The BAFTA TV Craft Awards have once again highlighted a glaring lack of recognition for female directors, and the wider imbalance in the field.
Not one woman has been nominated in the best factual director category at the awards, leading to condemnation from We Are Doc Women, an organization dedicated to supporting female documentary directors, who lambasted the disparity in the nominations.
“We Are Doc Women (WADC) are both saddened and furious to discover that the BAFTA Craft shortlist for Best Director Factual is 100% male,” a spokesperson told Variety. “In 2020, WADW wrote to BAFTA as we were in exactly the same situation — after there were no women nominated in the best factual director category, despite the fact that three of the films nominated that year for best single documentary were directed by women.”
“In 2021, there was significant improvement: 50% of the nominees were female and it was won by a woman,” the spokesperson continued. “One step forward and two steps backwards is simply not good enough. Whilst BAFTA and the rest of the TV and content industry virtue signal around diversity, it would appear that women directors are simply still not getting on the lists. This calls for industry-wide change, from the broadcasters, SVODs, commissioners, the production community and BAFTA.”
We Are Doc Women is a U.K. network created in 2018 to support female directors and includes over 150 female directors, producers, assistant producers and executive producers working across documentaries and factual TV.
There are also no women nominated in the best fiction director category.
Katie Bailiff, CEO of Women in Film and TV (U.K.), told Variety: “It’s undoubtably disappointing to see no women nominated in these categories, but I actually think we need to go further upstream in the process to look at the opportunities to direct that women are afforded in both factual and fiction. What we need is for more women to get their hands on those big, meaty, award-winning documentary subjects and those larger, creatively ambitious projects and budgets. Unless female directors in both unscripted and scripted are coming through the pipeline at an earlier stage this problem will run and run.”
And Andy Harrower, CEO of Directors U.K. said: “It’s not about the set of nominations, it’s about the reflection of the industry that they give us. We’re encouraged to see diversity and representation in the emerging talent categories. But the lack of representation in the director categories clearly highlights the challenges directors face, particularly those from under-represented groups, in progressing past a certain point. The industry needs to do more to ensure that directors can pursue sustainable careers. Intervention at mid-career is needed to ensure talent doesn’t hit the same glass ceilings others have encountered in the past.”
Sara Putt, deputy chair of BAFTA and chair of BAFTA’s television committee, responded to the comments. “We are seeing progress in many areas of craft and particularly in our emerging talent category, where the gender split is 50/50 and includes writers and directors,” said Putt. “However it’s not translating effectively enough through the whole talent pipeline, and this year not in the director categories, for which we’ve seen a drop in gender diversity in entries, which then is reflected in nominations.”
“We all need to look harder at the barriers to further progression and ensure that we can provide women with a sustainable career path and the opportunities to fulfil their potential; and we wholeheartedly agree that there needs to be further industry-wide change,” Putt continued. “As an agent – in my day job – I know this does not adequately reflect the talented women in our industry, and within BAFTA we will be looking closely at this in terms of our entry requirements for awards. We will also use the data from this year’s entries to identify the areas of under representation that we will focus on in future BAFTA talent initiatives.”
