Gender equality and diversity, in front of and behind the camera, is one of the film policy goals that the Norwegian Film Institute aims to implement. In 2024 there was a 50 percent share of women in projects that received production funding from the Norwegian Film Institute.
The drama series Requiem for Selina received production funding from the NFI in 2024. Series creator Emmeline Berglund, producer Ingunn Rensel, directors Rikke Gregersen and Ole S. Kåss. Photo: Torbjørn Sundal Holen/Anti/NRK
The annual survey of the Norwegian Film Institute's funding allocations shows that the share of women in projects that received production funding through 2024 was 50 percent.
The share of women in projects that received development and production funding combined in 2024 was 49 percent.The share of women is measured in key roles defined as producer, director, and screenwriter.
“It is encouraging to see that our allocation of production grants in 2024 is equally distributed between women and men. The share of women will vary over time due to the relatively small number of films produced annually. But our moderate affirmative action policy clearly generates results, says Kjersti Mo, Director of the Norwegian Film Institute (NFI).
“For the first time since we began recording gender parity statistics, female directors have larger budgets than their male counterparts in 2024. This will fluctuate over time, but it breaks the pattern we have observed in the past, Kjersti Mo says.
Between 2020 and 2024, the share of women in projects receiving development and production funding from NFI was 48 percent.
The share of women among applicants remains noticeably lower, averaging 42 percent over this five-year period. The consistently higher share of women grant recipients compared to applicants can be attributed to the NFI objective of 50/50 gender equality among Norwegian film makers. The NFI applies moderate affirmative action policies in allocating development and production funding.
The share of women producers remains consistently high in 2024. For feature films, 61 percent of producers in projects awarded production funding are women. For drama series, the women share reached 67 percent, though the number of allocations is lower in this category.
The share of women professionals is highest over time for producers, averaging 57 percent from 2022 to 2024.
The NFI allocation statistics show that the share of women film professionals in Norway is significantly higher than the European film industry average. Comparable numbers from the European Audiovisual Observatory for women professionals in key positions on feature films 2019-2023 averages 25 percent female directors, 29 percent female screenwriters and 31 percent female producers. The corresponding figures for TV/SVOD fiction are 27 percent, 37 percent and 43 percent.
Another measure of gender equality in the film industry is the size of the production budgets available to directors. For feature films between 2020 and 2024 in Norway, films directed by men have the largest average production budgets, at 38 million NOK. Feature films directed by women have an average production budget of 33 million NOK during this period.
In 2024, however, feature films directed by women had the largest average production budgets, with an average of 45 million NOK, compared to 35 million NOK for films directed by men. The figures fluctuate significantly from year to year, but the 2024 result goes some way towards balancing previous differences.
In 2024, the NFI awarded a total of 73 production grants to projects with Norwegian majority producers, covering the formats documentary films, feature films, drama series, and short films. 18 feature films with Norwegian majority producers received production funding from the NFI in 2024.
The NFI awarded a total of 252.7 million NOK in production grants for feature films and drama series in 2024.
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