Eight years ago, director, producer and editor Daphne Schmon was at the Cannes market attempting to get financing for her debut narrative feature, “The Eye,” when she came to a realization: She didn’t know where to start.
“We had a meeting with an executive and he asked for the finance plan, and we just realized that there’s so little knowledge around the business side of it,” Schmon told Variety over coffee in London. Reflecting on her time spent at film school at Wesleyan, Schmon said: “It’s so interesting, there’s gender parity coming out of film school — so something’s happening between the film school level and Hollywood.”
This breakthrough moment led to the inception of Breaking Through the Lens, a nonprofit initiative advocating for gender equality in film by providing critical support during the financing stage. Schmon co-founded BTTL with Emily Carlton, her co-writer on “The Eye,” and the film’s star, Elpida Stathatou. In 2018, they held their first event connecting emerging filmmakers with trusted investors, and Schmon was shocked to see they had received RSVPs from studios like Lionsgate and Sony.
“There was a lot of hunger for an event like this,” Schmon said. “We realized it was a real bottleneck in the industry, this financing stage. A lot of the top investors don’t want to be put out there on a billboard. At the same time, they get hundreds of cold emails and they don’t have time to vet, so it was a really needed connector aspect.”
This year, Breaking Through the Lens’ Cannes presence is stronger than ever, with its annual cocktail event on Friday being headlined by a conversation between Kristen Stewart, whose directorial debut, “The Chronology of Water,” is premiering in Un Certain Regard, and Sonic Youth rocker Kim Gordon. Then, on Sunday, the organization will hold an exclusive investor showcase for this year’s cohort, which was selected by a jury including Diane Kruger and consists of five projects from non-male filmmakers.
Those in the cohort — Emily Thomas, Olivia Peace, Erin Sayder and Rita Baghdadi, Damiana Acuña and Isabelle Mecattaf — already received a €10,000 ($11,000) action grant to help their films move in the right direction. “€10,000 may seem like pocket change next to a feature film’s total budget, but it makes all the difference when the film is in late-stage development and that is the only cash funding available,” Schmon noted.
And, for the first time, Breaking Through the Lens was also able provide their filmmakers with accreditation to the festival and $2,000 to offset the cost of travel.
“We’re not just a talk or a panel, we’re all about creating change through action,” Schmon said. “I think any filmmaker knows that just attending these festivals can feel so out of reach and that can be a barrier in itself. And this, I have to say, is so unique in the industry just having attended multiple different labs — you’re often charged a fee if you get in, and you then pay your travel.”
Breaking Through the Lens currently has a presence at the “big five” film festivals, having recently launched at Sundance this year just as the winner of their first action grant, Nadia Fall, premiered her film “Brides” at the fest. Schmon hopes for Sundance and Cannes to become the “cornerstones” of BTTL’s programming, and notes that they have opened up an office in Greece in order to be eligible for European funding and are holding discussions to expand to Mexico. Despite their global push, since the U.S. does not have a central government funding body like the U.K. or France, BTTL will also make it a priority to “step in and offer grant funding on a large scale for American independent filmmakers – particularly women and marginalized directors,” Schmon said.
However, she acknowledges that the real change still has to come from the top down — and from those with the checkbooks. “We need actions to speak louder than words,” Schmon said. “There’s a lot of talk, a lot of good will, but when you look at the numbers they’re not really getting that much better. Only 13.5% of the top 100 grossing films of 2024 in the U.S. were directed by women, and an even more shocking statistic is that in 97 years of the Academy Awards, only three women have one best director. 97 years! So, we’ve got a long way to go.”
But change also needs to come from within. Schmon said there is still a “subconscious bias” among many execs in the industry, even those who are women. “I’ve definitely been in the room with women executives who have thought that I was an assistant, and they have directed the entire conversation to this DOP that I work with,” she said. “And I had to keep saying, ‘I’m the director.’ But that’s happened to me quite a few times; I myself have found sometimes I make assumptions. And I think that we all need to examine our own behaviors.”
Beyond amplifying women directors, Breaking Through the Lens also champions nonbinary and trans filmmakers, with three of its five filmmakers in the cohort this year identifying as queer. “Especially now with the cultural conversation and so much that’s at stake, it’s important more than ever,” Schmon said of this representation. “It’s essential that our film industry reflects our culture and our society, because films have the power to completely change people’s perspectives.”
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