by Chiara Spagnoli Gabardi

The Rated SR is a festival – founded by award-winning actor, filmmaker and curator Nora Armani – that aims to satisfy a market need concentrating on everyday human stories and socially relevant film content, as an alternative to the proliferation of gratuitous violence in filmmaking.

In the course of 7 days, over 30 films from over 14 countries will showcase, from March 14th until March 20th, at the QUAD Cinema (located on 34 W 13th Street in New York), which is a venerable theatre owned by the same family since 1972. This venue is renowned to show the best in independent feature, documentary, and foreign films, and couldn’t be the most appropriate platform for the Rated SR films, that are entertaining, uplifting, informative, and most of all artistically appealing.

The keynote speaker at the festival is Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, who will also present the Rated SR Social Justice Award. But in the course of the Socially Relevant Film Festival others prestigious awards and recognitions will be bestowed: twelve feature films will be competing for the Grand Prize and a documentary winner will receive a VOD DVD distribution deal courtesy of Cinema Libre Studio, a leader in the distribution of social issue documentaries and independent feature films, whereas the Vanya Exerjian Prize, will be given by the Women Film Circle Critics Award for films by and about women.

This latter prize will mark an important moment for this year’s festival, since Vanya Exerjian was an actress and producer, who passed away ten years ago and the festival was founded in her memory, and 2014 also marks the 10th anniversary of the Women Films Critic Circle organisation. The WFCC is made up of 65 women film critics and scholars from around the country and internationally, who are involved in print, newswire, radio, online and TV broadcast media, in the belief that women’s perspectives and voices in film criticism need to be recognised fully.

The five women film critics from the organisation who will be acting as jurors for the Vanya Exerjian award are: Chloe Glickman, Karen Benardello, Jhoanna Robledo Chiara Spagnoli Gabardi and Debra Wallace.

These are the WFCC Award contenders:

Coney Island: Dreams for Sale

by Alessandra Giordano

The documentary chronicles the passionate fight of a community to protect the future of

legendary Coney Island amusement park.

Flore

by Jean-Albert Lievre

The film portrays a woman, Flore, with Alzheimer’s and her amazing recovery/control of the ailment.

If Only Everyone…

by Natalia Belyauskene

The story of friendship between an Armenian veteran of the Nagorno-Karabakh war and the daughter of one of his fallen comrades, leads to an uplifting journey towards redemption and real human values in times of war and in peace.

Indian Summer

by Simon Brook

This is the unusual and wonderful story of a top French oncologist who travels to India with one of his former patients to try and understand how traditional Indian medicine (Ayurveda) cured her cancer.

Small Small Thing

by Jessica Vale

The Award winning documentary tells the story of the 7-year old Liberian rape victim Olivia Zinnah, who died in 2012 from her injuries, despite five years of medical treatments and the intervention of the Liberian government.

From the Black You Make Color

by Richie Sherman & Judy Maltz

On the periphery of Israeli society, eight women discover a safe haven from the pressures of the outside world during the course of a school year at Tel Aviv’s oldest beauty academy.

Hamshen Community at the Crossroads of Past and Present,

By Lusine Sahakyan

The film focuses on the current state of the descendants of the Armenians of Hamshen (Hamshentsis), exploring those who were Islamised by the Ottoman Empire in the 18th century.

Not Who We Are

by Carol Mansour

The documentary portrays five women, five journeys with the same fate of being a refugee in Lebanon.

Stable Life

by Sara Macpherson

In the stables at a California racetrack and works long hours caring for racehorses while her teenage son José Luis is turning heads as a hotshot apprentice jockey. Dionicia and José Luis have gambled their futures on the hardscrabble sport of horse racing. Will they succeed or will their lack of immigration papers prevent them from achieving the stable life of their dreams?