'F' for Feminist: IMDb Adds New Movie Rating

It’s been an interesting few weeks for movie database IMDb, which recently shut down its discussion forums because they were “no longer providing a positive, useful experience” for users, according to the company. To help improve the user experience, IMDb announced that it would soon be unveiling a series of new features, and it looks like one of the first is ready to go.

According to Engadget, the site is getting ready to debut a designation marked “F” for movies that meet criteria for being feminist-friendly. To earn the marker, movies must either be written or directed by a woman or feature scenes that pass the Bechdel Test, an evaluation created by cartoonist Alison Bechdel that mandates a movie should include two named women talking about something other than a man.

The F rating was first proposed by director Holly Tarquini for England's Bath Film Festival. "The F-Rating is intended to make people talk about the representation of women on and off-screen," Tarquini told the BBC. "It's exciting when new organizations decide to join us in shining a light both on the brilliant work women are doing in film and on how far the film industry lags behind most other industries when it comes to providing equal opportunities to women.

"But our real goal is to reach the stage when the F-Rating is redundant because 50 percent of the stories we see on screen are told by and about film's unfairly under-represented half of the population—women."

More than 21,000 films are said to be eligible for the classification when it goes live on the site, including Frozen, The Girl on the Train, and American Honey.