for actress and director Ariane Labed, this 77th edition is “clearly not feminist”

Committed to the #MeToo movement, Ariane Labed, who presented her first feature film as a director, deplores the lack of parity in the Cannes selection with only four women out of twenty-two candidates for the Palme d’Or.

Despite some progress, the 77th Cannes Film Festival is still far from parity for French actress Ariane Labed, who has just presented September Sayings, her first feature film as a director. “It’s clearly not a feminist edition, it will be a feminist edition when we’re 50/50 in the programming because feminism is a question of equality (…) so we’re not there, but at least we left room for Judith Godrèche to present her short film“, declares the one who launched, with others, the Association of Actors (ADA).

“We are still very, very, very sorry that there are so few women in competition“, she added, estimating that the presence of only four women out of twenty-two candidates for the Palme d’Or was “notable and sad“.

During the photo session of her film, presented in the Un Certain Regard section, the director and her actresses struck a pose, hands in front of their mouths, like the gesture on the steps, at the start of the festival, by Judith Godrèche surrounded by dozens of women appearing in her short film Me toodenouncing sexual violence.

“We are arriving at the end of the festival and I thought that this gesture was going to be repeated throughout, naively“, she underlines, denouncing the smear campaign on social networks which affected Judith Godrèche and her daughter: “It’s amazing what happens after this action which is still just a sober gesture“.

The actress and director who signed an open letter in 2023 against the Cannes Film Festival’s treatment of sexual violence against women, nevertheless recognized that things were improving: “It’s certain that we don’t have people like Johnny Depp (in the opening film in 2023), we are not honoring people like Polanski this year, we can be happy about that. So yes, I think it’s progressing“.

“This year, we can feel that there is a little attention, which some will call a fear, but which I find absolutely reassuring. Now we feel that some people will think twice before speaking“, she estimated. And “this was not yet the case a year ago“.

“It’s the role of a festival like this to highlight female directors.“and realize”more clearly and more concretely that it is also its role to strive to be sure that we achieve parity, finally“, she insisted.

“But I’m not saying it’s over“, she qualified, tackling in passing “the words of Vincent Lindon” : “that men dare to ask us for a road map and how to behave, I find that really insulting“.”Feminism is not complicated, it is not intellectually hard to understand, they are quite capable“, the filmmaker is indignant. Even if, as an actress, she has always felt like a “film maker, filmmaker in English“, she recognizes that the fact of having put on the hats of screenwriter and director amounts to having “the full powers of narration“, which is “a pleasure”.

With September Sayingsthe adaptation of the novel Sisters by Daisy Johnson about the sometimes toxic relationship between two sisters she says she had “desire and need to make portraits of young women and women not seen before and in particular to be able to talk about sex among young girls without sexualizing them“.”I felt strengthened by this whole experience“, confided one of the two main actresses, the British Mia Tharia.