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LOVE is in the air tonight at WRIF!
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Festival Kick-Off Party
Friday, Feb 14
5:30 - 6:45PM @BOH
ALL ARE WELCOME!
Celebrate 20 years of WRIF with fellow film lovers and good music by Route 5 Jive, good food and wine from Vermont Party Barn in the newly renovated Briggs Opera House Lobby. Take in a special exhibit of Suzanne Opton's photography connected to opening night short film "Endlessly an Observer" and a Norwich Bookstore pop-up to kick off the festival!
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Opening Short
Friday, Feb 14 7PM
@BOH
VT filmmaker Brian Carroll will be in attendance
Local VT photographer Suzanne Opton had a long and celebrated career, including a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her portraits of American soldiers in the Library of Congress and Smithsonian American Art Museum have sparked passionate debate about art and militarism. Corinth, VT filmmaker Brian Carroll interviewed Opton in her studio, reflecting on a lifetime of work and simplicity in rural VT.
An exhibition of Opton's work will be on display in the Briggs lobby.
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Opening Feature
Friday, Feb 14 7PM
(with Endlessly an Observer)
@BOH
Director Rachel Seed's intimate, genre-bending journey of a daughter’s attempt to piece together a portrait of her mother, a pioneering female photojournalist she never knew uncovers the vast archive Sheila Turner Seed produced, including lost interviews with iconic photographers Henri Cartier-Bresson, Gordon Parks, Cecil Beaton, Bruce Davidson, Lisette Model, and others. The film explores memory, family, and stories left untold.
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""VT Midnight" Feature
Friday, Feb 14 9:30PM
@BOH
This neon-saturated crime thriller unfolds over the course of Valentine’s Day in New Jersey. After a drug deal goes sideways, a young sex worker goes on the run from the mob, making colorful companions and enemies along the way. Flipping the script on the LGBTQIA+
return home tale and the classic Jersey mobster saga, this neon-soaked story is full of both action and moments of pure tenderness. Complicated and hilarious, Ponyboi’s journey exposes a kaleidoscope of humanity's sugary sweetness under hard surfaces. Official selection at Sundance and Newfest. Directed by Esteban Arango (USA)
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Feature Film + Short
Saturday, Feb 15 12PM
@BOH
Canada's 2025 Oscar Submission and official selection at Cannes, TIFF, and New York Film Festival, Universal Language overflows with good cheer and kindness in a comedy told through multiple narratives reimagining a Canada where Persian and French are the two official languages.
Directed by Matthew Rankin (Canada)
With Emerging Filmmaker Winning short "Bee Well"
by Brandon Mioduszewski
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Feature Film + Panel
@BOH
Winner of Best Documentary at Berlinale, this eye-opening, vérité-style film serves as a moving portrait of the unlikely friendship between Palestinian activist Basel Adra and Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham, who form a philosophical and political alliance despite drastic differences in their abilities to exist freely in this world.
Directed by Rachel Szor, Yuval Abraham, Hamdan Ballal, Basel Adra
(Palestine, Norway)
Followed by Panel Discussion moderated by Asst Prof. of History Aseel Najib with artist-activists Saba Maheen, Mona Shiber, and JuPong Lin
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Feature Film + Short
Saturday, Feb 15 5PM
@BOH
In this gorgeous story of youthful romance, fourteen-year-old Elias feels attracted to his new neighbor, Alexander, and soon realizes he’s in love for the very first time. This tender romance, set in the lush Belgian countryside and exuding warmth, has played for audiences at the Berlin and Frameline film festivals. Directed by Anthony Schatteman
(Belgium & Netherlands)
With Emerging Filmmaker Winning short "Within the Crystal Hills" by Griffin "The" Hansen
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Wellness Break
Saturday, Feb. 15 5PM
@Upper Valley Yoga
Move, stretch and enjoy a restorative yoga practice to help absorb and digest the many emotions that WRIF's films may give rise to (and sore bottoms from sitting). Upper Valley Yoga's Leslie Carleton will offer this 60-minute yoga practice FREE to any and all WRIF attendees. Please bring your own mat.
