FBA Festival lineup is taking shape. Plotting the coordinates. Updates coming. Final transmission soon.

A Plate for Two – a sharp, simmering meditation on cooking, desire, and survival.

Director: Paola Michaela

Narrative Short with Captions in English

Canada

4:23

While cooking Badhakopi’r Ghonto – a mixed vegetable stir fry—, Laila reflects on the act of cooking, loving, and what it means to find and keep a good man in a world of monsters.

Lupe Q and the Galactic Corn Cake – punk rock rebellion, abuela wisdom, and an alien showdown

Director: Paola Michaela

Narrative Short with Captions in English

United States

8:48

Lupe doesn’t care about her abuela’s cooking lessons, she just wants to rock with her badass punk band. But when Lupe finds herself battling an alien monster with her band, her abuela's lessons will remind her that punk rock is more than just loud music, and connecting with her Latin roots may just save their lives.

Sondesh – a quiet, tender story of queer longing and reckoning in Bangladesh

Director: Humaira Hannan Snigdha

Narrative Short with Captions in English

Bangladesh

10:00

Farhana's seemingly content marriage to her husband hides her longing for a deeper connection. A chance encounter with another woman, Nisha, ignites the spark within Farhana. She is forced to confront her true desires and navigate a world that is hostile of their identities. When Nisha's sudden departure coincides with a life-changing revelation from Farhana's husband, Farhana must deal with love, loss, and discouragement. She must face her authenticity in the face of societal pressure.

Featuring a post-screening filmmaker Q&A

A Culinary Uprising: The Story of Bloodroot, a documentary honoring the radical vision behind the queer feminist restaurant that nourished bodies, minds, and movements.

Director: Annie Laurie Medonis

Documentary Feature with Captions in English

United States

01:18:00 

In the '70s and '80s, there were over 230 feminist restaurants, cafes, and coffeehouses throughout the United States and Canada. Bloodroot, located in Bridgeport, Connecticut, is now the oldest and longest lasting of those spaces, in continuous operation for over 46 years. A Culinary Uprising: The Story of Bloodroot is a short documentary that explores this feminist, queer, vegan restaurant and bookstore, and illuminates the legacy of its pioneering proprietors, Selma Miriam and Noel Furie.

The Sunset of Green Snails – surreal poetics of existence in Iranian experimental cinema

Experimental

Iran

9:00

A poetic surrealistic journey of a woman facing the very nature of her being.

Refracted sight, beauty, and identity through astigmatism

Director: Kaia Green

Experimental

United States

3:33

"do you see light as i see it?" is an exploration of light through the lens of astigmatism, revealing a beautiful perspective of ordinary encounters. As light bends and shifts, the narrative encourages the audience to look inward—challenging them to reflect on their own perceptions of beauty and to reconstruct their identity and values in a more authentic way.

Into the Void – spoken word confronting erasure and silence.

Director: Giovannie Espiritu

Performance

United States

2:01

A spoken word performance poem about sexual assault.

Featuring a post-screening filmmaker Q&A with Arletta Director and Arletta herself.

Arletta. – Deaf Diné elder Arletta invites us into her world and her power

Director: Montana James Miller

Documentary, Experimental

United States

12:10

Travel with us to the Díne (Navajo Nation) to visit a member of the Deaf Indigenous community. This is the powerful story of Arletta. An elder woman who is Deaf and grew up and still lives on the rural Navajo Nation. Find out her Super Power through this incredible journey Arletta wants to share with you and the world. Please keep an open mind and learn from Arletta.

A migratory, intergenerational bond between woman and tree.

Director: ILIANA PAGÁN-TEITELBAUM

Experimental

United States

8:00

A poetic migration journey of a 100-year-old mulberry tree and a Caribbean woman across oceans to a metropolis where they are both harmed. The connection with the tree brings healing to the woman in her sick bed.

Healing through movement, narration, and Riot Grrrl’s zine legacy

Director: Lark Orbe

Experimental

United States

5:00

“Embodied Consent" is an excerpt from the zine titled "Learning Good Consent" by Riot Grrrl Press. Through narration and experimental movement, the piece tells the story of how to practice "embodied consent" in physical and sexual intimacy. Included are quotations of real people's experiences with consent, trauma, and embodiment. This piece offers audiences an invitation to ask themselves "What is consent? Am I embodying a practice of consent in my relationships? What does 'yes' and 'no' feel like in my body?" These questions are essential for building a culture of sexual assault prevention and positive and healing experiences in physical intimacy.

Petra Kuppers maps survival, joy, and difference across disability culture landscapes

Director: Petra Kuppers

Documentary, Experimental

United States

35:30

How do disabled and mad people survive, dance, insert their differences in a world full of stigma? How do we live through bodymindspirit experiences of alienation and pain? This experimental documentary charts disability culture archives and embodied gestures of survival and creative expression. It draws on community with human and non-human others: media clips as performance gifts, archival footage from dance archives, environmental embedment and grounding in trees, water, desert and lakes. Together, we dance, and spring our binds.

Abortion and grief through personal documentary

Director: Alison Johnson

Experimental

United States

3:12

January 22 is an intimate film about the filmmaker's personal experience having an abortion on the anniversary of Roe V. Wade. Through a candid and reflective lens, the diary style film delves into this topic with honesty and sensitivity.

Grief as movement, poetry, and embodiment in motion

Director: Anne Ciecko

Documentary, Experimental

United States

3:12

Solitary walking becomes an essential therapeutic means of forgetting-and-remembering painful loss, mortality, and corporealized grief—revealing unexpectedly affecting poetry in traversed landscapes, an acutely inflamed body, ritualized medical care, and the uncanny manifestations of lensed observations.

Mastectomy stories that challenge reconstruction norms and resist the violence of industry

Directors: Seth Thompson and Hannah Sullivan

Documentary

United States

32:40 

Eight women tell their mastectomy stories, and challenge societal expectations for reconstruction. Along the way, they expose the breast implant industry, and the problematic policies and health issues that create harm.