Boxoffice and Celluloid Junkie Present Top Women in Cinema 2019

Celluloid Junkie is partnering with Boxofficefor the fourth-annual list of the 50 Top Women in Global Cinema. This year, we’ve narrowed the scope by focusing more closely on the exhibition side of things. We’ll be following up our efforts with a list honoring distribution executives this summer, in time for CineEurope. And if you’re wondering why the independent exhibition space isn’t represented on our list, we have a feature in the works on the women making a positive impact in that particular corner of the industry, as well.

The reason for the change is simple: There are many, many women making an overwhelmingly positive impact on the exhibition industry—across continents, companies, and areas of expertise. And we’re not the only ones champing at the bit to give them their due. In just over a month, Celluloid Junkie and Boxofficereceived a record number of nominations.

For the first time, this year’s selection panel is majority female, and it was our job to narrow down the list of nominees from triple digits to the 50 entries listed below. It was an honor but, at the same time, no easy job. What we were looking for were the women who, over the last year, had the biggest influence on our industry. 

We weren’t necessarily looking at their job titles or the size of their companies, though those two easily quantifiable criteria certainly came into play. Although we went through each nomination we received, we made it a point not to be influenced directly by the number of votes each candidate received. We tried to be as inclusive as possible in order to represent the industry’s global reach, limiting the number of women listed from any single market. Ultimately, this list is constrained by an arbitrary number—and we look forward to continue profiling and championing influential women in this industry regardless of this (or any other) list in the pages of Boxoffice throughout the year 

On behalf of our panelists—J. Sperling Reich, Patrick von Sychowski, and Helen Budge of Celluloid Junkie; Ayşegül Algan and Marion Delique Selmer from Boxoffice France; Jan Runge; Diana Stratan of UNIC; and myself—we’d like to thank all those who submitted a nomination. Most importantly, we’d like to thank all the women, whether on this list or not, who contribute to the business we all love. 

TOP WOMEN IN GLOBAL CINEMA

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