Variety & Chanel Host Women in Film Dinner at TIFF — SkimNews
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- Variety and Chanel co-hosted their annual Women in Film dinner at TIFF on Friday night, drawing Michelle Yeoh, Sarah Paulson, Colman Domingo, Patricia Arquette, Ayo Edebiri, Lily-Rose Depp, Courteney Cox, and dozens of other filmmakers.
- Ramin Setoodeh, Variety's co-president, told the crowd that despite Hollywood's banner box office year, none of the top 15 films were solely directed by women.
- TIFF's official selection is 35% directed or co-directed by women — a parity goal TIFF leadership set for 2028 that the festival reached two years early.
- Chanel Women Creators' Network, established in 2020 as an extension of TIFF's Share Her Journey Writers' Lab, announced its 2026 fellows: Shannon Walsh, Hannah Vastinsalo, Shannon Welby, and Amelia Eloisa.
- Courteney Cox launched her directorial debut "Evil Genius" at the fest, joining actor-director Fala Chen ("Bloodline") among the multihyphenates the dinner saluted.
- Carol Nguyen, the program's 2025 fellow, is debuting her documentary "Still Night, Burning House" at this year's festival.
Why it matters: The dinner surfaces a gap: TIFF has already hit its 2028 women-director parity target (35% of selection), yet zero of the year's top 15 box-office films were solely directed by women — meaning festival-level progress isn't translating to studio tentpoles, which is exactly what Chanel and Variety's networking push is designed to fix.
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