Breaking into show business, apparently, is all about who you know, and the Female Eye Film Festival helps women and non-binary people make connections in the industry.
Leslie-Ann Coles and Norma Hoy held a screening event called The Female Eye in Toronto in 2001 after Coles noticed a lack of female directors on the festival circuit.
Coles submitted her debut film, In the Refrigerator: Spirit of a Hunted Dancer to festivals in 2000, which nearly led her to the 73rd Academy Awards.
She said she wanted to know whether there were so few, or if festivals were not programming female-directed films.
The inaugural festival showed 42 films at the Bloor Cinema directed by women or non-binary people.
Coles said she never intended for the event to become an annual film festival, but 24 years later, it has become an internationally recognized festival. The festival usually runs in the summer, but this year it was rescheduled to Oct.14 to 19.
The festival tries to counter the findings of a 2025 study by Stacy L. Smith and Katherine Pieper, with USC Annenberg’s Inclusion Centre, who analyzed “the 100 most popular films as listed on Box Office Mojo” over the last 18 years and found only 6.6 per cent of those directors were female.
Nearly four out of five female directors with one top film have not directed another, the study showed.
In the top 100 films in the last 18 years, Tyler Perry has directed 18, Steven Spielberg has directed 12, and Ridley Scott and Clint Eastwood, each directed 11, the study found.
The research showed that in the same category, Anne Fletcher and Lana Wachowski each have four films, Greta Gerwig directed three, and 17 other female directors each have two.
The study concluded Hollywood’s female directors’ employment was “clearly uncoupled” from their success.
A standout moment for Coles at the festival was in 2006 when Deborah Kampmeier, a director from New York, called her to consider her film, Virgin, a two-hour feature film denied by film festivals.
Coles watched the film and was “blown away,” and accepted it for FeFF. But Kampmeier was stalled at a border crossing. An hour before the screening, Kampmeier was carrying two massive 35 mm film cartridges down the streets of Toronto.
The film starred an unknown actress at the time, Elisabeth Moss, who would later reach stardom from her roles in Mad Men and The Handmaid’s Tale.
Moss attended FeFF that year. Coles went to a “weird prop shop” to get an honourary best actress award.
Coles said she knew she was going to be “a huge star.”
She said Kampmeier has an incredibly successful career and was an honorary director at FeFF in 2020.
Lia Cavasotto joined FeFF as an intern in 2017 and has held the role of script development officer since 2022.
The story editors at the script development workshop give “incredible notes,” where screenwriters make industry connections, Cavasotto said. She said the public is encouraged to attend script readings.
The FeFF schedules are published on their websites and social media platforms.
Cavasotto said festival programming, which she helps curate at FeFF, is narrative and affects which films are selected.
"It's a creative art. It's not like this film is good, this film is bad," Cavasotto said, adding that festivals are creative pieces in themselves, and denial does not equate to the quality or validity of the work.
Coles said she is most proud of FeFF for curating each film program.
FeFF is known among filmmakers for contextualizing their films thematically, creating a better overall viewing experience.
Chris Hamilton said she has been working with FeFF since 2023. She first came to the festival in 2022 as a director, submitting her film Go on and Bleed.
"The reason why I was really interested in Female Eye is because it has excellent press all over the world, plus it's part of the Canadian Screen Guild Awards," Hamilton said.
She is now the festival’s development manager.
This year, FeFF will be launching a new documentary category, Coles said.
There is a “glaring gender disparity” among the invitees to documentary film festivals, she said.
"So hopefully this is kind of going back to our roots where we were trying to address a kind of gender equity in the international film festival world," Coles said.
Hamilton said her work has been impacted by the festival by recognizing the vitality of industry connections.
"The really big strength of The Female Eye is they're very good at networking," she said.
It is a fertile environment for both aspiring and established filmmakers, Hamilton said.
She said FeFF is imperative to sustain female filmmakers and to get women into decision-making positions in the film industry.
Cavasotto said most of her film career has been in female- and non-binary-focused spaces and is thankful for that.
"It's just always a more collaborative space,” Cavasotto said, “there's more respect. There's more space for creativity and space to speak up."
