Venice Jury Head Maggie Gyllenhaal Calls For Empathy In Politically Charged Times; Addresses Dearth Of Women In Competition: “It’s A Systemic Problem”

Venice Film Festival jury president Maggie Gyllenhaal called for empathy at the opening press conference for the 83rd edition on Wednesday, which gets underway against politically charged times.

Asked whether cinema should be political, Gyllenhaal replied that filmmakers and spectators needed to be open to all types of filmmakers and stories.

“To me, the answer has something to do with empathy. I think that film allows an opening into an opportunity to find empathy inside of ourselves. Personally, I don’t believe that there is any subject or any filmmaker that shouldn’t be heard,” he said.

“I think we can challenge ourselves to hear stories about the most corrupt, the most perverse people, because it opens up the opportunity to find empathy for those people, and even to look at the ways in which we might have a little bad guy inside us, a little perversity inside us, a little corruption inside us. Fight it as we might.”

“I think that if movies really are an honest look into other people’s experience, that they are fundamentally unavoidable. unavoidably political, as well as a lot of other things.”

Gyllenhaal is joined in the jury this year by Tunisian director and screenwriter Kaouther Ben Hania; English composer and artist Daniel Blumberg, Italian professor Francesco Casetti, French director and screenwriter Xavier Giannoli, the Afghan director and screenwriter Shahrbanoo Sadat, and the Hong Kong director and producer Johnnie To.

They did not take to the stage with Gyllenhaal, who was instead joined by the jury heads for the festival’s other competitive sections.

Dearth of women

Many of the questions focused on the fact that there are just two female directors in the main competition.

Gyllenhaal joked that it was proof that male directors were better than female ones before going into the subject in more depth.

“There’s a systemic problem,” she said.

She added that it was harder for women to get their films financed but also suggested there was another fundamental reason preventing female directors from breaking through.

“Could it be possible that the things that women, having had a different experience of being alive in the world. Want to make movies about are not always deemed high art. Who decides what’s good? Who decides what’s valuable?”.