This Changes Everything 2019

This Changes Everything takes an incisive look into the male-dominated film industry to examine those forces - both conscious and unconscious - that continue to foster the systemic underrepresentation and misrepresentation of women. Produced with New Plot Films in association with the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, David Yurman, and the Artemis Rising Foundation, this documentary asks: What is behind the film industry’s blatant gender bias? What has been tried in the past and what initiatives are being tried today (and around the world) to confront gender discrimination? What does this discrimination look like on a more personal level? And most importantly, what must be done to create real and lasting change.

From small micro-aggressions to criminal abuses of power, the mistreatment and underrepresentation of women in Hollywood is becoming increasingly known, though little real change has actually occurred in a system in need of a critical reset. We, the filmmakers, were fortunate to have many female and male power players in Hollywood sit before our cameras. We had the additional fortune of witnessing a new wave feminist movement explode onto the scene while we were shooting. The movement has galvanized the women of Hollywood (and some men) to take real concrete steps toward change. There is growing consensus that the time for talk is over but that consensus is not necessarily new. The film’s title comes out of my second interview with Geena when she talks about how everyone thought that the success of a female-driven film would finally make things change… and then nothing did. There are reasons for this that the film explores. This Changes Everything is not meant as just a showcase of the issues but as a call to action to further the cause of the radical social and institutional change that is necessary if we are to move forward as a culture and as a country.