Politically minded movies are at the core of this year’s Green Mountain Film Festival — a program that includes 19 feature films, 21 shorts and a handful of other events. The festival runs from Friday, March 14, through Sunday, March 16, in Montpelier, with films playing at either the Savoy Theater or the Capitol Theatre and satellite events scattered across the city.
While the festival organizers didn’t set out with any predetermined themes, GMFF programmer Sam Kann said she was drawn to films with explicitly political subject matter and those that feature historically marginalized voices — especially considering policies enacted by the current presidential administration that target LGBTQ, immigrant and other minority communities. “We’re showing a lot of films that take a hard look at our country and many that are uplifting those whose civil rights, both here in the United States and elsewhere, are under threat,” she said.
On opening night, the festival screens the Serbian drama 78 Days. Directed by Emilija Gaši, the film follows three sisters creating a video diary with a handheld Sony camcorder. Set in 1999, their video-play unfolds against the backdrop of the Kosovo War, when NATO carried out an aerial bombing campaign against the former Yugoslavia.
Another festival highlight is Seeds, a documentary that follows Black farmers and their families in the rural American South as they struggle over land ownership — at one point traveling to Washington, D.C., to protest in front of the White House. Directed by Brittany Shyne, Seeds won a U.S. Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year and, according to Kann, is “gorgeously shot” on black-and-white film.
Four groups of short films are in the festival mix, with queer, coming-of-age and Vermont themes, as well as selections from the Mothership Monthly Film Festival, a DIY series in Burlington.
Each block will be followed by a Q&A with filmmakers. Among them is Fiona Obertinca, visiting from Los Angeles with her short film “Dandelion,” about 1970s-era youth advocate groups that identified LGBTQ kids in the U.S. foster system and tried to place them in queer homes.
That history is “totally radical, and nobody knows about it,” said Obertinca, who made the film in a master’s program at LA’s American Film Institute.
Beyond film screenings, attendees can listen in on a Sunday evening panel about creating feature-length films in the Green Mountain State. Vermont Production Collective, a nonprofit that supports new and established artists in the film industry, hosts the discussion.
Audiences can also take part in a “work in progress” screening — a new feature of the festival — on Saturday afternoon. They’ll watch and weigh in on Burlington, This is You!, an unfinished documentary by Burlington codirector Myles David Jewell that traces the history of the city’s community media center, CCTV.
Throughout the weekend, the Crumb Factory artist collective will host “APOLIS Departure/Return,” an exhibition of documentary shorts and audiovisual installations exploring the Asian diaspora. Visitors can stick around for two all-vinyl dance-floor sets on Friday and Saturday night.
The festival’s closing night features The White House Effect, from directors Bonni Cohen, Pedro Kos and Jon Shenk. The documentary leans heavily on archival footage to examine the history of how climate change became a partisan battle at the federal level.
Founded in 1997, the GMFF took a four-year pandemic-induced hiatus beginning in 2020, returning with an all-new team last year. In addition to this year’s political bent, the films focus on community, Kann said. For instance, a discussion about civic engagement and democracy is scheduled to follow a Saturday afternoon screening of Pete and Rebecca Davis’ documentary Join or Die, about the work of political scientist Robert Putnam.
“It’s as important to think about large-scale human rights abuses as it is to build our local communities,” Kann said. “Tying these things together is, I think, one of the greatest beauties of the festival.”
This article appears in Mar 12-18, 2025.
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