Waiting for the Spanish Kathryn Bigelow

Films shot by Spanish female filmmakers in 2021 had exactly half of the budget of those shot by male directors, according to the Las mujeres en el sector audiovisual del largometraje español report from CIMA (a professional organisation aimed at promoting the equal presence of women within audio-visual industry). In short, and using data taken from the ICAA, (a Spanish government organisation charged with the planning of policies to support the film industry and audio-visual production), on average, films directed by women cost one million euros, those with mixed-gender directors, between one and three, and those directed by men cost slightly over two million. However, if the glass ceiling exists, it’s not only budget related, but also thematical. 

On the Casa Paco podcast, Paula Ortiz mentioned to her fellow filmmaker, Paco Cabezas, that it is difficult for her to get funding for her audiovisual genre projects and made the joke that perhaps it would be easier for her to shoot a film about motherhood in her native town. Gema R. Neira, from Bambú Producciones complained in a Netflix panel that when she gives interviews for the series she scripted with Ramón R. Campos, she gets called by the media if it’s a romance (Velvet) or period film and they talk to him when it’s a thriller (Jaguar) or science fiction (The fence), while knowing that they always work in partnership. 

At the same time, the Goya Award for Best New Director has been monopolised for five years by young Spanish female filmmakers, and for the next edition, Alauda Ruiz de Azúa is already the favourite with her film Lullaby (Cinco lobitos). A similar trend is being observed with other awards such as the Gaudí and ASECAN Awards. Intimacy created, written, and starring Spanish women, is one of Netflix’s current international successes and is the most watched on the platform internationally in non-English languages. In addition, Ana Rujas and Claudia Costafreda’s creation, Cardo, is the most awarded production of 2021.

But is this a step forward in the visibility of female creators in the Spanish audio-visual industry, at least for the moment, placing ‘women issues’ in a box? Is it a matter of prejudice, or statistics? According to the Dirigir obras audiovisuales en España report on social labour, only 15% of working filmmakers in Spain are women. Is it a budgetary problem in cinema in general? Are public policies useful? 

Spanish female filmmakers and ‘commissioned films’ 

Cristina Andreu, president of the Association of Women Filmmakers and Women in Audio-visual Media (CIMA), has an answer to the last question, also backed up by the data in the report with which we opened this article: “They work. These grants, the ones with the largest budget. This year, there were 15 men and 14 women, before the maximum was 3. These Spanish female directors are already in a league of their own. Although, more factors will influence their budgets and because of production times, it could take two years to see the result”. 

The filmmaker complains that, yes, when it comes to women directing genre cinema, people come up to them with foreign references such as Jane Campion and her recent Western, The Power of the Dog, or Kathryn Bigelow’s awarded The Hurt Locker (2009), and Zero Dark Thirty (2021). At CIMA Impulsa, the program for the development of projects written by female scriptwriters, “we find that it’s women themselves who send us ‘stories about women’, I’m not sure if it’s because they think we’re only interested in those. It’s very difficult to break away from certain tendencies, and there’s a kind of self-censorship from the authors”. 

Andreu got nominated in the first edition of the Goya Awards in 1989 for Best New Director with her film Brumal, and Ana Díez won with Ander Eta Yul. It took this filmmaker almost a decade to shoot her second film Todo está oscuro (1997), which went unnoticed. Marking a big difference with Carla Simón, Pilar Palomero or Paula Ortiz’s current career growth. However, you could also say that “for the first time, they are hiring women to make commissioned films. Art film is great, but people have to eat and live. We’ve seen this trend for two years now”. 

One of the winners for that Goya Award was Arantxa Echevarría for Carmen & Lola in 2018. Her second feature comedy film, The Perfect Family (La familia perfecta), is commissioned and financed by Atresmedia. She explains to Cine con Ñ that she feels like an exception, “it still amazes me that the producer called me to do a comedy worth four million with José Coronado and Belén Rueda after having made a film about two Gypsy lesbian girls. It’s assumed be an absolute exception, it doesn’t happen. Usually, it’s very hard for them to call us for commissions or to use our scripts, which stray away from the four themes that are considered to be feminine – menstruation, maternity, or friendship”. 

The filmmaker stresses that “without more than two million euros, it’s impossible to make a decent genre film, to make a thriller, or even worse, science fiction, it’s impossible. Even Carla Simón herself said, after making Alcarràs, that it was an expensive film. Even if it seems simple and cheap, it took a long time to shoot, and that costs money”. She usually understands that it’s a matter of risk, “a producer has a budget of five million and needs to make double that, he has to choose between five directors and only one is a woman”. Following the same path as Echevarría, the author’s first feature and second commissioned commercial feature film, is now followed by previously mentioned, Ruiz de Azúa, who recently finished filming Love at First Kiss (Eres tú), a Netflix comedy. 

