More than producing an action plan or any concrete steps to further change, the CineLink Industry Days’ Thinking Inclusion Policy panel at the Sarajevo Film Festival instead provided a forum for a range of senior industry executives to take stock of the progress already made, and to compare and contrast the unique requirements of their home territories on this delicate issue. Vital to the discussion were questions of intersectionality and transparency as well as policy shifts that could bring about diversity and inclusion in more significant ways than just commissioning projects from a wider range of authors.

Presented by MEDICI Training - The Film Funding Journey, and compèred by Tamara Tatishvili of that very organisation, the experts on stage at Sarajevo’s Hotel Europe were Kristina Börjeson, head of Production at Film i Väst; Neil Peplow, director of Industry and International at the BFI; Nataša Bučar, managing director of the Slovenian Film Centre; Fatih Abay, diversity and inclusion officer, European Film Academy; and Caterina Bolognese, head of Gender Equality for the Council of Europe.

Abay was the first panellist to take the mic, speaking proudly of “the new agenda at the European Film Academy” and repeating, “Everyone should have fair and equal opportunities in the sector.” He has “been talking to people of colour in Germany and also in Europe, and the main challenge is actually accessibility”. Furthermore, “the industry and institutions – they’re very strong structures. We need new voices, new perspectives. Europe is a very diverse entity, but within those diversities, there are different national narratives.”

The BFI was talked up across the panel as a pioneer in this area, but Peplow was keen to emphasise the further steps it is taking and its evolving attitude to issues like disability inclusion. The organisation “needs to address some underlying issues internally, looking at covert or subconscious racism which inform decisions, and to challenge ourselves constantly. […] We want to make the workplace more representative and do that through behaviours and cultures that are inclusive. Not short-term initiatives, but long-term interventions that can be improved upon. Also, we need data that measure them,” he went on to say.

Börjeson was more candid about the difficulties in promoting gender equality at Film i Väst. “Some of us understood immediately, while others did not,” she said. “My recommendation for funds doing this is to get the people on board internally first. Because now, maybe some of us were fairly well prepared, but some were not at all prepared. We constantly went into discussions arguing, and we didn’t really have the best arguments.” She also acknowledged the disparity between processes on diversity and gender equality in Sweden, and that there was “a social democratic government for 40 years, with the gender discussion moving forward – it was a natural thing in Sweden. We were much further ahead with that than with diversity.”

Bučar spoke optimistically of the “softer” approach, saying that merely bringing up and gathering data on the dearth of female filmmakers in Slovenia created a platform for change. After a short slide presentation, she concluded by saying that her organisation “wanted to motivate young women to start working and applying for money. The first female director in Slovenia made a feature in 2001; in Sweden, it was in 1911. At the moment, we have five female directors in production.”

“I’m not really from the film industry, but I’m delighted to see gender mainstreaming in action in film,” Bolognese began by saying. Her contribution to the panel also touched upon more qualitative research on issues such as gender stereotypes and content monitoring in films. “Gender stereotypes truly undermine freedom; they restrict creativity, and limit women and men, and people who don’t identify as either, to particular categories and roles,” she continued. “To combat sexism in media, there are examples of measures that can be taken. There are different tools: you could go soft, you could concentrate on awareness-raising and voluntary measures. We can go further, though, as we still see so much of the male gaze in cinema.”