The Price of Sex is a feature-length documentary about young Eastern European women who’ve been drawn into a netherworld of sex trafficking and abuse. Intimate, harrowing and revealing, it is a story told by the young women who were supposed to be silenced by shame, fear and violence. Photojournalist Mimi Chakarova, who grew up in Bulgaria, takes us on a personal investigative journey, exposing the shadowy world of sex trafficking from Eastern Europe to the Middle East and Western Europe. Filming undercover and gaining extraordinary access, Chakarova illuminates how even though some women escape to tell their stories, sex trafficking thrives.

An Open Secret is about 5 child actors whose lives were turned upside down by multiple predators & convicted sex offenders. The film looks at the lives of these children betrayed and abandoned by a system that essentially funnels them towards sexual predators without any oversight or regard for their safety. It documents not only these young people’s experiences, but also how some have emerged stronger for their speaking out. It begs the question of why children working in entertainment aren’t afforded the same protections they are afforded at school, and argues for more effective treatment and stronger penalties for child sex offenders.

Loreta Janeta Velazquez was a 19th century woman of many disguises. Havana-born and New Orleans-raised, she was a rebel from the start, a precocious Cuban tomboy who idolized Joan of Arc. One of the 1000 women who fought in the Civil War, she altered her sex, her ethnicity, and her identity in order to become a Confederate soldier (alias Lieutenant Harry Buford), to spy for the Confederacy then to become a double agent for the Union. She exposed her secret in a memoir, The Woman in Battle, which chronicles her often tragic life. Yet for the last 150 years, her story has been dismissed as a hoax. Rebel unlocks this mystery with a non-traditional approach that plays with form and style. Loreta risked being tried for treason for her masquerade and was ultimately branded a liar and erased from history. In Loreta’s search for family, nation, and identity, she instead became a fascinating illustration of the politics of memory.

Regarding Susan Sontag is an intimate and nuanced investigation into the life of one of the most influential and provocative thinkers of the 20th century. Passionate and gracefully outspoken throughout her career, Susan Sontag became one of the most important literary, political and feminist icons of her generation. The documentary explores Sontag’s life through evocative experimental images, archival materials, accounts from friends, family, colleagues, and lovers, as well as her own words, read by actress Patricia Clarkson. From her early infatuation with books and her first experience in a gay bar; from her marriage in adolescence to her last lover, Regarding Susan Sontag is a fascinating look at a towering cultural critic and writer whose works on photography, war, illness, and terrorism still resonate today. More than any other thinker of her day, Sontag was watched, viewed, photographed and stared at. She was gazed at, and she looked back, very carefully, particularly at language and metaphor and at photography and what she called “the ecology of images.”

Her Story is about two trans women in Los Angeles who have given up on love, when suddenly chance encounters give them hope. Violet is drawn to Allie, a reporter who approaches her for an interview, while career-driven Paige meets James, the first man she’s considered opening up to in years. Will they risk letting what they are stand in the way of being loved for who they are? Trans women in the media have long been punchlines, killers, indications of urban grit, pathetic tragedies, and dangerous sirens. Rarely have they been complex characters who laugh, struggle, and grow, who share strength in sisterhood, who seek and find love. Her Story depicts the unique, complicated, and very human women we see in queer communities, and explores how these women navigate the intersections of label identity and love.

Tell Her Story and Belinda’s Petition are the first films created for Jennifer Burton’s new Half the History project, a short film series highlighting the under-told stories of women in American history. These shorts were directed by Burton and produced by Five Sisters Productions with the undergraduates in Burton’s DR 152: Producing For Film course at Tufts University. Music for Belinda’s Petition was recorded by Tufts University Kiniwe West African Drumming and Dance Ensemble with Professor David Locke. Tell Her Story introduces the diversity of historical women’s stories yet to be told. Belinda’s Petition, about the formerly enslaved Medford woman who successfully sued for reparations in 1783, is inspired and grounded by her actual petition to the Massachusetts Legislature. These films were produced with the support of the Tufts Diversity Fund, the Tisch Faculty Fellows Program, the Department of Drama and Dance, Film and Media Studies, and the Royall House and Slave Quarters in Medford.

The Speed Sisters are the first all-woman race car driving team in the Middle East. Grabbing headlines and turning heads at improvised tracks across the West Bank, these five women have sped their way into the heart of the gritty, male-dominated Palestinian street car-racing scene. Weaving together their lives on and off the track, Speed Sisters takes you on a surprising journey into the drive to go further and faster than anyone thought you could

In popular Western imagination, a Muslim woman in a veil – or hijab – is a symbol of Islamic oppression. But what does it mean for women’s freedom when a democratic country forbids the wearing of the veil? In this provocative documentary, filmmaker Diana Ferrero portrays the struggle of two women – one in France and one in Iran – to express themselves freely. The film highlights how women still must struggle for the right to control their own bodies -not only under theocratic regimes, but also in secular, democratic countries where increasing discrimination against Muslims and sexism intersect.

The opening event for the Women Take the Reel film festival is devoted to reflecting on and celebrating Black Lives through film, music, poetry, and dialogue. Each of the works presented in this program provides a different lens with which to look at topics ranging from identity, racial justice, sexuality, gender, masculinity, and more. All of the contributing artists and filmmakers will be present to talk about their works that day and will be featured in a concluding roundtable discussion and Q&A with the audience.

An excitingly fresh take on some classic themes and ideas, The Second Mother centers around Val (Regina Casé), a hard-working live-in housekeeper in modern day Sao Paulo. Val is perfectly content to take care of every one of her wealthy employers’ needs, from cooking and cleaning to being a surrogate mother to their teenage son, who she has raised since he was a toddler. But when Val’s estranged daughter Jessica (Camila Márdila) suddenly shows up the unspoken but intrinsic class barriers that exist within the home are thrown into disarray. Jessica is smart, confident, and ambitious, and refuses to accept the upstairs/downstairs dynamic, testing relationships and loyalties and forcing everyone to reconsider what family really means.

She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry resurrects the buried history of the outrageous, often brilliant women who founded the modern women’s movement from 1966 to 1971. She's Beautiful takes us from the founding of NOW, with ladies in hats and gloves, to the emergence of more radical factions of women’s liberation; from intellectuals like Kate Millett to the street theatrics of W.I.T.C.H. (Women’s International Conspiracy from Hell!). Artfully combining dramatizations, performance and archival imagery, the film recounts the stories of women who fought for their own equality, and in the process created a worldwide revolution.