The 2011 San Francisco International Women’s Film Festival runs April 6- April 10, 2011 at the Roxie Theatre in San Francisco.
The films in the festival represent the lives of women all over the globe and were directed and /or co-directed by women, including the opening night film from Uganda, Raymonde Provencher’s ‘riveting and jaw-dropping’ documentary, GRACE, MILLY, LUCY…CHILD SOLDIERS.
The 7th Annual SFIWFF proudly opens with Raymonde Provencher’s riveting and jaw-dropping documentary, GRACE, MILLY, LUCY…CHILD SOLDIERS. When we think about child soldiers, we rarely realize that many of them are girls. This documentary exposes the gripping first-hand accounts of Grace Akallo, Milly Auma, and Lucy Lanyero. Grace, Milly and Lucy were among the thousands of young girls brutally abducted from Ugandan villages, and trained to fight and kill for the Lord’s Resistance Army, a notorious rebel group, and forced into a life of warfare and slavery. Today, as adults rebuilding their lives, these women have become activists, helping female ex-rebels find their voice in the world, acceptance at home and forgiveness from one another. Launching an active global campaign, these women survivors are determined to have every victim’s voice be heard, and the war in Uganda must be stopped. The future of an entire generation of children and women depends on it. Stunning landscapes and quiet villages complete the setting for a call to rebuild lives once crushed by violence. The documentary also makes use of a distinct visual and sound treatment that conjures up the stifled echoes of a repressed past. GRACE, MILLY, LUCY…CHILD SOLDIERS exposes an entire generation shattered by war and violence, envisioning a more just world where all children are no longer used as tools of war.
Feature films selected for the 2011 San Francisco International Women’s Film Festival are:
U.S. NARRATIVE FEATURES – San Francisco Women Filmmakers
Opal (Director: Dina Ciraulo) – Opal is a narrative feature film about self-taught naturalist and cult icon Opal Whiteley. Raised in a logging camp at the turn of the century, Opal catapults to fame with the publication of her childhood diaries, then to infamy when readers suspect a hoax.
U.S. DOCUMENTARY FEATURES – San Francisco Women Filmmakers
TRUST: Second Acts in Young Lives (Director: Nancy Kelly) – TRUST is an uplifting movie about immigrant teens empowering themselves that will knock you down, but it will also pick you up. TRUST follows eighteen-year-old Marlin, a struggling Honduran immigrant to the United States who has lived through some of the harshest cruelties imaginable.
Atomic Mom (Director: M.T. Silvia) – Atomic Mom is a documentary about two women, both mothers, who have very different experiences of the atom bomb. After decades of silence, a daughter’s quest for truth leads to the exchange of an olive branch between an American Scientist and a Hiroshima Survivor.
U.S. NARRATIVE FEATURES
Three Veils (Director: Rolla Selbak) – The lives of three young Middle Eastern women intertwine as they struggle to defy tradition and create their own realities.
INTERNATIONAL NARRATIVE FEATURES
Imani /Uganda (Director: Caroline Kamya) – Imani vibrantly captures three vignettes of life in modern day Uganda: A child soldier returning to the parents who could not protect him, a woman fighting to get her wrongly accused sister out of jail, and a youth dance troop leader struggling to simply get through a hometown performance.