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Feature Film
Saturday, Feb. 15 7PM
@BOH
When lonely 12-year-old Bailey meets a kind drifter (Franz Rogowski,
Passages), something seems off. Incredible things begin to happen as the film shifts gears to magical realism in a manner that only a filmmaker like director Andrea Arnold (Fish Tank, American Honey) could pull off. Official selection, Cannes and NY Film Festival.
(UK/Germany/France/US)
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Late-night Feature Film
Saturday, Feb. 15 9:15PM
@BOH
As a heat wave brings a Marseille neighborhood to the boil, three roommates gleefully meddle in the lives of their neighbours from their balcony. Until a late night drink turns into a bloody affair. Fresh from Cannes 2024, Noemi Merlant’s sophomore feature is an Almodóvarian rape-revenge ghost story that blares its bare-breasted, hard-knuckled feminism with bright colors and breathless plotting.
(France)
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Due to SNOW, Sunday's line-up has been moved to MONDAY @ Briggs Opera House
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Monday, Feb 17 @JAM
10:30AM-12PM
All are invited to enjoy pastries and coffee at JAM – Junction Arts & Media before today's film screenings. Filmmaker and JAM Ex. Director Samantha Davidson Green will be in attendance preceding 12PM screening of her short film, "I Believe I'll Go Back Home," shot in part at JAM in May 2022.
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Feature Film + Short
With short doc "I Believe I'll Go Back Home: Robert Johnson's Copiah County Roots & Living Legacy" by Samantha Davidson Green
Monday, Feb 17 12PM
@BOH
On an empty road in the middle of the night, Shula stumbles across the body of her uncle. As funeral proceedings begin around them, she and her cousins bring to light the buried secrets of their middle-class Zambian family in filmmaker Rungano Nyoni’s surreal and vibrant reckoning with the lies we tell ourselves.
(Zambia/UK/Ireland/US)
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Feature Film + Short
Monday, Feb 17 3PM
@BOH
In 1968, a group of radical journalists leave the city and politics to live communally as organic farmers. Blending contemporary interviews with a remarkable trove of archival footage,
Far Out tells a lively, inspiring, irreverent and honest story about how these “hippies” not only transformed Vermont and western Massachusetts, but how rural life changed them. Directed by Charles Light (USA). With short 16mm doc "Free Farm" from the Newsreel Collective (1970).
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Feature Film + Short
Monday, Feb 17 6PM @BOH
Ailing filmmaker Leonard Fife (Richard Gere) wants to tell his life story, unfiltered, before it’s too late. From legendary screenwriter/director, Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver, First Reformed) comes an outpouring of lapsed-Catholic guilt, lived lies and denied truth, in which the fragments of history fall together in a mosaic of aspect ratios and film stocks for a stunning visual and editing experience.
(US) With Emerging Filmmaker Winning short "Love of the Land" by Travis Van Alstyne
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Feature + Short
Monday, Feb 17 8PM @BOH
In the must-see debut feature of the year, Palestinian filmmaker Mahdi Fleifel orchestrates a breakneck, empathetic thriller set within the modern refugee experience. As Palestinians Chatila and Reda hustle and steal their way through a miserly living in a refugee squat in Athens, they dream of one day opening a café in Germany and reuniting with family members displaced at a camp in Lebanon. A refreshing perspective in today’s discourse, Fleifel is emerging as one of the leading cinematic voices of the Middle Eastern diaspora.
(Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Greece, Netherlands, Germany, France, UK)
With Emerging Filmmaker Winning short "Deepfake Girl" by Annika Murdock
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@ JAM – Junction Arts & Media
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Media Arts Exhibits
On display throughout the festival
Feb 8 - 16
@JAM – Junction Arts & Media
Experience STARLINGS : LEAFLETS, an interactive video art installation by artist and designer, Saba Maheen (Dartmouth '20) unpacking the IDF's leaflet campaign in Gaza.
With PEACE BIRDS, a community-engaged art action that grew out of a shared desire of Mona Shiber and JuPong Lin, two artist friends who come from lineages of occupation and struggle for sovereignty in Palestine and Taiwan, to transform the agony of witnessing atrocities.
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How does my gift help JAM?
When you make a gift to JAM – Junction Arts & Media, your donation enables JAM to empower all Upper Valley residents to have a creative voice, actively participate in local democracy, and find joy and belonging in the Upper Valley community. JAM is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. Your gift may be tax-deductible.
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