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This weekend!

Barnard’s Athena Film Festival is making its triumphant return for the third time this weekend.  The opening reception will be tonight, and film screenings and workshops will be starting up tomorrow.  Tickets are wonderfully discounted for students — $20 for an all-access pass, and $5 for individual films.  Bwog brings you our flick plicks to check out this weekend:

Hannah Arendt: Friday, 8 pm (Q&A with screenwriter and journalist)
A fictionalized telling of Hannah Arendt’s coverage of the Nazi Adolf Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem, and her finding of the “banality of evil.”

Ginger and Rosa: Friday, 9 pm
Previously at the New York Film Festival, about two girls’ friendship in London during the Cold War.  Directed by Sally Potter and starring Elle Fanning, Christina Hendricks, Timothy Spall, and Annette Bening.

Brave: Saturday, 12 pm (Q&A with director)
Yup, it’s that Disney/Pixar movie about the BA Scottish princess.

Band of Sisters: Saturday, 12 pm (Q&A with director)
A documentary about two nuns outside of a Chicago deportation center, following the Vatican II conference on how the Church should face the modern world.

Beasts of the Southern Wild: Saturday, 6 pm
Four-time Oscar nominee for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Actress from 9-year-old Quvenzhane Wallis.  Don’t miss it.

Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel: Saturday, 6 pm
A documentary about the better-than-fabulous Diana Vreeland of Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue in the 1960s.

Women Aren’t Funny: Saturday, 9 pm (Q&A with director)
Comedian Bonnie McFarlane directed this documentary in a hunt to find if women can, in fact, be funny.  This is the world premiere of the film.

The Invisible WarSunday, 12 pm (Q&A with producers and Rebekah Havrilla of the Service Women’s Action Network)
Winner of the Audience Award at Sundance and nominee for Best Documentary at the Oscars, this film explores the dark secret of rape in the US military.

La Rafle: Sunday, 12 pm
This film tells the story of the Vel’ d’Hiv Jewish raid of 1942 in Paris of 13,000 adults and children from the perspective of the children and a nurse who cared for them, played by Melanie Laurent.

Brave Miss World: Sunday, 6 pm (Q&A with director, producer, and Fran Drescher)
The closing night film of the festival is about a former Miss World who was abducted and raped, and subsequently dedicated her life to helping other survivors.