A recent dip in female-led theatrical releases in the UK - back to 2018 levels of 26% reminds us that our work is far from over; that we cannot be complacent.
Below you can read about the research we conduct into gender representation in film and the wider industry, tracking the release landscape to present an accurate picture of investment in films by filmmakers of marginalised genders.
Here you can also find out about news and opportunities at Reclaim The Frame, along with curated film recommendations, filmmaker interviews, and creative responses.
We’re excited to be returning to Glasgow Film Festival as part of the industry programme, and for the first time to be bringing a delegation of filmmakers to GFF.
Funded by ScreenSkills Film Skills Fund, and in partnership with the 20th Glasgow Film Festival, our now well-established continuing professional development programme involves taking eighteen talented writers, directors and producers from across the UK to Glasgow Film Festival in March.
#ReclaimTheFrame activity at GFF will include:
Monday 4 March
SOLD OUT!
18:00 - THE TEACHER directed by Farah Nabulsi + Q&A
Inspired by true events, a grieving Palestinian schoolteacher struggles to reconcile his risky commitment to political resistance.
Followed by a post-screening Director discussion, moderated by our #ReclaimTheFrame Director Melanie Iredale
Tuesday 5 March
13:00 - ORIGIN directed by Ava DuVernay
A powerful biopic about Pulitzer Prize winner Isabel Wilkerson as she works on her hit book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent.
Special introduction by Melanie Iredale
15:15 - THE TEACHER directed by Farah Nabulsi
Special introduction by Melanie Iredale
Wednesday 6 March
13:30 - Panel session: Reaching Audiences & Creating Impact
Join us and our delegation of Filmonomics filmmakers for panel discussion about building audiences and creating impact for your film. Bringing together marketing, publicity, and outreach professionals together, this session will explore different approaches to creating inclusive and impactful campaigns for your films at varying budget scales.
Our Director Melanie Iredale and Impact Producer for Scotland Sandra Kinahan will be joined by Tejinder Jouhal, Director of Marketing & Distribution at Hanway Films; Ged Fitzsimmons, Founder & CEO of Cosmic Cat; and a member of the Glasgow Film Festival Press team.
Open to Glasgow Film Festival pass holders and filmmakers of marginalised genders. Register via Glasgow Film Festival.
17:30 - Networking Drinks
Join us and our friends at Film Hub Scotland for Glasgow Film Festival’s Happy Hour on Wednesday, to find out more about #ReclaimTheFrame in Glasgow and to raise a glass to our newly graduated Filmonomics cohort. Open to all GFF delegates.
We’re pleased to announce our lineup of speakers for our Filmonomics activity at GFF, including representatives of British Council, Hanway Films and more.
In Glasgow from 5 -7 March, some of our speakers.
L-R Top Row: Allison Gardner - CEO at Glasgow Film / Catherine Bray - Journalist, commissioner, producer, writer and director / Corinne Orton - Creative Producer and Transformative Coach / Ged Fitzsimmons - Impact producer and founder director of impact distributor, Cosmic Cat Films.
L-R Bottom Row: Paul Sng - Filmmaker / Rafa Sales Ross - Film journalist and programmer/ Sandra Kinahan - Freelance film promoter, writer, and editor / Tejinder Jouhal - Director of Marketing & Distribution at Hanway Films.
Please meet our delegation!
Amit Kaur (She/her) Writer/Director
Amy Coop (She/her) Writer/Director
Carina Haouchine (She/her) Director
Carys Lewis (She/her) Writer/Director
Em J. Gilbertson (They/he) Writer/Director
Dr. Isa Rao (She/her) Director
Jessica Bishopp (She/her) Director
Juliana Kasumu (She/her) Director
Kelly Holmes (She/they) Writer/Director
Laura McBride (She/her) Producer
Lotus Hannon (She/her) Writer/Director
Maja Bodenstein (She/her) Writer
Natalie Hewit (She/her) Director/Producer
Noemie Nakai (She/her) Writer/Director
Sarudzayi Marufu (She/her) Producer
Solene Guichard (She/her) Writer/Director
Seemab Gul (She/her) Writer/Director/Producer
Tracy Spottiswoode (She/her) Writer/Director
Also attending Glasgow Film Festival will be our director Melanie Iredale (she/her), and Training Manager, Simone Glover (She/her)
Written response by Gina Tonic
It’s rare to come across a piece of media about fatness or a fat person that doesn’t begin and end with self esteem. Aubrey Gordon, the activist behind the popular blog Yr Fat Friend and podcast The Maintenance Phase, has always been pointed in ensuring her work doesn’t revolve around body image. In one of the last scenes of the documentary ‘Your Fat Friend’ by Jeanie Finlay, that follows Gordon’s life through her rise to fame as a spokesperson for fat activism, Gordon sits on a stool at her local bookshop in Portland and announces: “You can’t love yourself out of oppression.” The room claps and I wish I was there to cheer along too.
