RiverRun International Film Festival lineup set highlighting BIPOC stories

The RiverRun International Film Festival kicks off later this month with nearly 200 screenings. There will also be a renewed focus on diverse programming through its inaugural BIPOC Filmmaker Fellowship.

The fellowship –– funded by a federal ARPA grant –– will boost the profiles of mid-career BIPOC filmmakers by showcasing their projects, allowing them to curate up to six films, and providing $5,000 for their work. A call for applications resulted in close to 30 applicants from across the country.

Sudanese filmmaker and University of Texas at Austin master's student Fatima Wardy was selected as this year’s fellow. RiverRun executive director Rob Davis says Wardy is an exceptional artist with an intimate grasp of Sudan’s rich cinematic history on the African continent.

"Fatima has assembled four feature films and two short films into our program this year," says Davis. "And this marks the first time that these have been seen in one place anywhere. And it is also — thanks to the grant we were awarded — a free program, as well as a panel discussion that we’ll offer about Sudanese cinema today."

Wardy says Sudanese filmmakers often draw from family dynamics to tell their narrative stories.

"As a Sudanese filmmaker myself and as a writer of scripts set in Sudan, I kind of gone to this kind of traditional landscape and explored this conflict of modernity versus tradition because it speaks to some of the dilemmas that a lot of Sudanese people are facing," says Wardy. "You know, even me and my cousins talk about like arranged marriage versus love marriage, leaving behind the agricultural life for like city life."

The 2024 RiverRun International Film Festival takes place from April 18 through the 27th in Winston-Salem. There will be several mainstream screenings ahead of their streaming and theatrical releases as well as the festival’s hallmark independent films.