Amma Asante’s “A United Kingdom” is set to open the 60th BFI London Film Festival in a week, and her film may be an awards contender this year. Like any female director, Asante has no doubt faced her share of hurdles along the way, one of them being the lack of trust in female filmmakers with high-profile and big-budget projects.

Speaking at the Women on Screen Panel during an event called Empire Live, The Guardian reported, Asante dove into the reasoning behind the mistrust of female filmmakers.

“It’s a trust issue in terms of the powers that be and whether or not they believe that these movies can sell, will sell, in terms of the female narrative, and how much they trust women when it comes to directing,” she explained. “Even when we are able, or allowed, to make movies, we are making certain types of movies. It comes down to who they feel safe about in terms of flying the plane … We know that it’s a misguided distrust in many ways because we know that women-directed movies don’t necessarily make less money than your average movie directed by a man — but for some reason there’s that fear and that is something that has to be dealt with.”

Asante does have a hopeful outlook for the future, though: “I think we’re turning a corner, but it’s a big one and we’re not round it yet,” she said.

Speaking with Women and Hollywood during TIFF, Asante also brought up the trust issue, saying, “I would say the biggest shift in delivering opportunities to women needs to be in trust. The powers that be — those who commission and finance (and that includes women as well as men) — need to to trust stories in our hands, crews in our hands, and the audiences’ ability to respond to our work.”

“A United Kingdom” still has no U.S. release date set, but Fox Searchlight was said to be in final talks to acquire the political romance at TIFF.