15/09/2026

LYFE TUESDAY | SEPT 15, 2026

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Burstyn hails progress for women in film at Venice lifetime award

Injured during filming Burstyn, one of the few performers to achieve the industry’s“Triple Crown”of acting honours, won an Academy Award for the 1974 drama Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore and later collected a Tony Award and two Emmys for roles spanning stage, television and film. A high-school dropout who overcame a difficult childhood and studied under legendary acting teacher Lee Strasberg, Burstyn emerged as one of the most acclaimed performers of her age. Looking back at Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore , directed by a young Martin Scorsese, Burstyn said the film helped challenge outdated depictions of women on screen. “That script grew into a film that I think is credited with helping to change the consciousness of women worldwide,”she said. Before then, she added, most scripts portrayed women through a narrow lens. “Their husbands would go out and save the world. And when he came home, they’d make him a cup of tea.”

ACCEPTING a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Venice Film Festival recently, US actor Ellen Burstyn hailed the transformation of opportunities for women in filmmaking since she began her career more than six decades ago. Burstyn, 93, said film sets were once overwhelmingly male environments, with women largely confined to acting roles. “When I first started working, which was 150 years ago, there were no women on the set. There were no women crew. There was nobody, no woman behind the camera. It was all men.” She credited the women’s movement and in particular, feminist activist Gloria Steinem, who died this month, with helping transform attitudes across the industry. “Slowly that changed until finally it’s gotten to the point where women are handling heavy equipment without even thinking about it, and they’re integrated into the crews. “They’re not quite 50/50 but they’re close,” she said. W HEN Danish director May el-Toukhy was selected for the top competition at the Venice Film Festival in July, she was the only female filmmaker in a 20-strong field – with a movie “about the invisibility of women”. She joked about the irony in a press conference recently, while pointing out progress on gender bias made in the wake of the 2017 #MeToo movement appeared to be reversing. “After #MeToo, I think all of us were really aware of this gender imbalance. “And something has happened over the course of the last couple of years, where we’re kind of returning to, you know, what it used to be – and so we have to be better,” she told reporters. The protagonist of Woman Unknown is a bride-to-be struggling to hide her wartime secret – a relationship with a Nazi during the German occupation of Denmark during WWII. Women accused of having consorted with the enemy are seen in the film violently stripped, their heads shaved and red swastikas painted on their bare flesh. The powerful film, which drew enthusiastic applause after a recent press screening, is “about being objectified on one hand and on the other hand being unseen and voiceless,” said May. Selection process questioned The dearth of women in the top Venice competition has sparked nagging questions about the selection process and female representation. “I would have loved to have more female colleagues in competition,” she told AFP recently, while denying she felt “lonely” because she had “been the only woman in many, many different settings”. Venice boss Alberto Barbera angered many observers in July when he said the initial 20-1 male domination of the top competition was because the submissions from women “were not enough to put them into the competition”. Since then, the festival has added another film co-directed by a woman, the documentary Naza about the Israeli killing of civilians in Gaza, which premiered on Sept 10. el-Toukhy, a Danish-Egyptian director who has worked on Netflix’s The Queen , said she had encountered gender bias throughout her career and even with her latest film. “When I pitched the film to people, I could see that they were glazing over because they were, like: ‘Oh, another Second World War film,’ which I feel is unfair because we’ve told so many stories about the male experience during war or post-war and we haven’t really explored what it meant to be a woman during that time as much,” she said. After film school, she said she struggled to find financing for her first film. “I think it took me six or seven years,

Burstyn also revisited the making of William Friedkin’s 1973 horror classic The Exorcist , describing it as transformative and physically painful. “Bill Friedkin was an extremely talented director, but he was also one of those directors that would do anything to get the shot,” she said, referring to a stunt that left her with a lasting back injury. “It was a life-changing experience, but it was painful, physically painful.” Honoured in Venice for a career that has continued into her 90s, Burstyn is still working and has two works screening this year: Kornel Mundruczo’s road movie Place to Be and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s 17-minute short Flesh Impact , where she plays Marilyn Monroe, imagining that the actress lived to be 100. Asked what drew her to a project after more than half a century on screen, Burstyn offered a simple answer: “If it makes me laugh, that’s good. If it makes me cry, that’s good. If it makes me laugh and cry, that’s terrific.” – Reuters

Burstyn receives the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement award at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival. – REUTERSPIC

Danish filmmaker rebukes industry as gender ratio slips o Rare woman director in Venice sees sector’s backsliding on gender

about are not always deemed high art?” Gyllenhaal said in the first week of the festival. Award-winning Italian actress Jasmine Trinca said recently: “When I see that there is only one woman in competition, I’m alarmed, I’m angry. “I think it’s a question we really need to ask ourselves and confront.” A study from the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative described 2025 as a “Great Recession” for women directors in the US: Just nine women were attached to the 100 top-grossing films at the box office. Only three women have won an Oscar for Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow, Chloe Zhao and Jane Campion.

whereas my male peers, they were much faster than me. “My second film was really hard to get done as well,” she explained. ‘Structural’ She sees the under-representation of women at the top of the industry as a “structural problem” – echoing a similar point made by American star Maggie Gyllenhaal who is head of the competition jury in Venice this year. “I do think it’s much harder for women to get their films financed. “Also, could it be possible the things that women, having had a different experience of being alive in the world, want to make movies

el-Toukhy attends the red carpet event before the screening of Woman Unknown at the Venice Film Festival. – PICS FROM AFP

Gyllenhaal says the film industry is still enacting barriers for women filmmakers.