It’s time to move women from muses to makers. Explore how empowering female filmmakers transforms the cultural lens and reshapes the screen.

This event is organised in cooperation with Elles Tournent.

Mainstream cinema has been shaped largely by male perspectives, influencing not only which stories are told, but how women are seen. Women are casted in supporting roles: as lovers, muses, moral anchors, or obstacles.

Even when they are the main protagonists, they are so from a predominantly male lens which leads to reinforcing a narrow representation of women. This has a massive effect in society at large, because those narratives are often internalised and reproduced within culture itself. If narratives remain concentrated in the hands of men, we end up with narrow representations, normalising and internalising patriarchal norms.

What are some narratives of and for women that have been reduced or underrepresented?

· Women as full protagonists

· Feminist and intellectual women

· Women’s interior lives - midlife reinvention, sisterhood, the wisdom of older women

With this event we want to explore a different narrative model: one in which women are not peripheral, but central. They are complex, ambitious, politically engaged, sexually potent, intellectually troubled, and - most importantly - unapologetically human.

To see this narrative model work, we need to invest in women behind the camera. Supporting women directors is not simply a narrow matter of inclusion. Rather, we are looking at it from the viewpoint of transforming the cultural lens itself: by diversifying narratives we reshape the male gaze and challenge stories that have long misrepresented women on the screen. With that, we help challenge stories that have misrepresented women in real life.

Our societies need women* to drive the plot. We need to move women* from muses to makers. Women* film makers.

Panelists:

· Alexandra Geese,

She has been a Member of the European Parliament since 2019 and is the digital expert for the Greens/EFA parliamentary group. She negotiated the extensive “Digital Services Act” which regulates digital platforms and social networks. Her main focus areas are democracy in the digital age, sustainable digitalisation, and gender equality. She is member of the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) and the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality (FEMM). In addition, she is a substitute member of the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO). Since February 2025, she has also been a member and Green coordinator of the newly established special committee on the European Democracy Shield (EUDS).

· Niki Karimi,

Born in Tehran, Niki Karimi began her work as an actress with films such as Sara by Dariush Mehrjui, for which she won the best actress award at the San Sebastian Film Festival and at the Nantes Film Festival in 1992. She then worked on more than 25 films which brought her awards both nationally and internationally, like at the Taormina Film Festival in Italy, the Cairo Film Festival in Egypt and the Fajr Film Festival in Tehran, together with Best Actress awards from the Iranian film Society. In 2001, she began her career as a filmmaker with a documentary about infertility: To Have or Not to Have. Her first feature film, One Night (2004), was in the Cannes Film Festival "Un Certain Regard" selection and subsequently shown at numerous international film festivals. In 2006, she made her second feature film, A Few Days Later which premiered at the Rome Film Festival.

· Alexe Poukine,

She is a French-born filmmaker based in Brussels whose work has earned international recognition across the documentary and fiction landscape. Over the past decade, her films have been selected and awarded at major festivals including Visions du Réel, Cinéma du Réel, Festival dei Popoli, DocsBarcelona and BRIFF. Her documentary That Which Does Not Kill (Sans frapper) won the Jury Prize at Visions du Réel, while Who Cares? received both the Grand Prix and the Audience Award at BRIFF.

In 2025, Poukine made a highly acclaimed transition to feature fiction with Kika, which premiered in the prestigious Critics' Week at the Cannes Film Festival. The film went on to win the Grand Prix at BRIFF and the CineMasters Award at the Munich International Film Festival, confirming Alexe Poukine as one of the leading voices of Belgian cinema.

· Sevara Irgacheva,

Sevara Irgacheva brings deep expertise in European and national audiovisual industry and policy. She started her career in Belgian film industry where she held a variety of roles in film production. In 2015 she joined the Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel (audiovisual media regulatory authority – Belgium) working on cultural diversity policies, audiovisual production and commercial communications, and extensively taking part in projects of the European Regulators group for Audiovisual Media Services (ERGA).

Later she held the position of Political adviser on Media Policy to the Minister of Media and Culture of Wallonia Brussels Federation, implementing EU policies and leading the work on public service media. Most recently, she held a director position at a leading EU public affairs consultancy, advising international and European clients on public affairs strategies and audiovisual and digital policy. She holds a master’s degree in Film Directing and Production from the prestigious Institut National des Arts de Spectacle (Brussels) and a LLM in European and International IP and ICT Law from KU Leuven.

· Juliette Duret,

Juliette Duret is the Head of Cinema at the Palais des Beaux-Arts (BOZAR) in Brussels as well as a programmer for this department. She has been active in the film industry for over 30 years and has served on several prestigious juries, notably at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, the San Sebastian Film Festival, the Berlinale Forum, and the Tromsø International Film Festival.

In conversation with Jeta Bejtullahu, Narrative Strategist, Last Kind Words

About the facilitators:

Elles Tournent
Is a feminist and inclusive association, based in Brussels and dedicated to the dissemination, promotion and support of women in the film industry. They carry out this mission through 4 poles: the Brussels International Women's Film Festival, Graines de Cinéastes, On The Road and En Réseau. Their association is characterized by a plurality of feminist approaches, in a desire to make all women's voices heard*. They condemn all forms of discrimination and fight against all types of oppression.

Jeta Bejtullahu
She is the founder of Last Kind words and a narrative strategist known to dig into difficult conversations, with kindness and humour, not to unsettle but to understand where differences lie and what bridges we need to build and cross.

She works with leaders and organisations to overcome strategic challenges, with purpose and creativity, always in services of a future narrative. She believes in cultivating alternative ways of leading and being, ways that drag women into their full audacity.

Through her creativity workshops Jeta proposes dropping stories of being - too small - too much - not enough - and to reclaim the creativity that we are born with but fail to cultivate.

*Anyone who identifies as a woman.