Breaking the ‘diamond ring’ 

In 2012, Trinidad Núñez, professor of Social Psychology at the University of Seville, published Ayer, hoy y mañana, mostrando talentos, together with Spanish female filmmakers Teresa Vera and Josefa Silva, in which they studied 138 materials from 72 directors. “Their accounts broke limiting social models and opened itself up social engagement. Consequently, I believe they show that it’s not about women, but about society”. She talks about the so-called ‘diamond ring’, which represents “who and how they choose, or how they support what they know, and what is trustworthy. And what is trustworthy carries a man’s name”. 

Núñez highlights that a decade ago, researcher and film critic Pilar Aguilar, had already pointed out women’s problem of access to financing: “female film directors who have already proven their credit worthiness, have several films, received awards, and who have a solid audience, get ignored by stingy producers, every time they present a new project. That’s why, “when we find exceptions, they’re useless, not suitable, because they are filmmakers who own their production companies with which they can support themselves. Cinema is a medium that depends on the budget”. 

“The presence of women decreases as we get to the most senior level positions in a company, and the same happens with big budget films in cinema”, says Elena Trapé, winner of the Golden Biznaga at the 2018 Malaga Film Festival with her film Distances (Las distancias), and who has just directed several episodes of Rapa for Movistar Plus+. “But my overall feeling is that there is a desire to reverse this in the industry. With new fiction films, they try to have at least one woman for every three directors. Although, it continues to surprise me that I question decisions that a 45-year-old man with the same professional experience as me, wouldn’t consider asking himself”. 

She calls altogether for both male and female Spanish filmmakers “to end the cliché that our industry compensates resources with imagination. No, man, talent needs support”. That’s why Trapé also believes that “we will, for sure, see a Spanish ‘Kathryn Bigelow’. There are more and more women with responsibilities in Spanish cinema. When I started shooting films, I had to go look for them under rocks, and within the past five or six years, it has turned around. Partly because certain clients such as streaming platforms, ask for it, so it’s a matter of time”. 

Series, authorship, and how many horses do you want? 

In fact, the ‘quota of female filmmakers’ demanded by the platforms comes hand in hand with a greater freedom to act, thanks to the larger budget recalls Arantxa Echevarría who directed Prime Video’s El Cid. “They told me they wanted a feminine touch, and my episode is the dirtiest and raunchiest”, she laughs. “You see people fornicating, small children on the ground next to pigs… I had a great time. They asked me how many horses I wanted for a scene like that one, how many tripods… because I’m used to having a low budget, I asked, as many as you can get”. 

Laura Jou, director of the feature film Life without Sara Amat (La vida sin Sara Amat), its sequel in a miniseries Cucut, and the upcoming Fácil, agrees that she exists within the ‘box’ we gave female authors for what we consider to be women’s issues. Although, she admits feeling comfortable in them: “In my case it goes hand in hand, it’s what interests me, the intimate stories. Even Cucut, has a gender focus as a thriller”, but she believes that “we’re doing well. In a few years, we’ll have reached the equality for which we are now positively discriminating”. She understands that in series “you are seen more as a director and not as an author, but even then, I have always worked with female showrunners”. 

On series and creative freedom, we asked a few questions to Pilar Nadal, co-creator, and showrunner of Parot, currently broadcasted on the Spanish channel RTVE and winner of the Best Screenplay category at the Berlin TV Series Festival. Much before, in 1998, she was the first female script coordinator for Spanish the series Periodistas. Of course, in the series the authorship is “watered down and it’s a cause we must fight for on a day-to-day basis, although they are more and more Spanish female showrunners, writers, and directors doing comedy, for example, such as Olatz Arroyo and Marta Sánchez’s Supernormal TV series”. 

Nadal agrees with Echevarría in feeling like an exception: “It’s not my reality, but it’s evident that it exists. I’ve been lucky to be able to work in all genres such as musicals, dramas, thrillers… I’ve never been told to not touch on a subject because it’s not ‘for women’, although I know of younger female scriptwriters who have had that happen to them and, it is especially ridiculous. As if men only told ‘men stories’”. Cristina Andreu from CIMA concludes: “How will we change society if we watch TV series that continue to use all stereotypes? It’s not just about us working, it’s also about us having our point of view in the audio-visual industry. Not only in independent work, but also on a commercial level”. 

Cover photo: Cucut – Massa D’Or Produccions