Women's International Film Festival Coming Soon To Cranford Theater

CRANFORD, NJ — To celebrate the "resilience and indomitable spirit of women" Cranford Theater is hosting its International Women's Film Festival next week.

Opening night of the film fest will be Thursday, July 28. The festival will kick off with "Daughter of a Lost Bird" — a film that examines what happens to native children who are adopted out of their tribal communities.

The screening will begin at 5 p.m. at the theater located at 25 North Ave West.

"Right after the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 became the law of the land, Kendra Mylnechuk Potter was adopted into a white family and raised with no knowledge of her Native parentage," the description of the film states.

The film follows Potter on her journey to find her birth mother, April, who is also Native adoptee, and return to her Lummi homelands in Washington Sttate.

"With a sensitive yet unflinching lens, director Brooke Swaney documents Kendra and April as they connect with relatives and navigate what it means to be Native, and to belong to a tribe from the outside looking in," the film description says. "Along the way, Kendra uncovers generations of emotional and spiritual beauty and pain and comes to the startling realization that she is a living legacy of U. S. assimilationist policy. By sharing a deeply personal experience of inherited cultural trauma, the film opens the door to broader and more complicated conversations about the erasure of Native culture and questions of identity surrounding adoption."

Other film shorts at the festival will include "Adiyah Grace"(USA),"La Receta de la Abuela" (Chile), "Precious Cargo: Return to Viet Nam" (USA/Vietnam) and "Under Tension" (France).

The festival is free, and you can register on Eventbrite.

A trailer for "Daughter of a Lost Bird" can be viewed below:

Have a news tip? Email remy.samuels@patch.com.