February is here, and the sun is finally out past 5pm THANK GOODNESS.

This month the team have let ME (Caris) loose with the newsletter, so buckle up and try not to hit that unsubscribe button toooo quickly.

January online was full of “back to 2016” posts wasn’t it? The music, the fashion, pre-brexit, pre-trump, the “simpler” feeling of that time.

Nostalgia isn’t really about the actual past (for the people who argued 2018 was a better year for film) it actually is about pain, ooft yeah we’re going there that early in the newsletter…

Named in the 17th century by a Swiss doctor, Johannes Hofer, nostalgia was the pain soldiers felt being away from home. Rather than missing actual ‘stuff’ it’s very much the ache of wanting something familiar when everything around you feels uncertain. Which… feels oddly relevant now, right?

The look of iPhones and the death of Tumblr aside, what was the outlook of women in film back in 2016 and why has the internet not mentioned that in their reflections? We think we know why.

In 2016 women directed only 7% of the top 250 U.S. grossing films, with 92% of those films having no women directors at all. Across key creative roles, like they were in most of the 2010s, writers, editors, cinematographers ….women were hugely underrepresented. At the BAFTAs that year, none of the Best Director nominees were women, and only a couple appeared among the Best Screenplay nominees (Meg Lefauve for Inside Out, Emma Donoghue for Room). Cannes had roughly 20% women directors, and on screen, women made up just a third of major speaking roles.

Fast forward to now in 2026, and the picture is… frustratinglyyy familiar. Women directed only 8% of the top 100 grossing films in 2025, and just 16% of UK and Ireland releases were directed or co-directed by women. Behind the camera across the top 250 films, women make up roughly 23% of key creative roles which yeah is an improvement from 2016 but still far off from parity.

A decade can hold a lot of change, but it also shows us how incremental progress really is. When the industry’s top only shifts by 1%, the work happening in independent film and short-form storytelling matters more than ever. It’s all connected, and it’s why we can’t afford to stop trying.

Sugar Daddy Film Festivals (and our lack there-of…)

While submissions have been pouring in at Women X, and our new team of previewers have been ploughing their way through the films. I’ve been working on the annual mountain climb which is trying to source funding, locations and stakeholders to help piece together the puzzle of an underfunded film exhibition weekend focused on women’s art.

It’s got me thinking a lot about festival growth, and not just ours. Over the past year, I’ve watched a few festivals scale rapidlyyy to bigger venues, bigger teams, wider reach, extended days, big parties and when I did some digging it was all thanks to private investment from family members.

No shade, there’s nothing wrong with that, but it shows how stacked the working class odds are at leadership level. Without family money to underwrite risk, growth often comes with debt, burnout, and instability. Plus there’s the lack of clarity isn’t there, are those events deemed successful because of the private budget behind them, when actually there’s some deep rooted issues that money can not fix. Like hiding your full programme because you were worried we’d discover you only programmed 15% women again, or every female member of your team leaving in a 12 month period…

And shockingly (but not) gender and regionality compounds that. Many women-led festivals report significantly lower submission fee income, in part because men are less likely to submit to women-led festivals, even when women are key creatives on the films. Plus festivals just having a city in their name attract more submissions compared to ‘regional festivals’

Fear not, this is not a whinge, it’s very much part of a bigger piece of work me and the team have been working on. Growth of film exhibition across the UK is vital, getting people back to cinemas to experience stories is important (because The Rip taught us a lot..) but having a fair and honest approach to all of this is also important, and filmmakers fit into this story more than you think…so watch this space.

Women X Alumni News

Once again we are in AWE of the continued wins of our little village of filmmakers!

Clare’s Law by Phoebe Brooks has been nominated for the RTS Student Awards 👏

Joy O Dance by Dawn Feather is screening at Northampton Film Festival and Dawn also been selected for the WFTV Four Nations Mentoring Scheme ✨

Dog Hair Sticks to Everything from Megan McRitchie and On The Twelfth Day of Findom from Caitlin Black & Joanne Thomson have both been selected for Glasgow Shorts 🎬

Bluff from Naomi Wright has been selected for Crystal Palace International Film Festival

Cherry B from Ornella Hawthorne Gardez screened at Indie Lincs

Learners from Emer Heatley is heading to DAM Short Film Festival

The Pilgrimage from Chakira Alin is now available to watch on Minute Shorts

Getting together

In a 2024 UK survey of over 4,300 screen-industry professionals, 32% specifically experienced bullying or harassment. We all know it happens, but when it pops up in unexpected places it can really throw you. I’ve encountered a couple of situations recently and just wanted to pop a reminder here that the good people at The Film and TV Charity are available to support you.

And if you ever feel that something isn’t quite right, follow your gut, and speak up in a safe space. We’re making independent films on next to no budget, nobody should make that process unkind and harmful to your wellbeing.

On a lighter note, I’ve had to postpone the Evolve retreat I mentioned in last month’s newsletter to Spring! Blame logistics, logistics, logistics. But actually, this is kind of a blessing. The weather will be kinder, I get more time to plan properly, and I’ve been getting so many messages from filmmakers wanting to understand more about industry trends and pitching docs/forms/presentations where it matters.

Sooo this means me and the team can rejig the schedule, book a bigger venue, and maybe even contemplate a London edition too. We got a big waiting list from last months’ call out, so fear not your names are with us and we’ll let you know once we have a date in the diary.

Spending the rest of this month with fewer throwbacks and more truth seeking. Nostalgia may comfort us, but honesty builds our future. Even in the hardest work and funding mountains we climb, can we all please remember still find ways to care and be kind to those we collaborate with, to those who support us and also ourselves.

They’re never going to let me solo author one of these again are they?

Lots of love,

Caris x

Rianne Pictures is a production company running since 2013, championing women in film, launching the BIFA accrediated international film festival Women X in 2019.

Caris Rianne is the Festival Director of Women X Film Festival, Founder of Rianne Pictures and an award winning filmmaker.