The twelfth annual Athena Movie Competition (AFF) has unveiled its lineup. To be held in-person March 11-13 at Barnard Faculty in New York Metropolis and nearly March 11-20, the fest will have a good time ladies leaders with movie screenings, panel discussions, and applications designed to assist the pipeline of ladies creatives.
The 2022 version will open with Mariama Diallo’s function directorial debut, “Grasp,” which sees three ladies reckoning with their elite school’s racist previous — and current. Diallo will take part in a Q&A after the movie’s screening on March 11.
Tia Lessin and Emma Pildes’ “The Janes” will function AFF’s Highlight movie. The documentary is the story of the Jane Collective, an underground community that offered protected, accessible, unlawful abortions in Chicago earlier than Roe v. Wade. The administrators will attend a post-screening Q&A on March 12, which is able to then be adopted by a panel on reproductive rights.
Among the many movie lineup’s different highlights are a twentieth anniversary screening of Patricia Cardoso’s coming-of-age drama following a college-bound Latina teen, “Actual Girls Have Curves”; Clara Kuperberg and Julia Kuperberg’s doc about the one girl director in Hollywood throughout the ’40s, “Ida Lupino: Gentlmen and Miss Lupino”; and Kim Bartley’s three-year chronicle of the lifetime of a younger Native American girl, “Pure Grit.”
Panels will embrace “Let’s Discuss About Units: How Intimacy Coordinators Are Making Units Safer,” “Considering Past the Binary: Ought to Gendered Classes Nonetheless Exist?,” and “Accessibility is a Proper, Not the Latest Hollywood Pattern.”
“As we enter into our twelfth 12 months of the Athena Movie Competition, we’ve got a big selection of recent, distinctive, and important voices and programming to share with audiences this 12 months. We look ahead to opening the pageant with Mariama Diallo’s function narrative debut, ‘Grasp’,” mentioned Melissa Silverstein, Co-Founder and Creative Director of AFF and Founder and Writer of Girls and Hollywood. “I’m additionally very happy with the slate of panel conversations we’ve curated which contact on a few of as we speak’s most urgent points, together with reproductive rights and ladies’s political management.”
AFF 2022’s full lineup is beneath. Head over to the fest’s web site to buy passes or discover out extra.
FEATURES
The Conductor
Documentary
Director: Bernadette Wegenstein
Writers: Stefan Fauland, Bernadette Wegenstein
Producer: Annette Porter
Leonard Bernstein’s protege Marin Alsop reveals how she smashed the glass ceiling to turn into an internationally famend conductor.
Lethal Cuts
*New York Premiere*
Narrative
Author/Director: Rachel Carey
Producers: Liz Gill, Auveen Lush, Ciara O’Sullivan
A black comedy set in a working-class Dublin hair salon the place the stylists turn into unintended vigilantes and neighborhood heroes as they tackle the gang members and gentrifiers threatening their neighborhood.
Publicity
Documentary
Director/Author: Holly Morris
Producers: Michael Kovnat, Jill Mazursky, Holly Morris, Eleanor Wilson
A group of ladies from the Western and Arab world makes a bid to achieve the North Pole. This unprecedented expedition navigates open leads of water, the specter of polar bears, and -40 diploma temperatures in a unprecedented story of resilience and world citizenry.
*Alfred P. Sloan STEM Showcase
FANNY: The Proper to Rock
Documentary
Director/Author: Bobbi Jo Hart
Producers: Bobbi Jo Hart, Robbie Hart
Meet probably the most essential rock bands that you simply’ve by no means heard of. Their lead guitarist may shred. Their musicianship and songwriting had been stellar. They had been embraced by rock royalty, launched 5 critically-acclaimed albums with High 40 charted songs, however by no means broke by. Oh, they usually had been ladies. FANNY: The Proper to Rock reveals the fascinating, untold story of an exceptional band that just about turned the “feminine Beatles.”
I Am Belmaya
*New York Premiere*
Documentary
Administrators: Sue Carpenter, Belmaya Nepali
Writers: Sue Carpenter, Kat Reynolds
Producer: Sue Carpenter
An inspirational story of insurrection, braveness and hope in patriarchal Nepal. Silenced and subjugated for many of her life, uneducated Belmaya takes up the film digicam to inform her story.
