The San Sebastian Festival publishes its second gender identity report on the people who work – in the categories of directing, production, screenplay, cinematography, music and editing – in the films viewed by the Festival selection committee and those which were finally programmed at the 68th edition, an unusual year in many ways, but also one from which conclusions can be drawn. This report also includes data from a gender perspective of Basque and Spanish production, with a view to obtaining a specific analysis of the reality closest to us.

In the 2,487 films viewed by the selection committee between October 2019 and September 2020, authorship tends towards professionals who identify with the male gender in percentages ranging between 65% and 80%. Once again, production, screenplay and editing are the most proportionate fields. Among the 110 films selected by the committee there is greater presence of the female gender in all categories, but never with a participation of more than 40%.

The analysis contains two significant exceptions, which coincide with two of the sections showing the greatest imbalance in the previous year: Perlak, where more than 70% of the selected films are directed by a woman, and Horizontes Latinos, where there are more female directors (61%), more female screenwriters (62%), more female cinematographers (54%) and more female editors (52%). If we look at the general comparison with the Festival’s 67th edition, the percentage of participation by the female gender has risen, not in the films viewed by the Festival committee, but in those selected and programmed in all of the professional categories analysed, especially in directing (+10.5%), music (+8.2%), screenplay (+8%) and production (+7.6%).

However, we mustn’t forget the rather unusual context in which these occur, in a year marked by the pandemic. More reliable data are those of Nest and the Ikusmira Berriak project development residency where, like in 2019, there is still greater participation by female directors and screenwriters. In this respect, the Festival maintains its commitment to monitoring and verifying whether the new projects by the female directors and screenwriters screened in New Directors access the official competitions of this and other festivals in the coming years, and if the female producers, cinematographers, editors and music composers from film schools go on to develop a career in films.

Like last year, when a study was published for the first time offering data on the presence of cinematic projects with the participation of women, the Festival trusts that this portrait will serve as a starting point for witnessing and participating in a significant evolution in coming years. The 2020 edition, more than masks and hand sanitisers, has left us with the image of the female directors to have received accolades from all of the juries corresponding to the Festival’s competitive sections: Official Selection, New Directors, Horizontes Latinos, Zabaltegi-Tabakalera and Nest, respectively: Dea Kulumbegashvili (Georgia, 1986), Isabel Lamberti (Germany, 1987), Fernanda Valadez (Mexico, 1981), Catarina Vasconcelos (Portugal, 1986) and Ashmita Guha (India, 1991).