2026 Honorary Award

There is no clear-cut or single starting point in the history of the struggle for women’s rights. Nor indeed has it followed a straight path. The demands for equality by Olympe de Gouges and Mary Wollstonecraft, dating as far back as the late eighteenth century, were denied by the prevailing social order of the time. The Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 provided a decisive impetus to collective organisation which, in turn, led to the rise of the suffragettes, the feminists of the opening decades of the twentieth century and countless movements around the world that gradually secured rights that had been denied to women for centuries: the right to vote, to own property, to be legally free from male tutelage. While these were significant victories, they were never definitive: new reactionary forces, often backed by violent and authoritarian regimes, repeatedly fought back in an attempt to return women to a position of subordination and dependence.

An important part of this history cannot be understood solely through a list of individual figures, however important they may have been. Associations, conventions, research, debates, connections and alliances were absolutely necessary in order to turn demands into rights and gradually transform public institutions and private situations. Meeting and coming together in order to think, to pass on lessons learned, to defend one another and to take collective action was, and still is, one of the fundamental instruments of feminist emancipation.

In 1973, during Richard Nixon’s presidency, when the United States was witnessing both the victories of second-wave feminism, and the backlash against it, Tichi Wilkerson Kassel founded Women in Film in Los Angeles, an organisation set up to fight against the profound inequality rampant in the industry. Despite the talent of so many women filmmakers, creative decision-making and economic power remained largely firmly in the hands of men. And this was no minor political issue. In a century when the moving image became one of the most influential ways of representing the world, the power to create, write and direct films also determined which stories were told and from what perspective.

That first association was followed by others. Women in Film & Television International (WIFTI) was founded in 1997. Today it is an umbrella network for around sixty organisations from six continents. Its work is predicated on three basic ideas: connecting professionals, sharing knowledge and raising the visibility of their contributions. Through these connections, experiences are exchanged, common obstacles are identified and initiatives are taken to defend fairer working conditions in the film and audiovisual industry. Equality is never achieved through unprompted concession: it calls for structures and organisations that make it possible.
The growing presence of women directors at the Muestra de Cine de Lanzarote over recent years serves as a reminder of the amount of talent that had been denied opportunities for decades. It also reminds us that progress has been far from uniform and that much remains to be done. The Muestra de Cine de Lanzarote’s Honorary Award in 2026 recognises this demanding, diverse and collective endeavour. It is a tribute to something as simple as it is decisive: feminism’s capacity to open up paths that once seemed closed.