MONTREAL – Telefilm Canada says that it is seeing “encouraging” results on its way to meeting a balanced production portfolio by 2020 that reflects gender parity in in feature film production funding.
After the first year of measures introduced in collaboration with the industry, Telefilm said that the overall percentage of films featuring a woman in one of the key roles is 44% for director, 46% for screenwriter, and 48% for producer.
In addition, the overall percentage of dollars invested with a woman in a key production role for 2017-2018 is 25% for director, 29% for screenwriter, and 36% for producer.
Acting executive director Jean-Claude Mahé said that while positive change is happening, there remains a “significant gap” with bigger-budget films.
“We need the industry’s collaboration to increase the number of projects led by women in this budget realm,” he said in a statement. “That’s why, last year we allocated additional funds for women-driven projects in development, increased our promotional efforts and we are now reviewing new incentives aimed at ensuring that more women-led projects budgeted at over $2.5 million enter the pipeline this year.”
