ALL EYES ON WOMEN
Join Film Fatales and Cinemarket for a Virtual Market and Live Pitch Event event on Friday, March 5th at 10am PT during the 2021 Berlinale Film Festival.
Watch as filmmakers seeking distribution pitch their feature films to an industry panel of international buyers and distributors. Follow along as these directors receive live feedback on their projects and stick around afterwards for an audience Q&A.
The filmmakers presenting their projects are: Cristina Ibarra (The Infiltrators), Iram Parveen Bilal (I’ll Meet You There), Khadifa Wong (Uprooted), Kavery Kaul (The Bengali) and Yi Chen (First Vote).
Live feedback will be provided by Elise McCave (Kickstarter), Jackie Sayno (Encore), Nele Willaert (Gaumont), Opal Hope Bennet (DOC NYC), Sarah Lash (Condé Nast), and Sophie von Uslar (Constantin Film). Moderated by Alece Oxendine (Columbia University).
All Eyes on Women is a joint initiative from Film Fatales and Cinemarket to highlight and encourage diverse and positive representation of films directed by women, trans, and/or non binary filmmakers in screen-based media worldwide. Discover dozens of films participating in the Virtual Market throughout the festival.
You can also check out the list of all the Fatales films participating in the market HERE
As well as read up some more on this amazing initiative we are so very proud of here HERE
This event will be accessible with live captioning.
RSVP HERE
If you missed the event, no worries! You can catch up on past events and watch HERE
Iram Parveen Bilal is a creator excited to tell thought provoking stories that are socially impactful and envision an inclusive world. Her brand is character-driven, coming of age, moody dramatic stories with an added interest in the thriller space. Raised in Nigeria and Pakistan and having spent a third of her life in three different continents, she is a certified third culture citizen. Being a serial fish out of water, she has a keen eye into characters coping with challenging circumstances. Most recently, she was hired to write a pilot and break series for two seasons of a hip hop dance drama by the Emmy Award Winning producers of Netflix India’s DELHI CRIME. Her second feature as a writer/director, I’LL MEET YOU THERE was in competition at SXSW 2020 and was acquired by Abigail Disney’s Level Forward. I’LL MEET YOU THERE has opened to the North American market to rave reviews. She is a CAPE, IFP, Film Independent & Thomas J. Watson fellow and multiple time Women in Film awardee. Eager to raise while rising and being an engineer in her past, Iram is an active mentor for women in film and tech. She is a member of the Film Fatales and the Alliance of Women directors, advocating for gender parity behind the camera. Bilal has been featured on NPR, BBC, the New York Times, Forbes, Bloomberg, Filmmaker Magazine and more. Bilal initiated the Pakistani Oscar committee and is the founder of Pakistan’s first professional screenwriting lab (QALAMBAAZ). She believes genuine curiosity is the only antidote to fear. When she isn’t telling stories, she is dancing to Bollywood tunes or nerding out with fellow Caltech engineers.
A modern and moving portrait of three generations of a Muslim-American family, I’LL MEET YOU THERE follows Majeed, a Chicago policeman, and his teenage daughter Dua, a gifted ballerina, who are unexpectedly visited by Baba, Majeed’s long-estranged father from Pakistan. Majeed is given a career-making opportunity that he can’t turn down, but it requires him to use his father’s religious devotion to gain access to the local mosque, while Dua, under Baba’s guidance, begins to question her passion for dance. The three form a tentative bond of family and cohesion that comes to a head in a surprise bait and switch by the FBI. I’LL MEET YOU THERE defies storytelling conventions and stereotypes in favor of multi-dimensional characters who display their humanity at every turn. Filmmaker Iram Parveen Bilal’s thoughtful writing and directing have yielded enlightening performances in a story of family and betrayal that is both unique and universal.
Kavery Kaul is an award-winning filmmaker whose character-driven documentaries challenge who “we” are and who tells that story. Through an intimate lens, she crafts stories which boundlessly straddle different worlds. The founder of riverfilms, her films have been featured at DOC NYC, Telluride, London, Rotterdam, and Sydney Festivals; in countries including India, Japan, Burkina Faso, Dubai, and Italy; at the Kennedy Center (DC), National Museum of Women in the Arts (DC), Metropolitan Museum of Art (NY), Cleveland Museum, and High Museum (Atlanta). Kavery has received a Fulbright and a Logan Fellowship. She has garnered the Best Cultural Film Award (Havana) and a Proclamation of Excellence (NYC). She directed the prestigious Imagen Award Nominee CUBAN CANVAS, a Margaret Mead Film Festival Selection. Her film BACK WALKING FORWARD was showcased at the Maysles Cinema (NYC) and went on to numerous screenings internationally; LONG WAY FROM HOME was a Film Threat, Time Out, and Booklist Critic’s Pick. Her cultural documentaries include the theatrically-released ONE HAND DON’T CLAP; FIRST LOOK presented on PBS-TV by the National Latino Consortium; and WILD AT ART, part of the PBS-TV “Art to Art” series executive produced by Asian Women United. Her work has been selected to be preserved by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. An American born in Kolkata, India, in her highly-acclaimed TEDx Talk, she speaks to the power of storytelling as a way to connect people across the divides. She has written for Medium and Women’s Media Center News and Features. She is a co-founder of Manavi, the first organization to advocate for South Asian women survivors of domestic violence in the U.S. She also serves on the Board of Directors of the major media access center Manhattan Neighborhood Network.
