Director Ava DuVernay has been named one of PEOPLE's 25 Women Changing the World in the current issue for her efforts to increase diversity in entertainment.
Upon the recognition, the American director had an interaction with the magazine in which she revealed the darker side of Hollywood.
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The Oscar-nominated director thinks that the gender and racial disparity in Hollywood are not accidental.
She said: "I would say that it's quite intentional. You're basically saying, 'This is what we want, and this is what we're going to have.' There's no way you can tell me that there hasn't been effort put into exclusion."
In 2010, DuVernay founded an organisation named Array Now that helps to find and fund promising films by minority directors.
"I wanted to make films about the interiority of women of colour, people of colour, and I knew there wasn't a large market out in the studio system for those kinds of films, so I decided to just distribute on my own," she said.
"It started as a function of survival. I just finance it from my directing money and from donations from those who believe in inclusive film ... What you see you become, what you see increases your knowledge about the world and your place in it. It's imperative to equalise the playing field."
Besides that, the 45-year-old filmmaker hired only female directors for her OWN network drama Queen Sugar. "It's not hard, it just takes intention," the Selma director told PEOPLE.
"I've heard some people say it's reverse discrimination, but I can barely fix my mouth to answer a statement as ignorant as that. We're trying to correct, lead by example. It's an act of resistance."
DuVernay is recently working with Disney to helm its upcoming adaptation of the popular children's sci-fi novel that is starring Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon and Mindy Kaling, A Wrinkle In Time. She is the first black female director to lead a $100 million film.
The Middle of Nowhere director further said: "Disney allowed me to open my imagination. They believed in my vision in a way that was so nourishing to me as a filmmaker. It's very rare to come across that."
