UN Women brings gender equality to the agenda of the 41st Istanbul Film Festival

On the occasion of the 41st Istanbul Film Festival UN Women organized “#IamaWoman on Silver Screen Talk” together with the National Goodwill Ambassador Demet Evgar. Organised on April 13 in collaboration with the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (IKSV), the event addressed common stereotypes and discrimination against women in filming industry and reached an audience of over 25 thousand people on live broadcasting. The talk facilitated a discussion between UN Women Goodwill Ambassador and actor Demet Evgar, Film Producer Aslı Filiz, and Director Ceylan Özgün Özçelik covering issues like challenges of being a woman producer, actorand director, gender inequalities in filming industry, which cause systematic discrimination against women. Under the moderation of Prof. Nezih Orhon, the talk provided a platform for an intergenerational discussion about the share of women’s stories on the movie screen, women’s positioning in films, and the necessary steps to be taken in the film industry for social transformation. The talk was organized with the financial support from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency.  

#IAmAWoman on Silver Screen talk has been the first event conducted as part of #BenKadınım [#IamaWoman] campaign run by UN Women in collaboration with Demet Evgarkicked off in March 2022. Evgar hanged a banner at a public space in central Istanbul calling for women to realize their potential and transform the society. The campaign aims to make real women’s stories visible and promote women’s empowerment. Following the banner movement, #IamaWoman on Silver Screen Talk welcomed banners created by university students with messaging around increasing the share of women’s stories in the film industry, promoting women protagonists and upholding women’s representation in production roles backstage.

At the event Demet Evgar stated that gender inequalities are being reproduced in films and TV shows and emphasized that women characters are created with a male perspective. “We always know the civil status of female characters in films and TV shows, whereas we usually do not know that of male characters. The woman is either a saint or a sex object. They do not prefer blonde hair in mother roles and mothers cannot be sexy. Young and attractive women, on the other hand, always need a male hero,” highlighted Evgar. “We want to see heroines. This geography is home to many heroines, and they are everywhere. Heroines must be visible. These women can be a blonde mother, a plus size young woman, an engineer or a pilot one… We need projects free of stereotypes, telling women’s stories from the eyes of women, not men. This is what #IAmAWoman aims for.”

Director Ceylan Özgün Özçelik addressed prejudices and violence against women in the film industry, and gave some examples. “When a male director stops the film set for a couple of minutes, they say “he’s thinking”, but when a women director does that, the whole set goes “whoops, she will mess it up.” We are exposed to such things and worse,” said Özçelik during her remarks “Violence is not always physical, there is invisible violence everywhere.Films should tell our stories. We are sick of watching women characters who are under the wings of a man, trying to please him, or who only suffers. We need to show real women.”

Talking about the challenges she faced in the film industry, producer Aslı Filiz pointed out the effects of the inequality on women producers and directors. “Prejudices and inequalities are the biggest barriers to women’s presence in the industry. It is always harder to find financial support for projects directed by women or featuring women protagonists. Women producers and directors are mostly independent in Turkey because we cannot work otherwise,” underlined Filiz. “You have to work more than three times as much as men on set, you have to assert yourself more. This system must change, gender equality must be achieved in the film industry. What we watch has the power to transform us.”

UN Women Turkey plans to be on the agenda with new events in the coming periods with the #BenKadınım campaign so that women's voices are heard more and real women’s stories are more visible in all aspects of their lives including in cinema and media.