Ida Lupino: Gents and Miss Lupino
*US Premiere*
Documentary
Writers/Administrators/Producers: Clara Kuperberg, Julia Kuperberg
Ida Lupino was the one girl director in Hollywood within the late Nineteen Forties. She made films about ladies, tackling such dangerous topics as rape, bigamy, and abortion. For 20 years, the Administrators Guild of America was made up of 1,300 males and “Miss Lupino.”
The Janes
*Highlight Movie*
*New York Premiere*
Documentary
Administrators: Administrators: Tia Lessin, Emma Pildes
Producers: Emma Pildes, Daniel Arcana, Jessica Levin
Within the spring of 1972, police raided an condominium on the South Facet of Chicago. Seven ladies had been arrested and charged. The accused had been a part of a clandestine community. Utilizing code names, blindfolds, and protected homes to guard their identities and their work, they constructed an underground service for girls in search of protected, inexpensive, unlawful abortions. They known as themselves Jane.
*Will probably be launched on HBO later this 12 months
The Justice of Bunny King
Narrative
Director: Gaysorn Thavat
Writers: Sophie Henderson, Gregory King, Gaysorn Thavat
Producer: Emma Slade
A overcome adversity story about ladies preventing their means again from the underside of society.
Kili Huge
*New York Premiere*
Documentary
Director/Author: Ida Joglar
Producers: Sam Kretchmar, Ida Joglar
A gaggle of plus-sized ladies from all over the world try and climb the tallest peak in Africa, Mount Kilimanjaro.
Grasp
*Opening Night time *
Narrative
Director/Author: Mariama Diallo
Producers: Joshua Astrachan, Brad Becker-Parton, Andrea Roa
Three ladies try to seek out their place at an elite Northeastern college as outdated because the nation. When nameless racist assaults goal a Black freshman — who insists she is being haunted by ghosts of the college’s previous — every girl should decide the place the true menace lies.
*Will probably be launched in theaters and on Prime Video globally on March 18, 2022
Ninjababy
Narrative
Director: Yngvild Sve Flikke
Writers: Johan Fasting, Yngvild Sve Flikke, Inga Sætre
Producer: Yngve Sæther
Astronaut, forest keeper, cartoonist: 23-year-old Rakel can think about herself as a number of issues, however not a mom. So when she finds out she’s nearly seven months pregnant, her pocket book fills up with depictions of the “Ninjababy, who thinks it will probably simply cover in there, have time, and sneak out 9 months later.” After her drawings come to life as an animated fetus in a bandit masks, Ninjababy turns into a raucous and humorous coming-of-age story.
In Norwegian, with English subtitles
Pure Grit
Documentary
Director: Kim Bartley
Producers:Rachel Lysaght, Lesley McKimm
Chronicling three years within the lifetime of a younger Native American girl, Pure Grit is an exhilarating and intimate story of utmost bareback horse racing, younger love and hope when all appears misplaced.
Queen of Glory
Narrative
Director/Author: Nana Mensah
Producers: Baff Akoto, Anya Migdal, Kelley Robins, Jamund Washington
Ghanaian-American Sarah is all set to desert her Ivy League doctoral program to observe her married lover throughout the nation when her mom dies out of the blue and makes her the proprietor of a neighborhood bookshop within the Bronx.
Actual Girls Have Curves
*twentieth Anniversary Screening*
Director: Patricia Cardoso
Writers: Josefina Lopez, George LaVoo
Producers: Effie Brown, George LaVoo
In East Los Angeles, an 18-year-old is torn between her ambitions of going to varsity and the wishes of her domineering mom for her to get married, have kids, and oversee the small, rundown, family-owned textile manufacturing unit.
Robust Feminine Lead
Documentary
Director/Author: Tosca Looby
Producer: Karina Holden
One in three Australian ladies expertise discrimination or harassment within the office. Australia’s first and solely feminine prime minister, Julia Gillard, was one among them.
SHORT FILMS
Black Beginning
Director: Haimy Assefa
Producer: Dominique Turner
Three expectant moms, together with the director, navigate the thrill, fears, and complexity of Black motherhood in America.
Black Goat
Director/Author: Tang Yi
Producers: Prabin Kumar Rawat, Ok Sab Pandey
Pasang will get her first interval.