This precise articulation of a feeling felt by many in the fat people isn’t a one off for Gordon; it’s the reason she’s found such resounding success as a voice box for our community. The film is littered with them; stand outs include “The same things that are cause for concern in thin people are required social performances of fat people”. I’m amazed by Gordon’s ability to verbalise in person as well as on the (digital) page. As a writer and podcast host myself, I often feel a dissonance between my ability to self express in writing versus in on the spot cadences.
The documentary is detailed look at not just the rise of Gordon’s blog, her book and her public status but at the upbringing and society that shaped our fat friend into the person she is today. Gordon’s parents appear regularly, usually separately, to tell us how proud they are of their daughter and express regret at how they raised her. Both take the time to explain how they grew up hating fatness and how they automatically shifted that point of view onto their child. It stings to see Gordon’s family realise in real time how much they have been poisoned by fatphobia in their own lives and that they couldn’t protect their child from the horrors that fat people face every day.
What sucks the venom from the wound is Gordon’s unrelenting perseverance in loving those around her and critiquing the cultural norms that have made fat discrimination commonplace in lieu of anger at the individuals in her life. Gordon collects vintage diet books and laughs at them; Gordon dissects the origins of the body mass index on her podcast - both actions have the same result, pointing the finger at the profit margins that are made from convincing fat people to hate themselves and from encouraging thin people to hate them too. The audience is asked to question who benefits from their pain.
Mid film, as Gordon laboriously peels shrimp at a table in her home - at the same address that gets doxxed later in the documentary and brings subject and viewer to the painful point that fatness doesn’t just repulse people, but inspires homicidal thoughts in them - Gordon reveals that she is a diagnosed atypical anorexic. Alongside detailing her personal experience with disordered eating, Gordon uses the moment to dive into systematic marginalisations in the medical field: How fat people are often encouraged to partake in dangerously low calorie diets by doctors. How the parameters for being diagnosed with anorexia (the non atypical kind) includes having a BMI below 17. That the only difference between atypical and regular anorexia is the specific weight of the patient, a barbaric distinction when considering the condition this diagnosis applies to.
‘Your Fat Friend’ is a documentary that successfully uses key points in the life story of a successful writer and activist to hammer home the systemic oppression that the fat community faces. Not only in terms of medical care, but in accessibility, public safety, dehumanisation and more. Finlay and Gordon have masterfully produced a project that personifies the struggles that many fat people feel too ashamed to put into words. When talking on plane travel early in the film, Gordon says “I try and fail to fit into a space made for someone else” and the implications of her words still ring around my head. I haven’t heard a better way of explaining the fat experience - airborne and with both feet on the ground - than that.
Gina Tonic is a culture and sex writer from South Wales who has been named “the writer and editor empowering a generation of fat babes” by Dazed Beauty. With bylines in Vice, Refinery29 and more, in 2020 Gina founded her fat liberation publication, The Fat Zine. Holding the role of Senior Editor and podcast host at Polyester Zine, Gina commissions weekly written content and has interviewed the likes of Gemma Collins, Juno Birch, CupCakKe, Chloe Cherry and more. Gina has a passion for inclusivity, her own generous rack and lemon desserts, and is currently working on her first book.
You can catch our #ReclaimTheFrame screenings of YOUR FAT FRIEND, including post-screening recorded discussion with Director Jeanie Finlay and Star Aubrey Gordon 9-18 February. Learn more here.
Congratulations to all of the nominees for this year’s #EEBAFTAs, we’re thrilled to see #ReclaimTheFrame supported titles such as EARTH MAMA, HOW TO HAVE SEX, IS THERE ANYBODY OUT THERE?, PAST LIVES & RYE LANE amongst them.
Similarly to last year, the BAFTA nominations again present a mixed picture for marginalised gender filmmaking (directed/co-directed and/or written/co-written by a woman/women and/or non-binary people).
