Shahrbanoo Sadat and Jelena Maksimović Hit Back at Discrimination in Film Funding at Tokyo Festival Talk
Afghan director Shahrbanoo Sadat and Serbian director Jelena Maksimović said unequal access to film funding holds women back, during a Tokyo International Film Festival discussion. They argued that discrimination starts before films reach festivals, when funding decisions shape which projects can be made and whose work is seen.
Maksimović said Serbia’s film fund had its funding cut by the outgoing government after filmmakers backed student anti-corruption protests, while Serbian filmmakers already faced limited budgets and difficulty finding co-production partners. She welcomed the student movement’s election victory but said repairing the damage would take time. Sadat described barriers in Afghanistan as controlled by a male-dominated network and said she turned to European filmmaking, which also has inequalities.
In short
- Funding barriers can exclude women before their films reach festivals.
- Serbia’s film fund lost government funding after protests.
- Sadat sought opportunities in European filmmaking.
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The case for
Unequal access to film funding can prevent women and filmmakers from less powerful or connected networks from making work in the first place, so festival visibility alone cannot address the problem. Maksimović’s account also suggests funding decisions may be used to penalise filmmakers for political expression, making fair and independent support important to artistic freedom.
The case against
Funding bodies operate with limited budgets and must make difficult choices among many projects; differences in awards do not by themselves establish discrimination, and decision-makers may argue that artistic criteria and financial viability should guide allocations. Where funding is cut amid political conflict or public spending pressures, supporters of the decisions might also see it as a broader budget or governance choice rather than punishment, though the reported account raises questions about that explanation.
Explained simply
Film funding is often needed to pay for the development, production and distribution of a film. Public funds and partnerships between companies in different countries can help projects get made, but the money available is limited, so decisions about who receives it can shape which stories reach audiences.
Shahrbanoo Sadat is an Afghan director, and Jelena Maksimović is a Serbian director. Their experiences reflect different obstacles: Sadat described a male-dominated film industry in Afghanistan, while Maksimović spoke about reduced state funding in Serbia and the challenge of finding partners to finance films.
Funding decisions matter because barriers at this stage can affect whose work is made and seen, long before films are considered for festivals. The discussion raised questions about how political pressures and unequal access to resources can shape film industries.
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