The festivals’s focus mission empowerment  is about courageous and strong women who empower themselves in order to make the previously unthinkable things possible:

CHOLITAS – Jaime Murciego / Pablo Iraburu, Spain / Bolivia / Argentina, 2019, 82 min, documentary.

Five Bolivian women participate in a unique expedition. As a symbol of liberation and empowerment, they decided to climb the highest mountain  Americas together, the 6961 m high Aconcagua in the Argentine Andes. And they will do so in their traditional Bolivian costumes.

9 DAYS IN RAQQA – Xavier de Lauzanne, France, 2020, 89 min., documentary film

30-year-old Leila Mustapha is Kurdish and Syrian. She was elected mayor in Raqqa, the former capital of IS and current war ruin. Defying patriarchal structures, she dedicates herself to her mission: rebuilding the almost completely destroyed city, and establishing democracy.

LUCHADORAS – Paola Calvo / Patrick Jasim, Germany, 2021, 92 min., documentary film.

This documentary portrays three female wrestlers in Ciudad Juárez, a city in Mexico known for its high incidence of femicide. Through lucha libre fighting, they seek to escape low-paid factory work and, with great courage and fighting spirit, present a new image of what it means to be a woman in Mexico.

WRITING WITH FIRE – Rintu Thomas / Sushmit Ghosh, India, 2021, 93 min, documentary.

“Journalism is the essence of democracy,” says Meera, a journalist and head of India’s only newspaper run by Dalit women (“untouchables,” “casteless”). Together, they fight for their rights through investigative journalism and do not let patriarchal structures or hostility deter them from their path.