Strong Leads: A Film Seminar for High School Girls is a free after-school program spotlighting films by women. It is designed for 10th, 11th and 12th girls of all identities, including gender-nonconforming youth. A presentation of the Belcourt’s education and engagement program, Strong Leads explores gender representation in cinema, in the Hollywood establishment, and in film discourse.
Students will meet at the Belcourt Tuesdays, April 1-29, 4:00-7:30pm, to watch films and discuss with their peers. Strong Leads is facilitated by Allison Inman, the Belcourt’s education and engagement director, and Jessie Griffith, the Belcourt’s theatre operations director and education associate.
Participation in Strong Leads is by application only. This seminar is offered at no cost to participants, but capacity is limited, and students must apply and be selected to attend. It is designed for students only and is meant to be taken in its entirety (no single sessions). Please note that the seminar is for 10th, 11th and 12th grade students. No exceptions, please.
Strong Leads features high-quality films designed to spark conversation about important issues. Because of that, some films contain adult situations, profanity, drug/alcohol use, nudity, sexual situations, and violence.
Applications are due Mon, Mar 24. Students will be notified Tue, Mar 25.
Tue, Apr 1: BIRD Dir. Andrea Arnold | UK | 2024 | 119 min. | R
Tue, Apr 8: CLÉO FROM 5 TO 7 Dir. Agnès Varda| France | 1962 | 90min | NR | In French with English subtitles
Tue, Apr 15: ON BECOMING A GUINEA FOWL| Dir. Rungano Nyoni | UK/Zambia | 2025 | 99 min. | PG-13
Tue, Apr 22: ARE YOU THERE, GOD? IT’S ME, MARGARET Dir. Kelly Fremon Craig | USA | 2023 | 106 min. | PG-13
Tue, Apr 29: LEONOR WILL NEVER DIE Dir. Martika Ramirez Escobar | Philippines | 2022 | 101 min. | NR | In Filipino with English subtitles
BIRD
Andrea Arnold returns with a story about a distracted father Bug (Barry Keoghan) and his lonely and imaginative 12-year-old daughter Bailey (Nykiya Adams), who must seek attention and adventure elsewhere. When Bug informs her that he’ll be marrying his new girlfriend soon, Bailey is furious and hurt, and retreats to the open fields on the outskirts of her hometown to seek comfort. It is here she is most herself — with an uncanny ability to communicate with animals and experience nature in a profound way. It is on one of these walks that Bailey has a mysterious, yet deeply meaningful, encounter. Enter avicular human Bird (Franz Rogowski). This latest film from renowned English filmmaker Andrea Arnold is a compelling, ultimately joyous story that tackles themes of identity, sexism, loneliness and class struggle. The director’s empathy and skill at showing us beauty despite dire circumstances elevates BIRD beyond its roots. Add to that a crystalline thread of magic realism — and the result is an ode to the wondrous transition from childhood to adolescence.
CLÉO FROM 5 TO 7
Agnès Varda eloquently captures Paris in the sixties with this real-time portrait of a singer (Corinne Marchand) set adrift in the city as she awaits test results of a biopsy. A chronicle of the minutes of one woman’s life, CLÉO FROM 5 TO 7 is a spirited mix of vivid vérité and melodrama, featuring a score by Michel Legrand (THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG) and cameos by Jean-Luc Godard, Eddie Constantine and Anna Karina. DCP Restoration overseen by filmmaker Agnès Varda.
ON BECOMING A GUINEA FOWL
In an empty road in the middle of the night, Shula stumbles across the body of her uncle Fred. As funeral proceedings begin, she and her cousins bring to light the buried secrets of their middle-class Zambian family. Surely the dead can’t take all their secrets to the grave, and Fred, in particular, had many. In the long-awaited follow-up to her widely acclaimed debut I AM NOT A WITCH, visionary Zambian Welsh auteur Rungano Nyoni returns with a fearless parable about the toll family secrets take on their keepers and the complicated costs of speaking up.
ARE YOU THERE, GOD? IT’S ME, MARGARET
In writer/director Kelly Fremon Craig (THE EDGE OF SEVENTEEN) adaptation of Judy Blume’s classic, groundbreaking novel, 11-year-old Margaret (Abby Ryder Fortson) is uprooted from her life in New York City for the suburbs of New Jersey, going through the messy and tumultuous throes of puberty with new friends in a new school. She relies on her mother, Barbara (Rachel McAdams), who is also struggling to adjust to life outside the big city, and her adoring grandmother, Sylvia (Kathy Bates), who isn’t happy they moved away and likes to remind them every chance she gets.
LEONOR WILL NEVER DIE
Leonor Reyes was once a groundbreaking figure in the Filipino film industry during its ragtag action cinema glory days, but now she struggles with old age, mounting bills, and the untimely death of her son. While revisiting an unfinished script about a fearless protagonist trying to avenge his brother’s murder, Leonor is struck on the head by a falling television set and knocked into a coma. As she lays unconscious in the hospital, fantasy and reality begin to blur when Leonor finds herself awake inside her script, becoming the hero of her own story. An innovative blend of pulpy action homages, playful comedy and touching family drama, LEONOR WILL NEVER DIE is a wonderfully imaginative tribute to the art of filmmaking.