Change the Title
Director/Co-Producer: Cai Thomas
Co-Producer: Donald Conley
An intimate portrayal of Black youth organizing on the west facet of Chicago, Change The Title follows a gaggle of fifth graders from Village Management Academy as they embark on a marketing campaign to rename Stephen A. Douglas Park after freedom fighters Anna Murray and Frederick Douglass. Over the course of the three-year grassroots marketing campaign the scholars sort out bureaucratic Chicago Park District methods, underestimations of their capability to make actual change in addition to a pandemic and world rebellion.
Chilly Beds Lits Froids
*US Premiere*
Director/Author: Laëtitia Martinucci
Producer: Jonathan Hazan
After getting locked out, Mona, a younger seasonal employee of Italian origin, tries to battle off the chilly whereas on the lookout for shelter.
Girlsboysmix
*New York Premiere*
Director/Author/Producer: Lara Aerts
Producers: Laura Verduijn
Why is it so essential to be a boy or a woman?
God’s Daughter Dances Sin-ui Ttal-eun Chum-eul Chun-da
Director/Author: Sungbin Byun
Producer: Suji Bong
A transgender feminine dancer, Shin-mi, will get a name from the Army Manpower Administration, to attend the Army Service Examination.
The Hairdresser La Coiffeuse
Director/Author/Producer: Lorraine Value
On this quick, poetic documentary Kathleen displays upon her 31 years as a hairdresser for the terminally unwell in palliative care.
In Accordance With
*New York Premiere*
Administrators: Sarah Ema Friedland, Alessandra Lacorazza
Author: Sarah Ema Friedland
Producers: Sarah Ema Friedland, Alessandra Lacorazza
A brief science fiction movie in regards to the actuality of entry to abortion within the U.S.
It’s Very Frequent
Director/Author/Producer: Megan Hess
The texture good miscarriage film you didn’t know you wanted.
Little Sparks
*New York Premiere*
Director: Denali Tiller
Producer: Rebecca Stern
Three kids within the Bronx navigate the challenges of distant studying
Militant Mom
*US Premiere*
Director/Author/Producer: Carmen Pollard
Producers: Lisa Jackson, Lauren Grant
Militant Mom tells the story of the ladies of a Vancouver housing mission who took on the CNR to make sure that their youngsters had a protected route to highschool.
My Grandmother is an Egg 我的阿婆是一顆蛋
Director/Author/Producer: Wu-Ching Chang
“As a toddler,” says the filmmaker, “my grandmother was given to be raised as a future daughter-in-law.” The movie displays upon ladies’s oppression and struggles for freedom.
Not the Science Kind: Ciara
Director/Author: Julio Palacio
Producer: Christine Enviornment
Dr. Ciara Sivels is a nuclear engineer with Johns Hopkins Utilized Physics Laboratory, and the primary black girl to earn a Ph. D from the College of Michigan in nuclear engineering. It was her highschool science instructor who first recognized her means in science and inspired her to use to MIT.
ReByrth
*New York Premiere*
Director/Author/Producer: Cydney Tucker
A Black doula fights to save lots of the lives of Black moms as they journey by childbirth into parenthood.
The Shaman’s Apprentice Angakusajaujuq
Director: Zacharias Kunuk
Writers: Zacharias Kunuk, Jonathan Frantz
Producers: Neil Christopher, Nadia Mike, Jonathan Frantz
A younger shaman should face her first check—a visit underground to go to Kannaaluk, The One Beneath, who holds the solutions to why a neighborhood member has turn into unwell.
Because you arrived, my coronary heart stopped belonging to me
*New York Premiere*
Director/Author/Producer: Erin Semine Kökdil
Central American moms journey by bus by Mexico, looking for their kids who migrated north in the direction of the USA however disappeared en route.
Susana
Director/Producer: Laura Gamse
Author: Susana
Regardless of the hazard to herself and her household, former slaughterhouse employee Susana returns to the scene at night time to take care of animals on their option to the kill flooring.
Tarcila: Indigenous Options to Local weather Change from Peru
*New York Premiere*
Director/Author: by Sarah Kuck
Producer: Leigh Newman-Bell
Quechua elder Tarcila Rivera Zea fights for Indigenous Rights to sovereignty and meals safety within the face of local weather change.
To the Future, with Love
Director: Shaleece Haas
Author: Hunter Pixel Jimenez
Producer: Shaleece Haas
Meet 19-year-old Hunter Pixel Jimenez, a nonbinary trans boy caught between the expectations of his Guatemalan immigrant household and his goals of dwelling “completely happy and homosexual” along with his long-distance boyfriend.
