NEW DELHI: Only one woman filmmaker – Jane Campion – has won an award in the Palme d’Or at Cannes in the past 50 years.
 
Revealing this, Swedish Film Institute CEO Anna Serner also revealed that only 54 of the thousand-plus films that have competed for the Palme d’Or at Cannes in the past 50 years have been made by women.

Additionally, only one woman - Kathryn Bigelow – of the four women from the more than four hundred who have been nominated for an Oscar for best director has won.

The facts were revealed at a press conference held in Cannes to mark the 50th anniversary of the Swedish Film Institute.

Serner introduced an international equality initiative for films. “In Sweden women have directed roughly ten per cent of all feature films over the last fifty years”, said Serner.

Furthermore, eight women have won the Swedish National Film Award for best director in the last fifty years, five of them in the last ten years

Serner put forth an equality package of mentoring, an inside look at the industry and a study of women who are about to make their first feature. She urged film industries, filmmakers, producers and film festivals around the world to look at this question and help to bring about international equality.

Announcement was also made about new projects including the upcoming Waltz for Monica to be released in December about the Swedish jazz singer Monica Zetterlund. Directed by Per Fly and written by Peter Birro, the film also stars Edda Magnason as the talented vocalist who died tragically in 2005 from a fire in her apartment. Magnason, Birro and Fly all attended the anniversary dinner.