Women In Film will recognize Pamela Abdy, Salma Hayek Pinault, Adria Arjona, Beth de Araújo and Gemma Chan at its 2026 WIF Honors ceremony, scheduled for Thursday, Nov. 5, at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills. The gala has a purpose beyond the trophies: it directly funds the organization’s advocacy, research and career programs.
That fundraising context is central to this particular honors slate. The recipients span studio leadership, acting, directing, producing and advocacy, while several of the awards explicitly connect achievement in film and television to work that can influence who gets opportunities, resources and representation across the industry.
WIF CEO Kirsten Schaffer described the five honorees as figures who combine screen work with efforts to build a more inclusive culture. Schaffer also pointed to Reframe research indicating a backslide for women and nonbinary people in the industry, positioning the ceremony as both a celebration and a response to continuing structural concerns.
Pamela Abdy receives WIF’s first Vanguard Award
Pamela Abdy, co-chair and CEO of Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group, will receive the inaugural Vanguard Award. The new prize recognizes the breadth of her career, with particular emphasis on her time at the studio.
Abdy’s tenure has included oversight of films ranging from large-scale commercial releases to awards contenders, including One Battle After Another, Sinners, Barbie, Weapons and Dune: Part Two. Warner Bros. tied the all-time studio record last year with 11 Academy Awards from 30 nominations, the industry’s highest nominations total that year.
In practical terms, a studio executive award is recognition of a different kind of creative influence than an acting or directing honor. A motion-picture group chief is involved in the decision-making environment around which projects receive studio support and how a slate is developed. WIF’s choice to launch its Vanguard Award with Abdy therefore places executive leadership alongside the more visible work of people who appear on screen or make films directly.
Nancy Meyers will present Abdy with the award. Warner Bros. is backing Meyers’ first film in more than a decade, a comedy now in production that stars Penélope Cruz, Kieran Culkin, Jude Law, Emma Mackey and Owen Wilson. The film is slated for release on Christmas Day 2027.
The recognition also lands during a period of continued attention on the choices studios make about the projects they champion. That wider conversation is visible elsewhere in movie-business coverage, including the unusual production model behind a planned open-source theatrical SCP anthology. Abdy’s honor is not tied to that project, but the broader point is clear: executives can have a substantial effect on which creative approaches make it into the marketplace.
Crystal Award honors the team behind Josephine
Filmmaker Beth de Araújo and Gemma Chan will receive the Crystal Award for Advocacy in Film for their collaboration on Josephine. Chan will be honored in absentia.
The film is a drama about a young girl who accidentally witnesses a devastating crime in Golden Gate Park. It won both the U.S. Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at Sundance. Josephine is set for a limited theatrical release on Nov. 20, followed by a nationwide expansion on Dec. 4.
The two prizes at Sundance are distinct forms of festival recognition. A grand-jury honor is decided by a designated jury, while an audience award reflects audience response under the festival’s voting process. Receiving both suggests the film connected with two different constituencies at the event: the jurors evaluating its artistic merits and festivalgoers responding to it directly.
For de Araújo and Chan, the Crystal Award also has a notable connection to earlier WIF programs. De Araújo took part in the organization’s financing intensive in 2018. Chan was named the WIF Max Mara Face of the Future honoree in 2020. The new award places them together while illustrating the long view of a career-focused organization: a participant or emerging-talent recipient can later return as an established honoree attached to a new film.
The award’s “advocacy in film” wording matters. It does not simply identify a box-office outcome or an individual performance. It recognizes work whose subject matter and creative collaboration align with the organization’s broader emphasis on cultural representation and professional advancement.
Adria Arjona named Face of the Future
Adria Arjona will receive this year’s Face of the Future award, which recognizes a rising star. Her recent work includes a standout role in the Peabody-winning series Andor, as well as executive-producer and acting credits on Los Frikis and Splitsville.
Arjona most recently led the A24 action thriller Onslaught. She is also set to star opposite Michael B. Jordan in Amazon MGM’s reimagining of The Thomas Crown Affair.
Her selection reflects a career that is not limited to one screen format or one job title. Television, independent film and studio-scale projects all appear in the credits cited for the honor, while the executive-producer credits are particularly important. An executive producer is a role whose exact duties may vary by project, but it generally signals a meaningful position in moving a production forward rather than solely performing in it. For an award aimed at a rising figure, that combination offers a fuller picture of an artist building influence both in front of and behind the camera.
“Face of the Future” is also a deliberately forward-looking designation. Unlike a career-spanning award, it does not frame a recipient’s work as complete or retrospective. Instead, it recognizes current momentum and the prospect of future impact, which makes Arjona’s mix of recent releases and forthcoming work especially relevant to the choice.
Jane Fonda to present Salma Hayek Pinault’s Humanitarian Award
Jane Fonda will present the Humanitarian Award to Academy Award nominee and Emmy winner Salma Hayek Pinault. The award is named for Fonda, who was its inaugural recipient.
Hayek Pinault is being recognized for a historic career across film and television and for advocacy concerning the rights of women, children and immigrants. It is an honor designed to connect professional achievement with work beyond a performer’s credits.
The presenter-recipient pairing carries its own significance. Because Fonda is the award’s namesake and first honoree, her role in presenting the prize links the event’s present recipient to the standards the award was established to recognize. WIF and Fonda selected Hayek Pinault for a career and advocacy record that crosses both entertainment and civic concerns.
Humanitarian awards can sometimes be treated as separate from an artist’s professional story. Here, the framing ties the two together: Hayek Pinault’s screen career is one part of the recognition, and sustained advocacy for specific communities is the other. That combined approach matches the event’s broader focus on leadership, community and opportunity.
An honors slate with an institutional message
Victoria Alonso and Andrea Nelson Meigs, co-chairs of the 2026 ceremony, emphasized Abdy’s advocacy for storytellers and highlighted Arjona, Hayek Pinault, Chan and de Araújo as women of color working in an industry where they remain underrepresented both on screen and behind the scenes.
The statement provides a useful lens for reading the award list as a whole. Abdy represents leadership at a major studio. De Araújo and Chan are being honored for a shared film project. Arjona’s award emphasizes a developing, cross-disciplinary career. Hayek Pinault’s honor recognizes a long-running combination of artistic work and humanitarian advocacy. These are different professional routes, but WIF is presenting them as connected examples of influence.
The WIF Honors committee is co-chaired by Alonso and Nelson Meigs. It also includes Syrinthia Studer, president of WIF’s board of directors, and board members Tara Duncan, Ivette Rodriguez, Rachel Rusch and Jurnee Smollett.
For audiences, the most immediate takeaways are the Nov. 5 ceremony date and the projects likely to remain in view afterward: the staged rollout of Josephine, Arjona’s next collaboration with Michael B. Jordan, and Meyers’ in-production comedy backed by Warner Bros. For the organization, the evening functions as a funding vehicle for the programs that support its stated mission. The recipients may be the headline, but the gala’s intended impact extends to advocacy, research and career development work beyond the ballroom.
