Women with Vision 2009: Dimensions

The 16th year of this festival, which recognizes the perspectives women bring to the art of filmmaking, situates us in a world interconnected by politics and global economics. With the series Views from Iran as its centerpiece, Women with Vision also includes new works made in Nepal, Korea, France, Holland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Israel—all regional premieres, with the French film God’s Offices making its U.S. debut. The festival also features works by two Minneapolis filmmakers, one who approaches her subject by hurtling to the sun via 3-D, and the other by zeroing in on one small locale in South Minneapolis during a protest movement. Guest filmmakers include So Yong Kim, who opens the festival with her dreamlike Treeless Mountain, and Astra Taylor, who offers the witty, insightful Examined Life. Whether bearing arms in Nepal’s civil war, entering the immigration fray in order to save a child, or reorganizing a village after a war, the characters in these films—and the directors who made them—present a world that is reshaping along human dimensions rather than political geography.