Afghan director Shahrbanoo Sadat, known for opening the 76th Berlinale with her latest feature No Good Men, didn't mince words about the challenges. "The discrimination did not start at the festival, but it started at the development level," she stated, reflecting on the glaring lack of films by women in competition at this year's Venice Film Festival, where she served on the main jury.

Joining her was Serbian director Jelena Maksimović, whose film Until the Day Ends played in Venice's Orizzonti section. Both filmmakers agreed that securing financing often demands a certain conformity, a barrier that disproportionately affects women. Maksimović recounted the struggles in Serbia, where the national Film Center Serbia faced severe funding cuts due to political retaliation against filmmakers supporting student anti-corruption protests. While a recent student victory offers a glimmer of hope for systemic overhaul, she noted, "Even when the film center worked normally we had a difficult time financing our films."

Sadat highlighted a similar "cultural mafia" in Afghanistan—a network of older men that makes it near impossible for women to gain access without significant compromise. Her own path involved connecting with the European filmmaking system, though she quickly added that even this alternative isn't free from inequality. She described the gender gap in European funding as "treated so normally," leading to a lack of proper development support that results in fewer women-directed films making it to major competitions.

The discussion then turned to the double standards women face. Sadat recalled Venice artistic director Alberto Barbera's controversial comments to Variety in July, justifying the festival's single woman-directed competition film, Woman Unknown (which went on to win the Golden Lion), by saying it was "the only one we found of adequate quality to compete internationally." Sadat contrasted this with her observation that "there were films that were just bad, but they are made by male directors. But women directors are not allowed to make bad [films]." This sentiment underscores a pervasive issue: women are held to an impossibly high standard, where anything less than perfection is penalized.

Both directors emphasized the urgent need for structural change. "We have to change the systems – start with the fundings, the committees," Maksimović urged, expressing concern that current efforts might be more tokenistic than truly transformative. Sadat, drawing on her experience from a war-torn country, stressed that change doesn't always come in grand gestures. "We do not think of the future; we think about the present. Change can start from little things. I don’t think that we should wait for the bigger changes, they happen like little by little, over the course of a really long time."

The frank conversation served as a powerful reminder that while visibility for women in film is growing, the foundational issues of equitable funding and unbiased gatekeeping remain critical battlegrounds for true progress.