Midwinter Film Festivals Bring Culture in From the Cold 

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• Courtesy Of Neon
• Robot Dreams

News that Barbie director Greta Gerwig and lead actress Margot Robbie had been passed over for Academy Award nominations set the mainstream movie world ablaze with claims of persistent industry sexism — and counterclaims about the quality of the year's best box-office performer. That debate may rage right through the Oscars ceremony on March 10. In the meantime, three upcoming film festivals in Vermont offer a reprieve from Hollywood drama with a deep focus on global cinema — especially the work of women auteurs.

The Global Roots Film Festival, presented by the Vermont International Film Foundation, runs from February 8 to 11 in the Film House and a new venue in Burlington's Main Street Landing Performing Arts Center. The festival spotlights a dozen films submitted for Best International Feature Film consideration, offering moviegoers a chance to see Oscar contenders from regions worlds away from Barbie Land. Seven selections are by women directors — four of them feature debuts, according to VTIFF executive director Steve MacQueen.

The White River Indie Film Festival, which runs from February 15 to 18 at the Briggs Opera House and Junction Arts & Media in White River Junction, showcases international and local films, including several directed by women. Among them is Vermont filmmaker Sierra Urich's acclaimed documentary Joonam, in the midst of its globe-spanning festival tour.

Finally, Montpelier's Green Mountain Film Festival, last held in 2019, will return from its pandemic- and flood-induced hiatus and run from March 14 to 17; its film lineup will be revealed on February 12.

Ready for popcorn and compelling cinema? Read on for highlights of each festival.

Sister Acts

One buzzworthy film screening at both Global Roots and WRIF is the boldly innovative documentary Four Daughters, from director Kaouther Ben Hania. This nominee for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar focuses on the trauma and tribulations of Tunisian matriarch Olfa Hamrouni and daughters Eya, Tayssir, Rahma and Ghofrane Chikhaoui — the latter two of whom have been swept away from the family into the ISIS radical religious movement.

While the film is a documentary, with Olfa, Eya and Tayssir appearing in it, Olfa is also portrayed in some scenes by actress Hend Sabri. The absent Rahma and Ghofrane are played by Nour Karoui and Ichraq Matar, respectively.

"It's the kind of documentary that would've been laughed out of the category back in the '80s and '90s," MacQueen said. "It's creative, almost docudrama. It's really clever and revealing."

Four Daughters will open the Global Roots festival on February 8 and screen again on February 17 at WRIF, accompanied by the Emerging Filmmakers selection "dear mom," an experimental documentary short from University of Vermont student Mae Nagusky that explores challenging questions about her mother. Filmmaker Laura Plasencia will lead a post-screening discussion.

Another highly anticipated Global Roots film with strong themes of women's communal experiences is Smoke Sauna Sisterhood, which earned Estonian director Anna Hints the Directing Award in the World Cinema documentary category at the Sundance Film Festival, among other accolades. The film chronicles an important cultural ritual: women gathering in a sauna to connect and share closely held secrets.

Intimate women's storytelling also energizes Joonam, a WRIF highlight that screens on February 18. Director Urich conceived the documentary while working in the film industry and developing her own projects outside Vermont. Joonam — a Persian term of endearment — explores how her identity is shaped by her Iranian heritage, which remained in the background of her Addison County youth.

Urich's mother, Mitra, emigrated from Iran to the U.S. in 1979, and her grandmother, Behjat, followed more than a decade later. For the director, the ancestral homeland carried a sense of "mysticism," she told Seven Days; Iran was "this lost land of Atlantis for me, so tantalizing but a bit out of reach." Urich felt "a very simple, kind of naïve calling ... of just wanting to hear these stories from my grandmother."

Since its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, Joonam has captivated audiences by illuminating the power of family stories to promote deeper self-understanding. On the film's global journey, Urich has met audience members whose responses to the story went beyond the particulars of nationality and ethnicity.

"There's something about legacy and wanting to feel connected to something bigger than yourself that many people can relate to," Urich said.

All About the Base

WRIF's Joonam screening and Urich's post-screening talk-back enhance a festival program packed with extra-cinematic events. Opening night, on February 15, will reprise the popular Pitch Fest, where aspiring moviemakers share ideas and might even land a deal. In 2023, Loren David Howard walked away from Pitch Fest with $1,000 toward his first feature film, Custodian, which will screen this year following Pitch Fest 2.0.

WRIF will also offer master classes on myriad aspects of the craft, led by Jay Craven (A Stranger in the Kingdom), Nora Jacobson (Ruth Stone's Vast Library of the Female Mind), producer Bill Stetson and other players who have powered Vermont filmmaking.

"I want it to be a good festival for people who like watching films, but there's also the added goal in there of inspiring people to make their own stuff," festival coordinator Cedar O'Dowd said.

