Only one of nine Oscar shortlisted Best Foreign Language Films was directed by a woman

Bruce Fessier
Palm Springs Desert Sun
Directors including (from left) Fatih Akin, Ildiko Enyedi and Samuel Maoz participate in the Foreign Language Oscars Shortlist Panel Monday at the Annenberg Theater.

Eight of the nine filmmakers shortlisted for a Best Foreign Language Oscar nomination spoke Monday at a Foreign Language Oscar panel moderated by Variety's chief film critic, Peter Debruge. Only Alain Gomis, director of Senegal's "Félcité,” couldn’t attend the Annenberg Theater event and he sent a video with a short message.

But what the panel did not discuss made a powerful statement. Only one of the nine shortlisted directors is female and that was so striking, a woman angrily approached Debruge afterwards and accused him of ignoring Ildikó Enyedi, director of the Hungarian film, “On Body and Soul,” until the end of the event.

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Actually, Debruge did not ignore her. And when he and others convinced the spectator of that, she apologized for missing, or at least glazing over a part of the conversation.

I asked Enyedi if she was used to being the only female filmmaker in the room after a career stretching back to her first short in 1979, and she said it’s happening less and less.

“In Berlin (where her film won the Golden Bear for Best Film), the first thing I watched for when the lineup went public was how many females there were,” she said. “I was so happy that there were four and two of them more established than me because I didn’t want there to be an advantage, you know? I was very thankful it was not a topic.”

Enyedi, 62, hadn’t made a feature film since the award-winning “Simon, the Magician,” in 1999. She had made two shorts in 2004 and 2008, and had worked on a Hungarian TV series from 2012-2014, but she had worked steadily in feature films in the 1990s, after winning a 1989 award at Cannes for “My Twentieth Century.” So Debruge wanted to know if there was pressure on her to return to the limelight after all these years.

Enyedi said she hadn’t expected to return to the limelight.

“I didn’t decide not to make films,” she told the audience. “It just didn’t happen. I thought I’d come back through the side door with this film. I didn’t know it would make the festivals. This is the way we should do it.”

Enyedi, like others on the panel, said she never liked the competitive aspect of film marketing. She said it was a relief for her to come into Berlin with no expectations and then simply benefit from publicity machinery at the world’s second most important film festival after Cannes.

That Berlin win was almost 11 months ago and, as the year-long festival season culminates in Palm Springs, she says she's enjoyed this promotion more than she has for any other film.

“(Before,) I couldn’t switch from movie-making mode to sportsman mode,” she said. “This year, I watched it. My inner disposition was different.”

Debruge didn’t ask what it’s like to be a female filmmaker in today’s climate ,when Hollywood is more interested in gender parity and income equality than when Enyedi was cranking out features. But she said she didn’t want the climate to be a factor in how her film is measured.

“We are competing now,” she said of all the Shortlist filmmakers. “But, I love these guys. I love their films and I want to go forward on the basis of my film. The artistry. So, I am part of the conversation and I express my views, and so on, and we need more female filmmakers. But I don’t want to use it as an advantage.”

“On Body and Soul,” the story of a romance that manifests through a recurring dream, has one more film festival screening at 6 p.m. Wednesday at the Annenberg.