Brazilian star Fernanda Torres has suggested the only way for women to achieve parity in the film industry is to produce.
The actress, who enjoyed a buzzy 2024-2025 awards season for her Oscar-nominated and Golden Globe-winning performance in Walter Salles’s film I’m Still Here, was speaking on a high-powered panel devoted to women at the Taormina Film Festival.
She was joined on the stage by jury president Jane Campion, jury members Holly Hunter, costume designer Miyako Bellizzi (Marty Supreme), casting director Francine Maisler (Sinners), Amazon MGM Studios Head of Global Marketing, Film, Series Sue Kroll as well as Italian star Anne Valle and director Francesca Archibugi among many others.
The discussion proposed by festival director Tiziana Rocca examined the state of play for women in the film business and what needs to be done to achieve parity across the movie-making chain.
“The best way to overcome this problem for women and the difference around finance is for women, actresses to start producing… this is fundamental,” said Torres.
The star brought her mother, the famed Oscar-nominated actress Fernanda Montenegro, into the discussion, revealing a conversation she had with Lauren Bacall, who she befriended while on the awards season trail with Salles’ Central Station in 1998.
“Lauren Bacall said to my mother one day, ‘But Fernanda, you’re working all the time. You do theatre, cinema…and I’m waiting for invitations… it’s incredible how much you work.’ I think my mother worked so much and continues to work because she produces her own things in Brazil,” said Torres.
“The important thing to do is not wait for the invitations because the market will be pro-man and with all these problems and I think the difference is when you have someone like Jane [Campion] who is directing or specially if we start to produce. That’s what we need to do in order to change the market and not only complain that the market is for men.”
Campion, who cut swathes in the film business as the first woman to win a Palme d’Or for The Pianist said she had striven for parity on her sets but said the drive for parity should not be at the expense of also working with men.
I’ve always had at least 50% women on my sets, just because it feels more comfortable to me. Women bring a sort of sense of, I would say, care and love. That’s really important and helpful to the actors who, for me, are the most important people. They need to feel love and care,” she said.
“I do also believe that we don’t want to live in a world which is polarised about power. We need to share power, men and women. It’s super important. We’re all human.”
