Shahrbanoo Sadat Slams Film Funding Bias at Tokyo Festival Talk
- The Scoop: Shahrbanoo Sadat and Jelena Maksimović used Tokyo International Film Festival’s Tokyo Talk stage to indict gender and nationality bias baked into film financing.
- Location & Setting: The session unfolded at the TIFF Lounge in Tokyo Midtown Hibiya, with Sadat present on the back of her Berlinale-opening feature No Good Men.
- Industry Stakes: Both filmmakers argued the bottleneck sits at development funding, where institutional gatekeeping quietly filters out women and filmmakers from smaller territories before production even begins.
Shahrbanoo Sadat and Jelena Maksimović took the Tokyo International Film Festival’s Tokyo Talk stage to name the financing system itself as the barrier, not the festival circuit.
The session at the TIFF Lounge in Tokyo Midtown Hibiya turned a spotlight on development money, where both directors say exclusion is engineered long before cameras roll.
Development Money Is Where the Filter Actually Bites
Sadat drew a hard line between festival access and financing access, arguing the industry’s real gatekeeping happens years earlier.
“The discrimination did not start at the festival, but it started at the development level.”
Her diagnosis went further, framing the barrier as structural rather than incidental to any single institution.
“Filmmaking in Afghanistan is a crime, it’s not as extreme as that, but the discrimination is fundamental, it’s in the system.”
The remarks landed with added weight given her recent jury duty in Venice, where the thin representation of women in competition drew open criticism.
Maksimović, whose Until the Day Ends screened in Venice’s Orizzonti section, described a Serbian funding landscape that was strained even before institutional disruption.
“Even when the film center worked normally we had a difficult time financing our films, the amount of money for Serbian films is very small and it’s hard to find co-production countries.”
Her sharpest admission was one of pre-emptive retreat, filmmakers self-selecting out of major funding pools because the rejection feels predetermined.
“We didn’t dare to apply to the big funding to get more money for our films because we knew we wouldn’t get the money there.”
Berlinale Opener to Tokyo Stage: Sadat’s Festival Capital
Sadat arrived in Tokyo carrying genuine festival currency: No Good Men, a romantic comedy and the third chapter in her ongoing film series, opened the 2026 Berlinale.
The feature runs 103 minutes and pairs Sadat in the lead role alongside Anwar Hashimi, Liam Hussaini, Yasin Negah, Torkan Omari and Fatima Hassani.
She stepped in front of the camera after the original lead withdrew three weeks before filming, a scramble that speaks to the shoestring margins these productions operate on.
Her short Super Afghan Gym, set in a downtown Kabul gym reserved for women during a single daily hour, was selected for Cate Blanchett’s Displacement Film Fund and screened in Tokyo.
That program’s first five-film slate exists precisely to back displaced filmmakers, making Sadat’s funding critique a live argument rather than an abstraction.
The commercial trajectory for No Good Men remains festival-driven, with Japan distribution mapped for the following year and no wide theatrical corridor locked.
For distributors weighing arthouse imports, the calculus runs through prestige positioning and awards-season visibility rather than opening-weekend muscle, tracked across our trade entertainment wire desk.
The real economics sit upstream: every year development grants skew toward established territories and male-led slates, the pipeline narrows, and festivals inherit a competition lineup that looks like a choice when it is actually a residue.
Ankit Jaiswal is the Chief Author, covering Indian cinema and OTT releases with honest, no-filler criticism. An SEO strategist by background, he brings a research-driven approach to film writing, cutting through hype to tell you exactly what's worth your time.
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