Venice jury chair calls out film industry's 'systemic problem'

Maggie Gyllenhaal, the actor-director chairing the Venice Film Festival jury, said the film industry has a 'systemic problem' with sexism, according to The Guardian. Speaking at the festival's opening, she addressed why the jury she leads will be shown only two films made by female directors in the competition for the Golden Lion.

The remarks arrive as the festival, which opened Wednesday on the Lido, draws the international film world's attention to the Italian coast. For Liguria, the festival is the region's most visible cultural event, a two-week stretch each autumn when the waterfront of Venice — a rival maritime republic to Genoa's own — becomes the centre of the global film calendar.

Gyllenhaal's comments, reported by The Guardian, point to a disparity that extends well beyond Venice. The festival's competition lineup this year includes roughly 20 films, yet only two are directed by women, a ratio that has drawn criticism in previous editions as well. The festival has made some progress in recent years — a female director won the Golden Lion in 2021 — but the overall balance of the programme remains heavily skewed toward male film-makers.

The festival's setting matters to the wider region. Venice and its Lido draw thousands of visitors each September, filling hotels along the neighbouring coast and generating significant revenue for the Veneto region's tourism economy. Liguria's own film connections run through Genoa, which has served as a shooting location for international productions, and through the Cinque Terre, whose villages appear regularly in travel films and commercials. The festival's conversations about representation in the industry therefore carry an echo for a region that markets itself to film crews as much as to tourists.

Gyllenhaal's framing of the issue as 'systemic' rather than incidental suggests the problem will not be solved by any single festival's programming choices. The Guardian reported that she made the remarks in the context of explaining the jury's working method, acknowledging the limitation of what the jury can consider when the selection itself reflects a broader industry imbalance. Her comments have been picked up across the international press covering the festival, adding a note of critique to the opening-day glamour.

The festival runs through mid-September, and the jury's eventual award decisions will be watched closely for signs of whether the conversation about representation translates into recognition. For the region hosting the festival, the attention on Venice's cultural prestige is a reminder of how closely Italy's image abroad is tied to its film industry — and how that industry's internal debates play out in public view along the lagoon.