Get to Know the BlackStar Film Festival Award Winners
In an industry where Black, Brown, and Indigenous artists are often underrepresented, BlackStar exists to create that space and resources to break barriers for these filmmakers, producers, directors, and artists. With resources from production labs, film screenings, exhibitions, and intentional community-building efforts, film buffs can prepare and anticipate what’s to come at the annual BlackStar Film Festival. The non-conforming program allows artists to veer away from the confines of genres and expectations — leading to further funding, connections, and audiences for BlackStar participants in the past, present, and future.
This year, the BlackStar Film Festival award winners thrilled audiences and the jury through their captivating storytelling, visual aesthetics, risk-taking narratives, and inspiring journeys on and off the screens. 1202 MAGAZINE spoke to seven BlackStar Film Festival award winners regarding the mission of their films, what winning a BlackStar award means to them, and how they will continue to tell untold stories and make a difference in the film community.
Check out the full BlackStar Film Festival Film Guide here, and more about the award winners here.
Director: Damien Hauser
After The Long Rains
Best Feature Narrative
In After The Long Rains, a young girl named Aisha aspires to become a fisherwoman to travel to Europe. Her journey is filled with experiences, but the moral of the story is to have patience in order to achieve a dream. Aisha’s mentor, Hassan, helps her (and the viewers) distinguish the difference between patience, laziness, and a child’s perspective.
“I feel overwhelmed, says director Damien Hauser. “I absolutely did not expect to win such an award, but I am all the more grateful that the film is being appreciated and watched internationally.” Despite being his first time at BlackStar, he says he felt at home — surrounded by talented, like-minded filmmakers.
Hauser says he wants to continue making films that deeply resonate with him — and that the perfect audience will come to him. “I hope that After the Long Rains will be released worldwide and that the film will succeed in reaching its audience,” he says. “I am already in post-production on my next film and hope to finish it this year.”
Director: Al'Ikens Plancher
Boat People
Best Short Narrative Award
Inspired by true events, Boat People explores the inhumane conditions at Guantánamo Bay as a Haitian refugee fights for survival. Director Al'Ikens Plancher wanted to shed light on a widely unknown reality of Black and Brown immigrants who risk their lives to find a better one. The film also serves as an advocacy and educational tool to acknowledge the consequences immigrants face due to political decisions.
“It encourages viewers to reflect on the consequences of detaining refugees, promoting empathy and inspiring action,” Plancher says. “This cinematic portrayal has the potential to influence public opinion and policymakers alike, driving discussions on the need for more compassionate and fair immigration policies.”
Plancher is still in shock after Boat People won the Best Short Narrative Award. To him, BlackStar makes him feel like he’s at home — surrounded by high-level artists and creatives who help him push his art to new heights. He aims to continue pushing boundaries by “staying still, and quiet, and listening to my inner self.”
Directors: Daniel Glick, Ivan MacDonald, and Ivy MacDonald
Bring Them Home
The Center for Cultural Power’s Climate Change Award
Bring Them Home tells a healing story of the Indigenous Blackfoot people. Because wild herd buffalo nearly went extinct over 100 years ago, it’s almost impossible to find any today. However, this small group of Blackfoot is determined to re-establish the species on their ancestral territory to revitalize the land and community.
After a long time coming, director Daniel Glick is elated that the film — and its story — are getting their well-deserved recognition. This film is not only connected to the erasure of the Indigenous people but to climate change as well. “For me, the biggest thing I want for audiences to take away is an opening to the Blackfeet and Indigenous perspective of what it means to be a human being in relation to the natural world,” Glick says. “The Western world has been indoctrinated with an ethos of conquering and human supremacy, which I think is a tragedy.”
Glick says humans prioritize putting themselves on top of the pyramid of life, causing us to lose what it means to be human in itself. Bring Them Home aimed to re-center what it means to be human and the relationships that come with it. “What’s beautiful and inspiring about the Blackfeet story is that it conveys a very different, and I think much healthier, context of human relationship with the natural world — one where we recognize all other living beings as relatives, ones worthy of our respect and care, and also as essential to our own survival,” he says. “We are intricately a part of a vast web of life, not apart from it, and the idea (I’d say delusion) that we are apart or above it does so much damage to not only the world but also ourselves.”
Director: Kristal Sotomayor
Expanding Sanctuary
Philadelphia Filmmaker Award
Expanding Sanctuary follows a mother-turned-community leader as she fights to end Philadelphia’s Police Database (PARS) with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In a historic win, this mother single-handedly helped protect the rights of many Latinx immigrant families in Philadelphia in collaboration with the non-profit Juntos.
“Through my production company, Sotomayor Productions, we have a whole slate of films about issues that are important to the local community, from immigrant rights to fighting corporate greed,” director Kristal Sotomayor says. “My aim is to keep working with local organizations to make that film on the ground to support our neighborhoods. We also want to have a national tour of Expanding Sanctuary in Latinx communities to educate about the issue of police surveillance and empower folks to organize.”
