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Gender parity the focus at Toronto International Film Festival, championing movies directed, co-directed and created by women

Gitanjali Rao, Julie Delpy, Bryce Dallas Howard and Kasi Lemmons among the directors featured

Highlight is Mark Cousins’ Women Make Films, a 14-hour documentary of clips from movies by female directors from all around the world

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A still from Kasi Lemmons’ Harriet, about the 19th-century African-American abolitionist Harriet Tubman.

Published: 11:15pm, 18 Sep 2019Updated: 1:10pm, 19 Sep 2019

The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) is serious about providing a platform for women filmmakers in an industry dominated by men and male-slanted norms. Last year, it signed the 50/50x2020 agreement, pledging to enhance gender parity and inclusion at film festivals, and this year, 36 per cent of the films in the festival were “directed, co-directed and created by women”.

It also has a five-year master plan called Share Her Journey, which was launched in 2017 and promotes understanding of gender parity. This includes a 10-week mentorship programme for women screenwriters, a Female Creator Initiative to help rookie filmmakers hone their skills and establish networks, a provision of educational resources for classroom discussions about gender-sensitive cinema literacy and the collection of data to track the careers of women in the industry.

The objective, according to TIFF, is to increase participation, skills and opportunities for women both behind and in front of the camera. This year, the festival raised C$2.4 million (US$1.8 million) for Share Her Journey, 80 per cent of its goal, and called for more donations.

Still, the TIFF programme is the most tangible showcase of the festival organisers’ ambitions. Opening-day highlights, on September 6, included French actor-director Julie Delpy’s My Zoe; American actor Bryce Dallas Howard’s documentary and directorial debut Dads; Norwegian filmmaker Jorunn Myklebust Syversen’s rite-of-passage drama Disco (about a teenager torn between her Christian faith and her love of the dance floor); and Gitanjali Rao’s animation Bombay Rose.

Other women-directed titles include high-profile biopics: Kasi Lemmons’ Harriet,about the 19th century African-American unionist Harriet Tubman; Marjane Satrapi’s Radioactive, on Nobel Prize-winning scientist Marie Curie; and Unjoo Moon’s I Am Woman, the story of 1970s Australian singer Helen Reddy.

More under the radar is Noura’s Dream, the debut feature from Tunisian director Hinde Boujemaa, who studied scriptwriting on a correspondence course and made a string of award-winning documentaries about her country’s political changes during the Arab spring.