Citing a “highly misogynistic” essay that exemplifies the “behaviors” her film is designed to condemn, director Coralie Fargeat has pulled her horror satire The Substance from Poland’s Camerimage Film Festival. Fargeat, who also mentioned that the film’s director of photography, Benjamin Kračun, would similarly be ditching the cinematography-focused fest, is just the latest creator to back away from the event after its founder, Marek Żydowicz, published an essay last week titled “Time For Solidarity” in Cinematography World.
Per THR, Żydowicz’s piece was responding to a recent petition from organization Women In Cinematography, which was calling on Camerimage to do more to support the work of women cinematographers. The festival founder seemed to balk at the suggestion, writing in response that such calls to focus on women in cinematography “Raises a question: Can the pursuit of change exclude what is good? Can we sacrifice works and artists with outstanding artistic achievements solely to make room for mediocre film production?”
The implicit assumption there—that a shifting of focus to include more work from women in the field would lead to “mediocre” films being elevated over “outstanding” ones—provoked a pretty immediate outcry, leading organizations like The British Society of Cinematographers to issue letters calling Żydowicz’s comments “profoundly misogynistic.” Żydowicz, for his part, says he’s been misinterpreted, and that he’s working with Women In Cinematography to craft new Diversity and Inclusion policy for the festival, which he later posted online—although WIC, in turn, says it wrote the policy, and Żydowicz only responded to it after everybody started yelling at him. In any case, the damage has been done: Steve McQueen announced this week that he wouldn’t be attending the fest’s screening of his new movie Blitz, which is set to kick off the festival, and now Fargeat has pulled her buzzy Substance from being shown entirely. (Talk about not respecting the balance.)
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