Join us on Tuesday, January 16th at 5:30 pm for this free BIFF documentary film showing of Sauti (Voice) at the Longmont Senior Center. This powerful film follows the lives of five young womenbrought to Uganda’s Kyangwali Refugee Settlement as children as they approach adulthood with dreams for a future beyond the constraints of a protracted refugee situation. They face uncertainties as diverse as the countries and circumstances of their origins.

Betty, whose parents were killed in South Sudan when Betty was five, now has multiple dreams: to be an engineer and bring light to her community, to care for her aging grandmother, and to be reunited with her uncle in Australia. The tangle of advancing through secondary school as her grandmother ages, and dealing with the international refugee bureaucracy is at times heartbreaking, but Betty is resilient and full of hope. Peninah, originally from Democratic Republic of Congo, finds herself resettled with her mother and sister to the United States after nearly 16 years in the Settlement, a stroke of luck that ends up far more complex than she imagined. Napona, from Rwanda, copes with the grief of orphanhood yet holds onto her resolution to become a lawyer so she can “stop corruption in Uganda.” Beatrice, also from DRC, battles illness but finds empowerment in learning to claim a journalist’s voice. Favourite, the oldest of the group, cuts new paths of leadership for herself, her family and community, while being torn between a cosmopolitan life at a fancy university in Nairobi and her family’s struggle for survival back in the Settlement.

Over the course of several years, the young women become storytellers in their own right through drawings, poems, and video self-documentation. In doing so they intimately explore the trauma of their pasts, the challenges of being a woman refugee, the choices for transcending the fates of their parents, and what it takes to be in charge of their own futures. Sauti (“Voice” in Swahili) follows the tenacity, tenderness and imagination of these women, and sheds light on the protracted refugee situation in an underdeveloped host country in East Africa. 74 minutes, subtitled.

Learn more about the film at sautifilm.org/ and stay after the film to meet one of the makers in a Q&A session! This 55+ event is free, but please register in advance by calling 303-651-8411.