The heroines, misfits, and mavens that star in this year’s Port Townsend Film Festival’s Women & Film are all getting their well-deserved moment of glory. Spanning a geographical range from Bainbridge Island to the North Pole, 12 feature films and two shorts will roll in the eighth annual festival, which will be held virtually for the second time running from April 22 to May 1.

Every selection rounds out a truly arresting collection of films. While some cherry-picked selections follow to whet your appetite, the full film catalogue is available at watch.eventive.org/ptffwomenfilm2022. Festival passes are $45 and are available for purchase now online. Individual tickets are $12 and will be available online once the festival begins April 22.

WHAT IT MEANS TO MOTHER

Winner of 106 awards since its debut in 2019, the 25-minute nail biter “Alina” follows a determined group of women who try to save an infant baby from Nazi soldiers in the Warsaw Ghetto. In “Freeze,” a 15-minute nearly hallucinatory comedy, a woman of 35 who wants children finds herself in front of a doctor who uses peanut M&Ms to illustrate her dwindling supply of eggs.

The bright and surprising “Ninjababy” features an animated baby-character that pops to life from a girl’s diary and changes her life. Featuring a download-worthy soundtrack, it was filmed in Norway by 47-year-old director Yngvild Sve Flikke in a beautiful female collaboration with Norwegian graphic artist Inga Sætre.

Close to home and the heart is “Honor Thy Mother,” a documentary following the lives of Aboriginal women from Canada, Alaska, and Washington as they search for identity as mixed-race adults, self-dubbed “Indipinos” after their Filipino and Indian heritage. Taken from their mothers at the age of 5, this film illustrates the process of dealing with racism and belonging on nearby Bainbridge Island.

And it’s not just women looking for their lost mothers, but mother’s looking for their lost daughters — and sons — in the heart-breaking 21-minute short, “Since You Arrived, My Heart Stopped Belonging to Me.” This film is a snapshot into deep grief, the carriers of this silent burden a collective of mothers from Central America determined to discover the whereabouts of their children who left to make the journey through Mexico to the U.S.

Watching “The Justice of Bunny King” feels a little like riding on a rollercoaster with a rusted track: Just what will happen? Only Bunny, a mom desperate to follow through on a promise to her daughter, really knows. The motion picture was directed by Bangkok native Gaysorn Thavatt, and funded in part by the 125 Women Filmmakers Fund from the New Zealand Film Commission.

HOW TO FAMILY

Rhea Perlman, (yes, that waitress from “Cheers”) and relative newcomer Miya Cech make screen magic in “Marvelous and the Black Hole.” After her performance in the film, Refinery 29 dubbed 15-year-old Cech the “unforgettable breakout star” of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. She plays a teenager with a chip on her shoulder undergoing some fraught family times, while Perlman plays a madcap magician who befriends her.

If there’s a “Band of Brothers,” why not a band of sisters? “Slave to Sirens” is the first all-lady thrasher band in the Middle East. Moroccan-American documentary filmmaker Rita Baghdadi follows the trials and triumphs of a small band that gets a chance to go big. At 78-minutes, “Sirens” is full-length documentary that music lovers will appreciate.

With housing a growing concern on the Olympic Peninsula, “What You’ll Remember,” a short filmed by Elizabeth Herrera-Lima, feels particularly relevant. After she and her husband lose their apartment after their firstborn enters the world, they find themselves homeless. Shot in real-deal smart phone footage paired with stills, the mother of four and her husband David narrate the footage as a letter to their children. “Home is where your family and the people that love are,” Elizabeth says. Packed into 12 minutes of film are 15 years of waiting for affordable housing. Sobering and intimate, this film is a candid look on what home is.

MOVERS AND SHAKERS

“Well-behaved women seldom make history,” Harvard professor Laurel Thatcher Ulrich declared in the 1970s. And bucking the system can take many forms, from out-right rebellion to subtle determination, which is the tack of a group of Turkish peasant women in “Queen Lear.” After forming a traveling theatre group determined to take Shakespeare to the most rural reaches of the countryside, “King Leer” becomes more appropriately amended.

“Ranger” shows the world that women will take big risks to preserve critical habitat and species in Africa. A group of Maasai women turn conventional military training on its head and opt for a rite of passage that prepares them to become the first female anti-poaching unit.

“Tokyo Shaking” literally gets things moving as a tsunami rattles Tokyo, leaving businesswoman Alexandra Pacquart, played by a captivating Karin Viard, to choose between staying at the helm of her job or being with her children as danger looms.

Things get fluid in the documentary “Out Loud,”  which follows the debut season of the all-transperson and gender-nonconforming Trans Chorus of Los Angeles. And the kid-friendly 10-minute short called “Mama has a Mustache” allows children the opportunity to share their thoughts on gender and modern parenting in a neon-riddled kaleidoscope of animation.

LOCAL ROYALTY

Corralling all of this magic in Women & Film 2022 is Danielle McClelland, the festival’s new executive director. The festival is her first at the helm  of the Port Townsend Film Festival after her predecessor Janette Force retired last fall.

“One of the elements of this position that appealed to me the most is the energy that Janette Force has done to develop specifically the Women & Film Festival,” McClelland told The Leader.

While the virtual programming isn’t quite the same as the in-person experience, much had to be planned in advance of pandemic restrictions and mandate status.

“We had to pull the trigger one way or another back in February,”  McClelland said.

But, she added, a bonus of the virtual fest is the inclusion of numerous producer and director interviews conducted by film festival staff, including her.

Films are available online with 24/7 access starting the morning of Friday, April 22 and stream until Sunday,
May 1. Visit watch.eventive.org/ptffwomenfilm2022 for the full catalogue, to purchase passes, and to view the free sizzle reel.