In 2018, there was a lot of news surrounding the numbers of filmmakers that are women and people of color that are accepted in film festivals. This came to a head at the Venice Film Festival, where there was only one female filmmaker chosen out of the 21 films in competition. Well, with Sundance underway, the Sundance Institute released a study showing that its film festival is proven to be a successful pipeline for diverse filmmakers.
The study was performed by Professor Stacy L. Smith and the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. Over 26,000 shorts and feature films that were submitted for the 2017 and 2018 Sundance Film Festivals were analyzed, as well as the demographic data for Sundance Institute’s Artist Support programs in 2016 and 2017. And the results really do speak for themselves.
28% of feature-length and episodic projects submitted to the Sundance Film Festival across 2017 and 2018 had at least one woman director, as did 34.1% of shorts. Of feature films and episodic content accepted in 2017 and 2018, 35% had a woman director, while 51.4% of short films did.
And the numbers were equally as impressive when it comes to directors of color. During 2017 and 2018, 45.5% of U.S. short films and 24.3% of U.S. dramatic features accepted to the Sundance Film Festival had a director of color. However, less than 15% of directors of submitted projects within each Festival category analyzed were women of color, and only 7.4% of U.S. dramatic feature directors accepted to the Festival in 2017-18 were women of color.
That being said, these numbers definitely put some of the other big name film festivals to shame, and show that Sundance has a history of trying to be an inclusive event.
“It’s clear from this data that there is a robust and exciting talent pool including women and people of color,” said Keri Putnam, Executive Director of the Sundance Institute. “We are proud of the investments the Institute has made in identifying and supporting underrepresented artists, and we are even prouder of the results those investments have catalyzed, over the two years captured here.”
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“Good stories depend on diverse perspectives. Those perspectives will only be supported with intentional outreach and support for intersectional voices across the spectrum,” said actor, producer and screenwriter Lena Waithe. “The audience is there to support good stories but we have to work harder to see those stories brought to light.”
While the numbers for the 2019 Sundance Film Festival weren’t part of the study, the Sundance Institute has released some demographic numbers that show the trend continuing into this year. 31% of feature-length submissions to the 2019 Festival had at least one woman director, as did 35% of episodic and shorts content. Of feature films and episodic content accepted in 2019, 41% had a woman director, while 52% of shorts did, for a combined total of 45%. 55% of accepted short films and 38% of accepted dramatic features had a director of color for the 2019 festival, and 18% of accepted projects, across features, episodics, and shorts, were directed by one or more woman of color.
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“This kind of data practice is a helpful barometer in our work as Festival programmers,” said Kim Yutani, Sundance Film Festival’s Director of Programming. “Our curatorial process operates independently from demographic information, but periodic and holistic studies of statistics and trends among submissions and acceptances allow us to assess how our work reflects our values of inclusion as we make creative curatorial decisions.”
As for the Director’s Lab, a special program put on by the Sundance Institute, the inclusivity is apparent. Of the women and people of color who directed top-grossing films in recent years – 30 – 35% had prior support from Sundance, whether that was a Lab, screening a film at the Festival, or other support. More than half of the participants in the Sundance Institute’s Directors Lab were women (55%) and people of color (60%).
As mentioned, the Sundance Film Festival is currently underway and will continue until February 4.
