Why Directing Actors Is Like Being a Psychologist

Earlier this month, the Geena Davis– and Trevor Drinkwater–founded Bentonville Film Festival, based out of Arkansas, kicked off its second year of pushing inclusive films with female-driven voices into the mainstream. Using research from the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, which revealed that “across 1,565 content creators, only 7 percent of directors, 13 percent of writers, and 20 percent of producers are female,” a 4.8-to-one male-to-female ratio behind the scenes, 34 films were selected out of 500 for the slate. To shift that ratio in mainstream films, BFF is the only festival that guarantees the winners of the narrative, family film, and audience award categories distribution through corporate sponsors that include AMC and Walmart. Read More…