At this year’s Cannes Film Festival, L’Oréal Paris will mark the fifth edition of its Lights on Women’s Worth Award.

“Our vision is to elevate the role of women in cinema,” said Delphine Viguier-Hovasse, global brand president of L’Oréal Paris, which has officially partnered with the festival for 28 sessions.

According to the brand, just 17 percent of women direct top-grossing films and 25 percent hold key behind-the-scenes roles. Its prize honors a female director from the Short Film category and the La Cinef student film category. Each is part of the festival’s official selection.

This year’s L’Oréal Paris juror for the award is Viola Davis, one of the few stars to have won a coveted EGOT — an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony award. She succeeds Elle Fanning, who was juror last year, and Kate Winslet, who inaugurated the competition and served for three consecutive years.

“Supporting women filmmakers isn’t just about creating opportunities — it’s about making sure the stories that shape our world reflect the voices, experiences and brilliance of all people,” Davis said in a statement released late April, when her appointment was revealed.

“This award is extremely important,” said Viguier-Hovasse, explaining the careers of the first four nominees – Aleksandra Odic, Mai Vu, Fatima Kaci and Viv Li — have been phenomenal. “They have been selected in 220 film festivals, and together they won 50 awards.”

The laureates are granted financial and coaching support.

“Aleksandra is starting her first long movie,” Viguier-Hovasse said. “We are extremely proud, because we see that our action matters on that front in Cannes. So it’s fantastic.”

The Lights on Women’s Worth ceremony will take place on May 23.

A host of L’Oréal Paris ambassadors, including Jane Fonda, Helen Mirren and Simone Ashely, will attend the upcoming edition of the Cannes Film Festival, which runs Tuesday to May 24. L’Oréal Paris is also to honor the anniversaries of its longstanding ambassadors Andie MacDowell, who has been a spokesperson for 40 years, and Eva Longoria, marking her 20 years with the brand, at a gala dinner on Wednesday.

“For our [spokespeople], the fact that the brand has been creating this prize and award in Cannes is really a game-changer,” Viguier-Hovasse said. “They know how having more female directors is so important in the way we shape the vision of society.

“We need to have female vision in cinema, because it’s so influential in the way the young [women] consider themselves and their role in society,” she said. “We know that cinema is building role models. You change the real world by changing the fiction of cinema.”

She said the Lights on Women’s Worth stands within the pyramid of L’Oréal Paris’ women’s empowerment actions. At the pyramid’s base is the brand’s Stand Up Against Street Harassment program, which trains women and men in bystander intervention.

“Then we promote women in culture and in society, with the Lights on Women’s prize in Cannes,” Viguier-Hovasse continued. “At the very top of the pyramid, we have the [L’Oréal] group initiative For Women in Science, where we promote very strong women [doing huge] work in science and research.”

The executive said complimenting all this is L’Oréal Paris’ partnership with Women’s Earth Alliance, to promote women’s entrepreneurship in sustainability, and the brand’s annual fashion show in Paris.

She explained there, “we are really showcasing the diversity and sisterhood, which is also very strong in the brand. So when you put all these pieces together, it’s consistent — it is elevating the role of women in society.”

Viguier-Hovasse called L’Oréal Paris a “feminine and feminist brand.” Most recently, it signed on Harold James as its new global makeup artist, whom she described as “a champion of transforming women into the best version of themselves.”

James will oversee L’Oréal Paris’ makeup artist team in Cannes.

Then at the Cannes Lions 2025, which is the international festival of creativity taking place in June, “The Final Copy of Ilon Specht” could be in the running. The short documentary shines a light on the woman who coined L’Oréal Paris’ iconic and feminist tagline “Because I’m Worth It.”

“We presented the dossier,” said Viguier-Hovasse, adding of the film: “It’s another consistent action of what we do to promote women’s worth and to tell the story in a very artistic way. I’m very proud of this piece of work that we coproduced as a brand.

“And you will see that it’s not over,” she continued. “We have a lot of ideas arriving in the fields of cinema and creation.”