THE BENGALI tells a boldly different story of immigration that takes African-American writer Fatima Shaik across deep divides of culture to India where her grandfather came from and where she searches for the truth in the stories she grew up with. Fatima Shaik embarks upon an unlikely quest when she travels from New Orleans, the city of her birth, to India, home of her grandfather Shaik Mohamed Musa. An African-American writer whose family has lived in Louisiana for four generations, she travels with Kolkata-born filmmaker Kavery Kaul to a part of India where no African-American (or American) has ever gone. Her search for the past is fraught with uncertainty, as she looks for her grandfather’s descendants, the land he claimed to own, and the truth behind the stories she grew up with. Her journey is tempered with hope, fear, and surprising encounters with strangers. THE BENGALI reaches across seemingly insurmountable cultural divides to shed light on timely issues and timeless themes. It tells a boldly different story of immigration about the ties between South Asians and African-Americans in the U.S.
Before working in film and theatre as a creative, Khadifa Wong trained at the iconic London Studio Centre in all aspects of dance. After 10 years as a Dancer she moved to New York to further study acting at TVI Actors Studio. Her acting training continued at Identity School of Drama in London. On her return to London, frustrated by the lack of opportunities and abundance of stereotypes for performers of colour, Khadifa realised she could make more of a difference behind the scenes and she formed her production company to help increase inclusion and erase stereotypes. She divides her time working in film, theatre and education. Her credits include films such as Uprooted – The Journey of Jazz Dance, Mondays and The Woman Who Knocked On My Door. Theatre credits include – Black Women Dating White Men, 15 Heroines
UPROOTED is a feature length Documentary that explores the journey of jazz Dance. Featuring contributions from some of dance’s most prolific and respected artists this film aims to start a conversation within the dance community and open up the world to this influential but often overlooked art form. Contributors include: Debbie Allen, Chita Rivera, Mandy Moore, Al Blackstone, Andy Blankenbeuhler, Susan Stroman, Melanie George, Moncell Durden, Saleemah E Knight, Tom Ralabate, Lyndsay Guarino, Wendy Oliver, Bonnie Langford, Arlene Phillips, Jerry Mitchell, Jason Samuels Smith and Thomas DeFrantz. This film is Khadifa’s feature length Directorial debut.
Washington D.C. based documentary filmmaker Yi Chen is a Soros Equality Fellow and DC Arts and Humanities Fellow. Her debut feature First Vote – about Asian American voters in battleground states – is an official selection at the 2020 AFI DOCS, Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, Hawaii International Film Festival, CAAMFest, LA Asian Pacific Film Festival, Vancouver Asian Film Festival, and more. The film is playing in virtual cinemas followed by national broadcast premiere on WORLD Channel’s American ReFramed series in October. It’s also currently on a campus and community tour across the US through Good Docs and its Good Talks speaker series. Yi’s work has been supported by the Ford Foundation JustFilms, Open Society Foundations, Center for Asian American Media, ITVS, DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, Kartemquin Films and Southern Documentary Fund. Yi holds an MFA in Film and Media Arts from American University and taught documentary filmmaking at George Mason University.
FIRST VOTE is a character-driven vérité documentary about four Chinese Americans’ first-time voting and organizing from the 2016 presidential election to the 2018 midterms. In Ohio, after casting his first vote for Trump in 2016, a conservative podcaster mobilizes immigrant voters for the Republican Party. In North Carolina, a progressive journalist confronts the recent rise of “Chinese Americans for Trump” after moving to a battleground state from Beijing. A gun-toting first-time candidate courts Tea Party votes and supports voter ID legislation in the South, where a University of North Carolina anti-racism educator believes the North Carolina General Assembly Republicans proposed vote ID amendment on the 2018 ballot is “making it harder for people to vote.” The film crafts an insightful look at the power and diversity of the Asian American electorate, the fastest growing eligible voters in the United States, and explores the intersection of immigration, voting rights and racial justice.
Cristina Ibarra is a Chicana border crosser and a Sundance award-winning independent filmmaker with roots along the Texas/Mexico border. Her new film collaboration, The Infiltrators, a hybrid docu-thriller, received the NEXT Audience and Innovator Awards at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. The New York Times calls her documentary, Las Marthas, “a striking alternative portrait of border life”. It premiered on Independent Lens in 2014 and was awarded the Best US Latino Film by Cinema Tropical. USA Today describes The Last Conquistador, her feature documentary collaboration that premiered on POV in 2008, as “Heroic”. Her directorial debut, Dirty Laundry: A Homemade Telenovela, was broadcast on PBS.
THE INFILTRATORS is a docu-thriller that tells the true story of young immigrants who get arrested by Border Patrol, and put in a shadowy for-profit detention center–on purpose. Marco and Viri are members of the National Immigrant Youth Alliance, a group of radical Dreamers who are on a mission to stop deportations. And the best place to stop deportations, they believe, is in detention. However, when Marco and Viri try to pull off their heist–a kind of ‘prison break’ in reverse–things don’t go according to plan.By weaving together documentary footage of the real infiltrators with scripted re-enactments of the events inside the detention center, THE INFILTRATORS tells this incredible true story in a boundary-crossing new cinematic language. The Hollywood Reporter said of the multiple award-winning film “rather than feeling like homework, watching it is a thrill.”