Athena Film Festival: Abortion Providers Doc, ‘Inside Out,’ ‘Truth’ Highlight Lineup

The Athena Film Festival on Wednesday unveiled the lineup for its 2016 edition. The event, which celebrates women’s leadership, will kick off on Feb. 18 with the New York premiere of the reproductive rights documentary Trapped, directed by Dawn Porter. Trapped focuses on Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP) laws and how they’re affecting abortion clinics.

Many of the additional, high-profile films set to screen at the fest have already played in theaters, including centerpiece pic Suffragette, Julianne Moore and Ellen Page’s Freeheld, Alicia Vikander’s Testament of Youth, French Oscar entry Mustang, He Named Me Malala, animated film Oscar frontrunner Inside Out, Far From the Madding Crowd and Truth.

This year’s event, set to run Feb. 18-21 at Barnard College in New York, will close with another documentary, Codegirl, directed by Lesley Chilcott. During the weekend festival, HBO Documentary Films president Sheila Nevins will conduct a three-part master class on documentary filmmaking. Composer Jeanine Tesori also will conduct a master class.

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“This unique festival showcases the stories of courageous and audacious women who are making a difference in their lives and communities,” Kathryn Kolbert, festival co-founder and Constance Hess Williams director of the Athena Center for Leadership Studies, said in a statement. “By celebrating women from across the globe, we offer a new, more inclusive vision of leadership and help young women see who they can be.”

Festival co-founder and artistic director Melissa Silverstein added: “As the Athena Film Festival continues to grow, so too do the stories that feature strong female leads and issues. We carefully curated the films and artists to highlight their incredible talents and the broad scope they cover, from acting to writing and producing. The 2016 lineup features women making waves not only in film but in life.”

The Athena Film Festival previously announced that it would honor Tesori, Mira Nair (set to receive the Laura Ziskin Lifetime Achievement Award), the cast and crew of Suffragette, director Karyn Kusama and producer Geralyn Dreyfus.

More information about the event — including the current lineup of narrative, documentary and short films as well as master classes and panels — is available here.

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