artistic director Alberto Barbera. In July, when pressed on the lack of female representation in his competition, Barbera defended the selection by stating that the films submitted by female directors were simply not of "adequate quality" to compete.
Sadat, having served on the Venice jury, was quick to dismantle this narrative. "I don’t want to comment on any specific film, but there were films that were just bad, but they are made by male directors. But women directors are not allowed to make bad [films]," she remarked.
This observation touches on a psychological truth in the industry: male directors are granted the luxury of mediocrity or experimental failure, while women are held to a standard of perfection. If a woman makes a "bad" film, it is often weaponized as evidence that "women’s cinema" as a whole is inferior. If a man makes a "bad" film, it is treated as a personal stumble.
Implications for the Future: Beyond Tokenism
As the session drew to a close, the focus shifted to the practical steps required for genuine reform. Both filmmakers were skeptical of "tokenism"—the practice of selecting one or two female-led films to fill a quota rather than addressing the root causes of the disparity.
"I know people are trying to change things, but are they really changing? Or are they just putting things into boxes?" Maksimović asked. She advocated for an overhaul of the committees and funding bodies that decide who gets to make films, noting that true change must be structural rather than superficial.
For Sadat, the path forward is one of persistence in the face of survival. "Coming from a war country, people are absolutely in survival mode. We do not think of the future; we think about the present," she said. She urged against waiting for sweeping, top-down changes, which she believes are rarely effective. Instead, she argued that change happens "little by little, over the course of a really long time."
A Call to Action for the Industry
The Tokyo session served as a stark reminder that the "celluloid ceiling" is not just a rhetorical device; it is a concrete barrier built on outdated funding models and entrenched gender biases.
The success of the student movement in Serbia and the global conversations sparked by filmmakers like Sadat and Maksimović indicate a growing impatience with the status quo. However, the industry is currently at a crossroads. Will festivals and funding bodies continue to defend their exclusionary practices under the guise of "merit," or will they finally acknowledge that merit cannot exist in a system that is fundamentally rigged?
The implications are clear: until funding committees are diversified, until developmental support is made equitable, and until women are afforded the same right to experiment and fail as their male counterparts, the vision of a truly representative global cinema will remain a distant, albeit necessary, dream. The "little by little" changes that Sadat envisions may be slow, but for the next generation of female filmmakers, they represent the only path to a future where their stories are told, funded, and celebrated with the same vigor as those of the men who have long held the keys to the kingdom.