The emphasis on supporting filmmakers aligns with WRIF's effort to expand its audience. Like Global Roots and GMFF, WRIF screens films that offer viewers perspectives not readily available at multiplexes or through popular streaming services — or, as WRIF programming director Travis Weedon put it, a chance to "experience a kind of cinematic language that they're not used to."

In recent years, WRIF has worked to balance "social-commentary documentaries and adventurous art-house films" with "more appealing cinema," Weedon said. The goal is "to earn people's trust that they can come to us for a good time, too, and not just be challenged," he added.

The opening-night gala sets that tone with a catered social event before Tran Anh Hung's acclaimed gourmet-themed period film The Taste of Things, starring Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel.

O'Dowd singled out director Pablo Berger's animated Robot Dreams, an Oscar contender for Best Animated Feature, as a film that audiences of all ages might find touching — with special appeal to the thriving animation community in the hometown of the Center for Cartoon Studies.

For horror movie fans, WRIF has Ariane Louis-Seize's Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person — with a Vampire Dance Party to follow. O'Dowd billed that intersection of moviegoing and socializing as "an experience like the Barbie movie, but for freaks."

Turning the Tide

Although the GMFF lineup was not yet released at press time, advisory board chair Christopher Wiersema offered the rough outlines of a venerable festival that is reemerging from a leadership shake-up, the COVID-19 shutdown and last summer's devastating flood.

The revived fest will spread throughout downtown Montpelier, with screenings and events at the Savoy Theater, Capitol Showplace, City Hall Arts Center, Kellogg-Hubbard Library and Crumb Factory artist collective space. Main Street's Rabble-Rouser Chocolate & Craft will serve as "an unprogrammed mingling space," Wiersema said. "Almost every space that we'll be in was affected by the flood and has since recovered.

"We were already excited to come back after a long hiatus," he added, but the post-flood resurgence feels "even more important."

The opening-night party at City Hall Arts Center will combine film and music, as Evan Premo of Scrag Mountain Music premieres a composition to score a new short film by Vermont art photographer and filmmaker Andreas John. The Montpelier Chamber Orchestra will perform original pieces to accompany two other shorts: "Chamberpeace" by Natalie Jones and "The Green Mountain Project" by Tori Lawrence.

On the programming side, Wiersema credits festival programmer Sam Kann, also the organizer of Burlington's multidisciplinary Plex Arts Festival, with "centering younger voices, diverse voices" in the renewed GMFF. As it did in years past, the festival will hold a three-day Film Slam, a sprint to make a short film based on a genre prompt and a set of parameters.

Wiersema, who's also the director of the Vermont Youth Documentary Lab, is already seeing the slam generate interest among youth groups. "That's going to be a lot of fun," he said, noting that such outreach will bring "a lot more exciting perspectives than the conventional lens."

VTIFF Opens a New Screening Room in Burlington

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• Erik Esckilsen
• Steve MacQueen in VTIFF's new screening room (still awaiting its new theater seats)

The organizers of this season's in-person film events count on patrons' willingness to step away from small screens and sit shoulder to shoulder in front of big ones.

"I think we're coming out of something, but we're redefining," Vermont International Film Foundation executive director Steve MacQueen said, referring to at-home viewing habits during the pandemic. "The communal experience of going to see things has power, and I think people understand that."

With its 2024 Global Roots Film Festival this month, VTIFF will expand opportunities for movie buffs to commune by opening a new screening room adjacent to its offices at Main Street Landing Performing Arts Center in Burlington. The space will accommodate roughly 35 audience members with seats in three tiered rows. Walls are painted a deep red, and there's "Dolby 7.1 Surround sound — top of the line," MacQueen said. "It's a very good environment in which to watch a film."

MacQueen credits his predecessor, Orly Yadin, with the vision for the screening room — and for guiding VTIFF to new heights, with offerings ranging from monthly screenings to Global Roots to the springtime Made Here Film Festival. VTIFF's attendance has risen over the past year, according to MacQueen, and the 2023 flagship festival broke records.

The new screening room is "not meant to be a huge moneymaker," MacQueen said, noting that the foundation hopes to keep screenings affordable. "We want to just start showing films and engaging and creating a film culture."

He's excited about the "free-form" programming possibilities of the room and the opportunities it provides "to get outside of what we've been doing, even as we expand what we're doing." For instance, he'd like to involve new curators in the programming process.

"I want to make it a resource for filmmakers, cineastes ... a room for the entire community to use," MacQueen said. "Everybody has a movie that is connected with them that they want to share with other people."

He joked about having shown a personal favorite, Swedish director Ingmar Bergman's intense drama Cries and Whispers, to a dozen or so people. "Two or three have liked it," he said.

All kidding aside, MacQueen believes people will keep showing up for the collective experience of seeing a movie in a dark room. "I think that just doing things alone has a shelf life," he said.