The Berlin Film Fes­ti­val has done away with gen­dered act­ing categories

As the human race has grown increas­ing­ly (slow­ly, ago­niz­ing­ly) enlight­ened about the com­plex nature of gen­der, a num­ber of tan­gen­tial quan­daries have arisen to reveal just how deeply the main­stream has tak­en the male/​female bina­ry for grant­ed. One such exam­ple con­cerns awards pro­grams, many of which have his­tor­i­cal­ly divid­ed their cat­e­gories along the lines of men and women, a nar­row con­cep­tion that nec­es­sar­i­ly excludes any­one who doesn’t see them­selves fit­ting in to that system.

Props to the Berlin Film Fes­ti­val, then, for posi­tion­ing them­selves as a van­guard of pro­gres­sive think­ing to right this short­com­ing. Just this morn­ing, the direc­tors of the pres­ti­gious film fes­ti­val issued a pack of announce­ments about their plans to hold a phys­i­cal edi­tion of pro­ceed­ings for 2021, includ­ing the note­wor­thy detail that the act­ing hon­ors would not be orga­nized around gen­der any longer.

Next year, the Sil­ver Bear prizes will go to one actor for Lead­ing Per­for­mance, and anoth­er for Sup­port­ing Per­for­mance – sim­ple as that. Whether this will result in a slip­page off bal­ance, with some years dou­bling up on men or women, will be curi­ous to see. The pre­vi­ous sys­tem enforced par­i­ty between the gen­der bina­ry, even as it failed to account for every­body beyond it.

This more inclu­sive sys­tem also pre­serves the elas­tic nature of the pre­vi­ous Best Actor and Best Actress dis­tinc­tions, under which leads and sup­port­ing play­ers were equal­ly like­ly to receive recog­ni­tion. It wasn’t so long ago that Samuel L Jack­son was sin­gled out for his com­mend­able sup­port­ing work in Jack­ie Brown, for instance. The juries play it pret­ty fast and loose in gen­er­al; 2011’s Sil­ver Bears went to the full ensem­ble of A Sep­a­ra­tion, and both of 2015’s stat­uettes went to the stars of 45 Years.

The mil­lion-dol­lar ques­tion now seems to be which insti­tu­tions will fol­low Berlin’s exam­ple and break down these walls. Indus­try activists have been implor­ing the Acad­e­my of Motion Pic­ture Arts and Sci­ences to make this change for years, and it’s a bul­let point high on the list of improve­ments that the fes­ti­vals in Cannes and Venice could imple­ment as well. It may not be many gen­er­a­tions until our descen­dants find it weird and patron­iz­ing that we used to give out one award to a man and one to a woman.