Winter Film Festival is a proud signatory of the 50-50 Parity Pledge.
We believe that the distribution of power needs to be questioned.
We believe that equality restores the balance of power.
We believe that diversity deeply changes representations.
We believe that the opportunity to work in an egalitarian and inclusive environment must be seized because we are certain that the equal sharing of power will promote profound creative renewal.
We are committed to using the power of numbers to raise awareness, increase the visibility of these issues and fuel the workshops that we will be leading to produce ideas, solutions, and opportunities.
For more information about the pledge, please visit https://www.parity.org
By taking the Pledge, festival signatories promise to do the following:
1. Compile statistics of gender and race of the directors of all the films submitted to selection, and when applicable, to also compile all members of the cast and crew mentioned in the registration process of the film.
For WFF 2025, we are proud to announce the following statistics for our selected films:
- 53% directed by women
- 24% directed by Black/African-Americans
- 15% directed by Latinx
- 32% directed by Asian/Asian-Americans
- 15% directed by Arab/Muslim/Middle-Eastern
- 15% directed by LGBTQ+
- 33% directed by first-time directors
2. Make public the gender and race of all the members of selection committees and programmers as well as all programming consultants.
For our 2025 Festival, we had 49 judges, comprised of 27 women, 22 men and 3 NB, from 8 countries, 15% Asian/American, 20% African-American, 15% Latinx, 6% Arab/Muslim-American and 13% LGBTQ+
Each submission must be watched by at least two men and two women.
3. Make public the gender and race of executive boards and/or boards of directors and to commit to a schedule to achieve parity in these bodies.
The Winter Film Awards Board of Directors are:
- George Isaacs (male, Latinx/African-American/Native American)
- Steffanie L Finn (female, Jewish)
- Lesley Sigall (female, Jewish)
- Vaughn Murphy (male, African-American)
- Joe Mauceri (male, Caucasian)