Because the BlackStar Film Festival took place in Philadelphia, both the film and the festival hit close to home for Sotomayor — leading her to win the Philadelphia Filmmaker Award. “I’ve attended BlackStar for many years as a moviegoer and as a reporter, so it's very special to finally attend the festival as a filmmaker,” she says. “It’s one of my favorite film festivals, and its impact on the local film community cannot be understated. The festival has provided a lot of opportunities for Philadelphia filmmakers. It’s a real pleasure to have my debut short documentary have its hometown premiere at BlackStar.”
Director: Zeshawn Ali
Highways
BlackStar Pitch Award
Highways is a film that delves into the unspoken reality of cross-country immigrant truck drivers in America. While they often find community through one another, truck driving can be quiet, lonely, and reflective. Zeshawn Ali, who directed Highways, grew up in the Midwest with an immigrant father who traveled the country often, so creating this film was an intimate experience for him.
“I resonated deeply with the ways this country can feel both expansive and unfamiliar,” Ali says. “I'm deeply fascinated by the ways in which people find home on the roads- it's a reminder of how resilient, caring, and hopeful community spaces can be. I've always been driven to make work that reflects the quietness and intimacy of shared experiences. To me, I love films that feel tangible- ones that make you feel like you are in space with someone, and the details of their world make you feel like you're there in the room with them.”
Ali specializes in creating films that are layered, complex, collaborative, and sustainable. As a BlackStar participant since 2020, he feels that groundwork has changed his career for the better. “Even back then, during such a complex time, I felt supported by their team and the community I was able to be connected to,” he says. “I've been continuously inspired by their curation, their vision, and the way they've supported filmmakers over the years, so many of whom I look up to and admire. I can't believe I get to be in the company of so many talented and thoughtful artists- BlackStar holds so much meaning to me in my filmmaking career.”
Director: Contessa Gayles
Songs From The Hole
Best Feature Documentary Award
Director Contessa Gayles calls Songs From The Hole a documentary visual album. The coming-of-age story follows James “JJ’88” Jacobs, using the original music he wrote in solitary confinement. At 15, he took someone’s life and then lost his brother three days later, which turns into raw scenes of prison phone calls, family scenes, lyrical journal entries, and interpersonal struggles.
“I am committed to telling stories about and for our healing and liberation, as individuals and collectively,” says Gayles. “A big part of that is recommitting to the ongoing work of decolonizing my filmmaking practice — finding ways with each project to center care, collaboration, equity, and joy — and to continue decolonizing my imagination so that my art is an offering for us and the future we’re dreaming into existence.”
The filmmaking process was centered around collaboration, bringing Jacobs to the forefront of the story through all of his mediums. Richie Reseda, who produced the music with Jacobs, was incarcerated alongside him. “We’ve screened this film for folks as young as 14 and as seasoned as 103 years old. It cuts through and is helping heal hearts and shift perspectives. We want to continue to bring Songs From the Hole to audiences everywhere it will be felt deeply -- to communities directly impacted by its themes, both inside and outside of carceral spaces, to Black people, to artists, to movement spaces, and abolitionist organizers. We’re just getting started in this effort with our impact and engagement campaign. Our hope is that this film becomes widely accessible so that it inspires, heals, and moves us all closer to true safety, accountability, and freedom.”
Director: Suneil Sanzgiri
Two Refusals (Would We Recognize Ourselves Unbroken?)
Best Experimental Film Award
Two Refusals (Would We Recognize Ourselves Unbroken?) came to life through challenging anti-colonial struggles and world-building possibilities. In many countries like Palestine, Kenya, Haiti, Bangladesh, Tigray, and more, director Suneil Sanzgiri delves into crumbling empires and the downfall of imperialism. Throughout the film, a woman experiences haunting dreams of a mythological Portuguese titan that prevents Vasco de Gama from reaching India. “All of my work requires active participation with the audiences,” Sanzgiri says. “They are as much a part of the meaning-making process of the work as I am or as anyone who worked on the film. Audiences bring their questions, their thoughts, their struggles, and their lived experiences to the work, which makes the work so much richer.”
“It means being able to see my work in relation to so many other works from so many diasporas and struggles, to feel included in spaces where that is articulated, and to feel proud to show my work with an organization that stands up for righteous causes and against genocide by committing to the academic and cultural boycott of Israel,” Sanzgiri says. “It means understanding that global struggles for Black liberation are interlinked with so many other struggles.”
While she depicts the experiences of herself and others alike, Sanzgiri can’t achieve her work without the help of participation from audiences. They serve as a large part of the creative process through their questions, thoughts, struggles, and experiences to make her work stronger. She always puts in mind that art does have a role in struggle.
