Kim Brizzolara: Films of Conflict & Resolution at the Hamptons International Film Festival

GPC member Kim Brizzolara shared with us her experience as a board member of the Hamptons International Film Festival. Read below her highlights from this year's edition:

"It has been 25 years since I joined the board of the Hamptons International Film Festival to start the signature section Films of Conflict & Resolution - five films from regions of violent conflict -as part of the larger film festival. The title, Conflict & Resoluton, signifying the dramatic arc of a film, with an ending, a resolution, though not always the one hoped for. My philanthropy then had been around international conflict resolution projects, and it seemed a good way to illuminate these stories in film for audiences who were largely unaware of what was going on, on the ground in the lives of people in these regions. The films then were small ones and not that many to choose from, but it was a very popular section. Today, there are many of these films. They are made with extraordinary courage and skill. 

This past October we premiered Antidote, a frightening profile of the courageous investigative journalist who exposed Putin's poisoning program, the same featured in Navalny; Homegrown, an intimate portrait of five right-wing activists leading up to the Jan 6 Capitol insurrection - cameras following them all the way up the steps; Lions of Mesopotamia, profiling the Iraqi soccer team through their two-decade journey to victory, against the backdrop of the devastations of Iraq, demonstrating the power of sports to unite and bring joy. Porcelain War follows three Ukrainian artists who defiantly find beauty as they defend their culture and country; and Soundtrack to a Coup D'Etat, a riveting, historical roller-coaster that illuminates the politics behind the assassination of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba, interwoven with the music of US Jazz Ambassadors like Louis Armstrong.   

Two other films at the festival that I want to highlight are the noted Brazilian director Walter Salles' I'm Still Here, the true story of a family in the 1971 military dictatorship; and Checkpoint Zoo, when the Ukrainian Ecopark Zoo, home to 5000 animals, was abandoned in the crossfire, and the brave volunteers who went in to save them."  

The festival program can be found here.