For the first time, 50 percent of film projects that received production funding in Norway in 2024 had women in key creative roles (director, producer and screenwriter), according to the latest figures from the Norwegian Film Institute (NFI). The share of women in projects that received development and production funding together in 2024 was 49 percent. Female directors also had larger production budgets on average than their male counterparts. Over the last five years, the share of women in funded projects has steadily increased to an average of 48%. Women now account for 67% of drama series producers and 61% of feature film producers.
However, challenges remain. While 50% of funded projects feature women in key roles, only 42% of applicants are women. Encouraging more female filmmakers to step forward is the next step in ensuring sustainable gender equality in the industry.
Gender equality and diversity, both in front of and behind the camera, has been part of the Norwegian Film Institute's film policy in recent years. To this end, the NFI has activated a positive action policy that has resulted in a strong push for gender balance in film.
Kjersti Mo, Director of the Norwegian Film Institute (NFI), says: "It is encouraging to see that our allocation of production grants in 2024 is equally divided between women and men... For the first time since we started recording gender parity statistics, female directors have larger budgets than their male counterparts in 2024. This will fluctuate over time, but it breaks the pattern we have seen in the past".
Between 2020 and 2024, women account for 48% of projects receiving development and production funding from the NFI.
The proportion of women applicants remains significantly lower, averaging 42 per cent over this five-year period. The consistently higher proportion of women among grant recipients compared to applicants can be attributed to NFI's goal of 50/50 gender equality among Norwegian filmmakers.
The share of female producers remains consistently high in 2024. For feature films, 61% of the producers of projects receiving production support are women. For drama series, the proportion of women reaches 67 percent, although the number of grants is lower in this category.
The proportion of female producers is highest over time, averaging 57 percent from 2022 to 2024.
The NFI allocation statistics show that the share of female film professionals in Norway is significantly higher than the European film industry average. Comparable figures from the European Audiovisual Observatory for women professionals in key positions in feature films for 2019-2023 average 25 percent for women directors, 29 percent for women screenwriters and 31 percent for women producers. The corresponding figures for TV/SVOD fiction are 27 per cent, 37 per cent and 43 per cent.
Another measure of gender equality in the film industry is the size of production budgets available to directors. For feature films between 2020 and 2024 in Norway, films directed by men have the largest average production budget at NOK 38 million. Feature films directed by women have an average production budget of NOK 33 million during the same period.
In 2024, however, feature films directed by women will have the largest average production budgets, with an average of NOK 45 million, compared to NOK 35 million for films directed by men. The figures fluctuate considerably from year to year, but the 2024 result goes some way towards leveling out previous differences.
In 2024, the NFI awarded a total of 73 production grants to projects with Norwegian majority producers, covering the formats documentaries, feature films, drama series and short films. 18 feature films with Norwegian majority producers received production support from the NFI in 2024.
The NFI awarded a total of NOK 252.7 million in production grants to feature films and drama series in 2024.
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Photo credit: Anu Malhotra
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