All but one of the nominees for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer are by women (see below for nominations) and in case of deja vu just under 50% (4/10) for Outstanding British Film are by women, which illustrates a stagnation with similar numbers for 2022 & 2023 nominations:
Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer - female nominees are:
BLUE BAG LIFE (directed by Lisa Selby, Rebecca Lloyd-Evans)
EARTH MAMA (directed by Savanah Leaf)
HOW TO HAVE SEX (directed by Molly Manning Walker)
IS THERE ANYBODY OUT THERE? (directed by Ella Glendining)
Outstanding British Film female nominees are:
HOW TO HAVE SEX (directed by Molly Manning Walker)
RYE LANE (directed by Raine Allen Miller)
SALTBURN (directed by Emerald Fennell)
SCRAPPER (directed by Charlotte Regan)
However the lack of films by women featuring in the Best Film and Director categories still illustrate how much of a gap still exists between female filmmakers and their male counterparts.
Just one film from a female filmmaker is nominated for Best Film and Director - Justine Triet for ANATOMY OF A FALL, given the longlist it’s such a disappointment that she isn’t joined by more of her peers.
Our research indicates that Director nominations for female filmmakers have decreased and plateaued from previous years (one in 2023, three in 2022, four in 2021 with zero in 2020).
ANATOMY OF A FALL (directed by Justine Triet) is also nominated in the Film not in the English Language category along with PAST LIVES (directed by Celine Song), both films also receive nods in the Original Screenplay category
Summer hit blockbuster BARBIE (directed by Greta Gerwig) was snubbed for both Best Film and Director categories but picked up nominations for Leading Actress (Margot Robbie), Supporting Actor (Ryan Gosling) and Original Screenplay.
Just one film by a woman is nominated in the Documentary category, BEYOND UTOPIA (directed by Madeleine Gavin), which is down from two in 2023 and three in 2022.
More nominations in the acting categories from films by women prove fruitful once again with four nominations in the Leading Actress, two in Leading Actor, two a piece in both the Supporting Actress and Actor categories:
Leading Actress:
Fantasia Barrino for THE COLOR PURPLE
Sandra Hüller for ANATOMY OF A FALL
Vivian Oparah for RYE LANE
Margot Robbie for BARBIE
Leading Actor:
Barry Keoghan for SALTBURN
Teo Yoo for PAST LIVES
Supporting Actress:
Danielle Brooks for THE COLOR PURPLE
Rosamund Pike for SALTBURN
Supporting Actor:
Jacob Elordi for SALTBURN
Ryan Gosling for BARBIE
There are also two nominations in the Animation category for ELEMENTAL (co-written by Kat Likkeland and Brenda Hsueh) and CHICKEN RUN: THE DAWN OF THE NUGGET (co-written by Rachel Tunnard).
In the shorts categories, all the films nominated in the British Short Animation category are films by women - CRAB DAY (written by Aleksandra Sykula), VISIBLE MENDING (directed by Samantha Moore) and WILD SUMMON (co-directed by Karni Ariel).
However just one film by a woman is nominated for British Short Film for JELLYFISH AND LOBSTER (written and directed by Yasmin Afifi).
Explore the full list of nominations at =
Watch this space for news on our annual virtual #ReclaimTheFrame roundtable with some of the nominees soon!
Sign up to be the first to hear at https://www.reclaimtheframe.org/sign-up-as-an-advocate
HOW TO WATCH THE NOMINATED FILMS BY WOMEN AND NON BINARY FILMMAKERS
ANATOMY OF A FALL is in cinemas now, click this link to find out where you can watch.
(SDH available)
BARBIE is available to watch on digital now, click this link to watch.
(AD & SDH available)
BEYOND UTOPIA is available to watch on digital from 31 Jan, click this link to watch.
(Korean language with English subtitles)
BLUE BAG LIFE is available on BBC iPlayer, click this link to watch.
(CC available)
EARTH MAMA is in cinemas now, click this link to find out where you can watch.
HOW TO HAVE SEX is available to watch on MUBI now, click this link to watch.
(AD & SDH available)
IS THERE ANYBODY OUT THERE is available to watch on digital now, click this link to watch.
(AD & CC available)
PAST LIVES is available to watch on digital now, click this link to watch.
(SDH available)
RYE LANE is available to watch on Disney+ now, click this link to watch.
(AD & CC available)
SALTBURN is available to watch on Amazon Prime Video now, click this link to watch.
(AD & SDH available)
SCRAPPER is available to watch on digital now, click this link to watch.
(AD & CC available)
