Bettina Oberli’s “Lovely Louise” will be featured at the Women+Film VOICES Festival

Denver’s Women+Film VOICES Film Festival is an annual week-long showcase of documentaries, features and short films celebrating the best in women-centric programming – either films written or directed by women or films with strong women characters such as the Oscar-nominated “August: Osage County.”

Presented as part of the Starz Denver Film Festival, VOICES includes screenings of 10 feature-length films and 19 shorts, as well as salon discussions, in-person guests and receptions in order to highlight thought-provoking, inspirational stories of women from around the world.  Please visit their website for the full schedule of films.

The festival will include the 3-D film, American Mustang, which is about the plight of wild horses in the American West and a young woman’s quest to protect them, as well as films such as Bettina Oberli’s Lovely Louise, about an octogenarian who was once a would-be Hollywood diva; Cecelia Peck’s Brave Miss World, about a rape survivor who speaks out about the  global attitudes toward rape and the harsh reality rape survivors face; Papuza directed by Joanna Kos and Krzysztof Krauz, about a Roma poetess who is ostracized by her community;  and Chloe Robichaud’s Sarah Prefers to Run, about a woman who is more passionate about running than anything else.

Some of the short films sound especially intriguing, such as Sophie Haller’s six-minute History of Virginity, Sarah Tabibzadeh’s 11-minute animated short, Lady with Flower-Hair (about a woman who has flowers growing out of her head); or Christine McHugh’s 9-minute On the Nature of Hotness.

There are video clips for almost all of the films on the Women + Film VOICES Festival website, and the guest speakers and discussions related to the films also look excellent.

Congratulations to the organizers of this festival. It is clearly a labor of love, and it is a huge accomplishment to organize a festival on this scale.