On the 9th of July, at the Cannes Film Festival 2021, we launched the CharactHer campaign, you can find the video of this launch on the European Commission’s youtube channel.

The European Commission & Collectif 50/50 advocate for gender equality and inclusion, not only in front, but also behind the camera in order to promote and ensure a renewal of representations and enable the audio- visual industry to remain culturally rich and vibrant.

Even today, gender quality is still far from being achieved – in addition to the obstacles women may encounter throughout their careers, a well-known factor for these persistent imbalances resides in the fact that:

  • certain sectors are still considered to be predominantly or exclusively “masculine”.

  • certain professions are therefore viewed as inaccessible by certain groups of individuals.

The impact of such views has sustained widespread practice of self-censorship, discouraging some young women or people from less privileged backgrounds from pursuing a wide panel of jobs.

We believe that the highlighting of inspiring “role models” with diversified backgrounds and experiences is an essential step to promote and ensure greater access to such careers: this is why we decided to launch “CharactHer”, a campaign aiming at:
– encouraging young women to pursue careers in domains which are traditionally considered to be “masculine” by showing them that in reality, women can access and succeed in these fields,

– highlighting – in addition to some of the most obvious positions such as directors/screenwriters – lesser-known positions in our industry in order to promote a great variety of potential career paths.

The film and media industries offer a wide range of professional opportunities that require a variety of different competences. If you’re ambitious, determined and passionate, there may be a job for you, no matter your gender or origin!

We have decided to film portraits of the following professionals: 

CINEMA

Cinematographer – Olympia Mytilinaiou (Greece) 

Show runner – Marie Enthoven (Belgium) 

Director/Animator – Anca Damian (Romania) 

Stunt performer – Anne Rasmussen (Denmark) 

VFX Supervisor – Gaia Bussolati (Italy)

Composer – Uèle Lamore (France)

Colorist – Susi Dollnig (Austria)

Key Grip – Maike Maier (Germany)

VIDEO GAMES

Game user researcher, accessibility consultant – Gwendolyn Garan (France) 

JOURNALISM

Safia Kessas (Belgium)

Paola Moscardino (Italy) 

Galya Prokopieva (Bulgaria)

The portraits of Uèle Lamore, Anca Damian and Anne Rasmussen were launched on the 9th of July and can be viewed here. We released the other portraits during different cinema and media events.