You and Me Ana Wa Enti
Director/Author: Alexandra Muhawi-Ho
Producers: Alexandra Muhawi-Ho, Polina Buchak, Camila Grimaldi, Alyssa DiMartino
33-year-old Amira struggles to seek out her place in between her Arab and American identities whereas dwelling with and navigating her relationship along with her culturally conventional, but loving mom.
PANELS
Accessibility is a Proper, Not the Latest Hollywood Pattern
Because the pandemic continues, there are those that merely need to return to “regular.” However for a lot of that “regular” was inhospitable and ableist, and is not acceptable. The pandemic introduced with it a renewed deal with how one can make the world of movie extra accessible, from the conversations round captioning, to digital description on digital panels, to Crip Camp being nominated for an Oscar, placing the facility within the arms of precise disabled individuals to inform their very own tales. However with each constructive push, there have been setbacks, from the Oscars by no means actually constructing an accessible stage or for disabled critics going again to be locked out of entry. As we chart the brand new regular, how will we make sure that the shifts we noticed throughout the pandemic not solely stay however are codified into the trade?
Let’s Discuss About Units: How Intimacy Coordinators Are Making Units Safer
Set security has been a subject of elevated dialogue since 2017 and the explosion of #MeToo. This panel will delve into the just lately created position of intimacy coordinator with the pioneering individuals forging this new motion to debate how they’re creating protected units for actors who take part in intercourse or different intimate scenes in movie and tv manufacturing. The panel may also talk about COVID protocols for intimacy, any pushback on their roles, and what they see as the subsequent steps for making the office safer.
Considering Past the Binary: Ought to Gendered Classes Nonetheless Exist?
This 12 months the Gotham Awards introduced that they’d be eliminating gendered classes for his or her awards, following the lead of the Grammys and the VMAs, and different award ceremonies. On this panel we’ll discover transferring past the binary, the significance of representing everybody and the implications of eradicating gendered classes.
Girls in Political Management
The story of ladies’s management in authorities is primarily informed from a lens of shortage — how few feminine leaders we’ve got, how unhealthy the statistics are, the sexism that ladies leaders expertise, and so forth. It’s time to reframe the dialog. This panel will discover the narrative round ladies in political life, how they’re coated after they run, win, lose, and lead, how this has modified throughout COVID, and we’ll make clear the successes of feminine leaders from across the globe. We’ll convey collectively political journalists, present elected officers, and people who assist them to debate and examine the advanced relationship between gender and politics as we speak and why issues will not be as dire as some say.
The Way forward for Latinx Tales in Hollywood
Twenty years on, Actual Girls Have Curves has turn into a seminal film, each due to its lovely portrayal of a younger Latina coming of age and since it’s a reminder of an unfulfilled promise for movies by and in regards to the Latinx neighborhood. On this anniversary, we glance again at this movie and talk about the way forward for Latinx tales in Hollywood.
What’s the Subsequent Part for Reproductive Rights?
With the Supreme Court docket poised to overrule Roe v. Wade this time period, states will quickly have free rein to ban or in any other case limit abortion. It’s anticipated that almost half the states will accomplish that. A whole bunch of 1000’s of pregnant individuals can have restricted entry to important well being care providers and be pressured to journey a whole bunch of miles to acquire care or search for abortion tablets on the grey or black market. With the brand new tremendous conservative majority on the Supreme Court docket, we’re at an inflection level. This dialogue will deal with the long run for the battle for reproductive rights from the people who find themselves on the entrance strains.
Pushing Boundaries in a World Filled with Limits: A Dialog About The Challenges of Creating Leisure Right now
Barnard Girls in Leisure hosts a dialog about creating recent and thought-provoking content material amidst a always shifting “new regular.” Between the pandemic, local weather disasters, cancel tradition, and political turmoil at dwelling and overseas, one would possibly argue that we’ve by no means wanted compelling, thought-provoking leisure greater than we do as we speak. However how do you create in a world that may generally really feel prefer it’s on fireplace? On this panel, ladies who work in numerous areas of the trade will talk about how we are able to rise to the problem of making essential work inside as we speak’s ever-changing boundaries.
Supply: Women And Hollywood
