BY KAREN BOSSICK

The Family of Woman Film Festival has added a bonus short film to its free virtual festival this September.

The Festival has added “Akashinga: The Brave Ones,” a 13-minute documentary from National Geographic about a group of Zimbabwe women who are fighting to stop the poaching of key species heading toward extinction.

The women-only team of rangers, drawn from the abused and marginalized, is revolutionizing the way animals are protected and communities empowered.

The documentary will be shown prior to the presentation of the feature length drama, “King of the Masks,” at 4 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 13. The films will be streamed free in partnership with Ketchum’s Community Library. "King of the Masks" happens to be one of Festival Founder Peggy Goldwyn's all-time favorite movies--she  discovered it at the film market at Cannes when it was first made and seeking distributors and it has gone onto become a class, inspiring Goldwyn to visit a water city where transportation is by canals when she visited China.

"It's a rich visual film, with an amazing, spunky girl, who certainly can't be stopped, at the center of it, along with the master Face Changer."

The Family of Woman Film Festival has lined up three moderators for its feature films:

• Sarah Craven, director of the Washington, D.C., office of UNFPA, will moderate the discussion following the livestreaming of “A Girl From Mogadishu” on Wednesday, Sept. 9. Filmmaker Mary McGuckian and film subject Ifrah Ahmed will join in the discussion.

  Craven has worked on advocacy campaigns focused on empowering women and girls and ending child marriage and female genital mutilation. She has served on the legislative staff to U.S. Sen. Tim Wirth of Colorado and Spark Matsunaga of Hawaii and worked in the U.S. Department of State.

  She recommended the film about a Somalian refugee who fights gender-based violence to Festival Founder Peggy Goldwyn after working with Goldwyn on a spin-off Family of Woman Film Festival at the UNFPA World Summit in Nairobi in November 2019.

• Boise Mayor Lauren McLean will moderate the discussion of “Councilwoman” to be streamed at 6 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 10. Joining in the discussion will be Carmen Castillo, the city council member of Providence, R.I., who is the subject of the film, and Margo Guernsey, the producer, writer and director.

  McLean, who has an MPA in environmental policy from Boise State University, led the historic Boise Foothills Open Space Campaign that protected the Boise Foothills for future generations in 2001. She was appointed to Boise’s City Council in 2011 and was twice re-elected before becoming mayor in January 2020.

• Tracy Andrus, director of the Andrus Center for Public Policy at Boise State University, will lead the discussion of “Apache 8” at 6 p.m. Friday, Sept. 11. Joining in the discussion will be firefighter Katy Aday, subject of the film, and director Sande Zeig.

  Andrus, daughter of the late Idaho Gov. and Secretary of the Interior Cecil Andrus, directs the Center’s Women and Leadership Conference, which attracts more than 800 men and women to hear from female leaders from throughout the United States.

  The 13^th annual Family of Woman Film Festival will be sponsored this year by the Friends of UNFPA. All five feature films—plus the short—will be livestreamed free through The Community Library Sept. 9-13.

  In addition, the Bonni Curran Memorial Lecture for the Health and Dignity of Women will be presented virtually on Tuesday, Sept. 8. To access visit www.thecommunitylibrary.libcal.com/event/6912336.

  FOR DONORS

  The Festival is also offering a special virtual donor screening of “Raising Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins,” an entertaining 93-minute documentary. It will be followed by a discussion with Tom Michael, the executive director of Boise State Public Radio about the journalist who wrote about Texas and national politics for The Dallas Times Herald, later The Dallas Morning News. It was she who dubbed George W. Bush “the shrub.”

  In addition, two virtual POV Breakfast events for donors will be held on Wednesday and Thursday, Sept. 9-10.

• Sarah Deer, subject of the film, “Sisters Rising,” will answer questions at 9 a.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 9. Deer, a teacher at the University of Kansas and Chief Justice for the Prairie Island Indian Community Court of Appeals, works to end violence against Native women.
• The work of The Children’s Radio Foundation will be featured at 9 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 10. Since its founding in South Africa in 2006, the radio foundation has created a network of 3,500 trained youth radio reporters in seven African countries who present on such issues as HIV/AIDS, the environment, violence and safety, education, teenage relationships and—now—COVID-19.