IMDb has added a new F rating system to recognise the contributions of women in the film industry, as well as movies that feature great, female-fronted storylines…
IMDb has announced it has adopted the ‘F Rating’ – a way of highlighting the films that are inclusive of women in writing and directing roles, as well as offering storylines that pass the Bechdel Test.
The F Rating was first created in 2014 by Bath Film Festival’s Holly Tarquini. It is designed to highlight the lack of women in the film industry, while also promoting those movies that incorporate more realistic and diverse storylines and gender balances.
Movies that have a female writer, female director and two or more significant women on screen, receive a triple F rating. Movies that fit this bill include Frozen, Bridget Jones’s Baby and American Honey.
The F Rating is an extension of the Bechdel Test – a system devised by the cartoonist Alison Bechdel to decide whether a fictional story includes at least two women talking about topics other than a man. You’d be surprised how many films fail this test!
More than 40 cinemas and film festivals have adopted the F Rating, and now movie database IMDb has added it to 21,000 flicks.
This all sounds great, but there’s a little catch. According to a report by the Guardian, the rating will only appear on the IMDb reference page and NOT the landing pages of movies, or in the keywords for those movies. Looks like anyone who wants to discover F Rated movies will have to do a bit of digging…
Here’s the full list in case you’re wondering whether your fave movie is F Rated.