Instead of keeping quiet to protect her relationships with industry connections, Chen decided to tell all in a 22-minute documentary called “The Boys Club” (2022), which premiered in May at South Korea’s Busan International Short Film Festival, winning the NETPAC Award, created to encourage talent and highlight exceptional Asian films.

Chen – who has also worked for big international media companies such as Netflix, the BBC and the History Channel – is well-known in Malaysia for tackling the taboo issue of female circumcision in her 2018 award-winning documentary “The Hidden Cut.”

“The Boys Club” does not identify the documentary that Chen was working on when she was harassed, or the Malaysian company that commissioned the film. But alongside dreamy images such as herself sinking underwater it includes excerpts from email exchanges and chat communications with colleagues and bosses from whom she sought support. Their responses ranged from timid sympathy to refusals to act. Many simply ignored her.

The Busan festival jury was smitten by Chen’s bravery and determination not to give up in spite of the toxic culture she encountered in Malaysia’s film industry. “I’m honoured by the recognition from BISFF at our world premiere,” she told Nikkei Asia.

“As a journalist myself, it was even more meaningful to receive the news on World Press Freedom Day. Media freedom is one of the issues highlighted in ‘The Boys Club.’ Journalists shouldn’t be harassed at the workplace, or for doing their work.”

Chen’s critical portrayal of her country’s movie industry has since premiered in North America at the 21st San Francisco Documentary Festival in June, and in Oceania at New Zealand’s Doc Edge Festival, in July.

Chen and her producers hope to go beyond the festival circuit to use the film as an educational tool and to lobby for changes to an Anti-Sexual Harassment Bill currently going through the Malaysian parliament after 30 years of campaigning.

Gender inequalities in cinema are common worldwide. A 2018 global report by Unesco showed that in Europe, where an almost equal number of men and women graduate from film schools, only a fifth of films are directed by women. Females are also under-represented in the workforce and receive only 16% of available funding.

In Malaysia’s relatively small movie industry, which is fragmented by a multiethnic and multilingual audience, gender imbalances are heightened by harmful stereotyping of female characters, who are often exploited or even raped, especially in the Malay-language media, the biggest sector. The actor Fauzi Nawawi shocked viewers of a TV talk show in 2021 by admitting that he enjoyed filming a rape scene in the Malay action drama “Anak Halal” (2007).

This year, the success of the historical action film “Mat Kilau: Kebangkitan Pahlawan,” directed by Syamsul Yusof – which opened at the end of June in Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore and Indonesia, and quickly became Malaysia’s highest-grossing movie ever – has confirmed that audiences continue to favour films reflecting the patriarchal values of Malaysia’s predominantly Muslim society. “Mat Kilau,” whose director is male, focuses on the epic tale of a Malay warrior who fought British colonisers in an uprising in Pahang between 1891 and 1895.

In the past, women have been represented more positively in Malaysian cinema, both as characters and filmmakers. The directors Shuhaimi Baba and Emma Fatima won international awards in the 1990s, and the late Yasmin Ahmad spearheaded Malaysia’s “New Wave” cinema in the early 2000s, which also included films by Tan Chui Mui.

But Penang-born director Nadiah Hamzah, a Cannes Lions bronze winner whose debut thriller feature “Motif” (2019) impressed the American media, said the local film industry has regressed since the mid-2000s.

“I’ve been revisiting Malay films from the 1990s, where women were portrayed as being strong, powerful and brave – but also remarkably human, with flaws – which made their characters and stories even more inspiring and relatable,” Nadiah told Nikkei.

She said the main reason for the change is the nonexistent representation of women directing such films in the mainstream Malaysian movie industry. “It is frustrating when female directors can only exist within the realms of independent cinema, where the audience is much smaller and niche,” said Nadiah. “Outside of Malaysia – for example, in Hollywood – there is a clear paradigm shift in pushing forward female voices in cinema.”

Documentary filmmaker and educator Indrani Kopal, the founder and executive director of the Far East Documentary Center, also said that Malaysia is a long way from where it should be in terms of both representing women on screen and providing opportunities for female directors.

“I know we have many gifted female directors in this country who are courageous, confident, fearless and ready to confront the real affairs of women through their films,” she told Nikkei. “But we must also acknowledge that not all female directors always want to make ‘feminist films’ – they too have desires to make any films of any kind, without any labels or specifications.” In both cases, these women merely want their voices heard, seeing their film funded, made, and finding the right audience.

Many male film directors agree that their gender is overrepresented on Malaysian movie sets. “I can’t give an exact answer as to why the industry is pro-males, but I think because filming activities are associated with large and heavy equipment,” director Muz Amer told Nikkei. His film “Prebet Sapu” (2020), the story of an illegal ride-hailing driver in Kuala Lumpur, was Malaysia’s official Best International Film submission to the 94th Academy Awards in 2022.

“Of course, since more men are involved, male attitudes are dominant. But this should change; women workers should be respected as needed, and most importantly, we should create a safe work environment for all genders,” said Muz.

“I think machismo and misogyny haunt not just the film industry, but the country in general,” Kuala Lumpur-based director and producer Edmund Yeo, who prefers to work in Japan, told Nikkei. “This is really rampant on social media and the internet, seeing how female public figures (writers, journalists, athletes) are often targeted for cyberbullying and online harassment. […] We can do better than this.”

On the other hand, Elise Shick, the young female producer of Kuala Lumpur-based genre film-focused Kuman Pictures, believes that being a woman in the Malaysian film industry can be advantageous when it comes to seeking funding or negotiating salaries with crew and cast.

“When we employ the dichotomy between the two genders (or more) to dissect and discuss gender inequality in the film industry, no matter how we portray either gender in films, this process itself is already another reproduction of discrimination,” says Shick.

“The real problem remains how the local film industry keeps depicting women. Out of 230 Malaysian films that were released theatrically between 2016 and 2020, less than 10 portrayed female characters in less bigoted, sexualised, fantasised ways,” said Shick.

“I don’t think we are going to end this vicious cycle … until both filmmakers and audience start to realise that genders aren’t the ones posing issues here. It’s the representation and the lack of respect towards the entirety of humankind that is.”