‘Mulan’ director criticises Hollywood on gender imbalances

New York, Apr 12 (PTI) The director of the forthcoming "Mulan" live-action remake, Niki Caro has criticised Hollywood film industry on gender imbalances, calling it "shameful".

The 51-year-old filmmaker, whose film "The Zookeeper's Wife" has recently released, says she is appalled to look at the abysmal number of female directors in the field, reported The Huffington Post.

"My gender should have absolutely nothing to do with it, at least in discussing the quality of my work, in which case I'm very proud to be working in a feminine way. But now that (The Zookeeper's Wife) is out, I look at the statistics on female directors, and now it's time for me to speak up.

"I've been silent for personal reasons, but now I'm very happy to say publicly that it's a shameful statistic. Just the sheer ignoring of 50 per cent of the available skill and talent and vision and tenacity and ambition appals me," says Caro.

Her remarks come after the release of a report earlier this year, which showed that only seven per cent of all directors were women who worked on the 250 highest-grossing films in the year 2016 (down two per cent from the previous year).