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VENICE FILM FESTIVAL

Female directors get recognition for a change
La Mostra del Cinema, the most venerable of international film festivals, and its new head, Alberto Barbera, seem to have got the message. What message? The one sent by dismayed festival-goers to Cannes last May upon discovering that out of 22 films in competition, none had been directed by a woman.
There was no need to be a hardcore feminist to feel a little troubled, especially when the newly elected French president Francois Hollande announced a perfectly gender balanced government on the very day the Cannes film festival opened: 17 female ministers and 17 male ministers.
One doesn’t necessarily have to agree with French feminist groupuscules such as La Barbe, but had it not been for their public brouhaha about Cannes' lack of female presence in the competition, it is most probable that Barbera wouldn't have taken any notice.
Yet, he has — and it's pleasant to see there are 20 female directors showing their films at the Mostra these coming days, and that four of them have been selected in the main competition out of 17 films. Among them, the 40-year-old American Belgium-based Jessica Woodworth with “La Cinqui^me Saison”, which she co-directed with her Belgian partner; 45-year-old American Rama Burshtein with her first feature film "Lemale Et Ha'Chalal”; 51-year-old Italian Francesca Comencini with “Un Giomo Speciale” and 64-year-old Chilean Valeria Sarmiento with “Linhas de Wellington".
Only four films directed by women out of 17, but it's better than none, and we'll be watching next year, as the figure must increase.
For the figure not only must, but can increase. Until recendy, it was indeed easy for festival directors to argue that there were very few female movie directors, and therefore much fewer films of theirs to choose from. It is no longer the case, and it’s high time the news reached all film festivals. In the past 15 years, the tide has indeed turned and, a year ago about the French new (female) wave, there are in many countries new generations of female directors who don't shy away from the camera.
Fabio Ferzetti, the chief film critic
of the Italian daily II Messaggero, says: "There are likely to be more and more films by female directors in main competition in the A-list festivals, simply because films directed by the new generation of women tend, in my opinion, to be particularly beautifully crafted, original and sensual."
And if a female director wins Venice's Golden Lion next week, like Sofia Coppola did for “Somewhere" in 2010, let us hope there won’t be furious allegations that she won simply because she is the daughter of a famous male director (Francis Ford Coppola) and the ex-girlfriend of the head of the jury (Quentin Tarantino).