Established by Nora Armani in 2011, and serving as SRFF's artistic director,  Armani  has defined the mission of this small festival. SRFF shows productions which “address socially relevant topics in an entertaining manner” with the goal of reaching a larger audience while avoiding the pitfalls of commercial films with their violence and frequent disregard of basic human rights. For its sixth edition, the focus was set on the life of  women and children in conflict zones, the fate of indigenous people, migration,  and the possible empowerment of victims.

Held from March 15-21 in the Cinema Village theater and other venues, the festival presented six narrative features, 13 long documentaries and 23 short films arranged in thematic blocks matching the festival's mission. Themes covered included Pollution and the Environment, Drug Addiction, Life and Death, Women and Choice, Capital Punishment, Freedom, and Across the Border.  Juries selected awards for the Vanya Exerjian prize on Empowering Women and Girls, the best narrative and documentary features, the best narrative and documentary shorts, and the winner of a script writing competition. A special jury of members of the Women Film Critics Circle bestowed the WFCC award. There were also mentions by the jury for best actor and best actresses. Cinema Libre Studio provided free consultation for the winners of the Grand Narrative and Documentary awards and IndiPix offered digital distribution for the winning documentary and a special award for a film they picked from the festivals official selection. Among some of the noteworthy panels accompanying the program were seminars on the organization of film festivals, the use of archival material, producing on low budgets, and a discussion event of Tierry Michel and Colette Braeckman’s classic 2015 documentary THE MAN WHO MENDS WOMEN.

The 2019 SRFF Winners included

Narrative Feature   YVA, Anahid Abab, Iran Armenia, 2017

Documentary Feature, DANSEUR, Scott Gormley, USA, 2018

Narrative Short, THE MANDARIN TREE, Cengiz Akayguen, Germany 2017

Narrative Documentary, WILD UTAH AMERICA’S RED ROCK WILDERNESS, Chriss Lee and Alex Lee, USA, 2018  

The Vanya Exerjian Empowering Women and Girls Award, CALIFORNIA GIRLS, Laura Hinman, USA, 2018,

Scriptwriting Competition, DUGHA, Rashana Suri.

The documentary section had several other impressive productions which are already in distribution, HBO’s IT WILL BE CHAOS by Lorena Luciano Filippo, USA, 2018  offers a superb and detailed analysis of the fate of refugees from Africa and the Middle East trying to reach Europe. Now available on Amazon Prime is THE CREEPY LINE by Michelle Taylor, USA 2018 which provides a sobering, empirically driven, analysis and call for action. Taylor’s focus is the manipulations of the public consciousness by Google and Facebook which flattens our critical minds, undermines the democratic process while continually enhancing the profits of both companies.      

Claus Mueller  filmexchange@gmail.com