The meeting tackled global policy issues in film industry and their impact on local level. This year, the first and most important issue of Cinema: Backstage was “Gender Equality: myth or reality”.

Opening the conference, the OIFF president Viktoriya Tigipko has noted: "It’s not the first time that we raise the gender issue here at the festival, and we’re proud to be speaking of some positive changes and increased amount of female decision makers in the film industry". Having underlined the main goal of 50/50 parity between men and women, Viktoriya Tigipko has shown the statistics of world film industry in her presentation. It is quite interesting that film schools teach as many women, as men, yet further professional success is not equal. The bigger the budget of the movie, the less is chance that it will have a female director or producer.

Julia Sinkevych, OIFF general producer has noted: "There are many talented women in film industry, both in creative and managing positions, yet there’s no gender balance among decision makers. And this situation is not only familiar for the film industry. We launched the Cinema: Backstage” to underline that women have the same rights as men for job opportunities, for equal pay and prospective regardless of their profession". Julia added that OIFF has a room for growth in regard of gender equality: this year, 39 films on OIFF program including OIFF Children, shot by female directors, including 3 movies with man-woman direction duo.

Tamara Tatishvili, who represents Georgia in EURIMAGE and European Film Promotion, moderated the conference.

Roberto Olla, Executive director of EURIMAGES, the cultural support fund of the Council of Europe, has also joined the conference. He noted that reaching 50/50 parity will take time and significant effort. Since he started working on gender inequality issue in film industry in 2012, representation of women in film crews has grown from 23% to 31%. “Some countries think they don’t have a gender issue because they don’t have statistics. I used to think the same way. So first thing you have to do counting.”

Hanna Slak, representing European Women’s Audiovisual network (EWA) (Slovenia), Eric Garandeau, Consultant and adviser to the minister of Culture of France, Kate Kinninmont, Chief executive of Women in Film and TV, UK and Iryna Prokofieva, Culture Bridge program manager, Gender research coordinator at the British Council Ukraine were also among the speakers.

The second part of Cinema: Backstage included a panel discussion where experts exchanged their opinions and ideas on better highlighting the realm of gender equality policy and its importance. The discussion was joined by Julia Sinkevych (OIFF general producer, co-founder of the Ukrainian Film Academy, and producer), Yaroslava Kravchenko (Founder of Wild Theatre, public figure, activist, Ukraine), Nana Janelidze (film director, Georgia), Hanna Slak (director, Slovenia), Daria Zhuk (director, Belarus).

Ewa Puszczynska, the head of the International Competition Jury has shared her own experience. She said that a significant change has happened since she started as a producer, today we can see a lot of strong charismatic girls in film academies. Yet the stereotypes are not over even in 2018: “When we were presenting Pawel Pavlikovski’s “Cold War” at Cannes’ red carpet, I was asked to step aside not to get in the way when the photographers were taking pictures of the producer. I had to explain that I was the producer.”

Wild Theatre founder Yaroslava Kravchenko said: “We often hear about some “female style and approach” to directing. But if we made an experiment and asked people to figure out which movies are shot by women just by the style, no one would tell the difference”.

The discussion was co-moderated by Tamara Tatishvili and Kate Kinninmont.