Diversity among directors still low in Hollywood

Minority film directors remain overwhelmingly under-represented in Hollywood according to a new report from the Directors Guild of America.

The results of the annual study show that in 2017, just 16 per cent of films were directed by women and only 10 per cent came from filmmakers of colour, the latter statistic at the lowest it’s been since the DGA started reporting in 2013. The figures emerge in a year that saw notable successes for minority directors, including Jordan Peele’s (pictured) Get Out and Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird.

“It’s outrageous that we’re once again seeing such a lack of opportunity for women and people of colour to direct feature films,” DGA president Thomas Schlamme said.

This year saw the DGA expand their typical data set to include films that earned less than $250,000 at the box office. This subset was slightly better for female diversity with a 14% showing but with films that made more than $250,000 (Dh918,125), the number went down to 9 per cent. Ethnic diversity was at a new low for the study. Of the films that made over $250,000 at the box office in 2017, only 14 directors of colour were involved, down from 21 in 2016.