For its 14th installment, the Richmond International Film Festival’s theme is “bare naked.”
“We’re going back to the basics,” says Heather Waters, founder and lead organizer of the annual six-day assembly of movies and music, which starts Sept. 23. “Right now, a lot of people are struggling to find their identity and or hiding behind a label, instead of just communicating human to human and appreciating just the bare essence of who we are as human beings.”
The festival theme is a response to what’s happening in our world today, she says, but it also addresses ongoing controversies that have rocked RIFF, specifically the community fallout over a film screened in 2023 that was widely considered to be anti-trans — more than 20 local businesses and organizations signed a statement condemning the film’s “dangerous, transphobic agenda” — but also the festival’s ongoing relationship with Israel, specifically its embassy, which has sponsored past appearances by Israeli filmmakers and may again this year.
Local singer-songwriter Deau Eyes, who signed a pledge last year with Richmond artists to boycott RIFF, had changed her mind and joined this year’s musical lineup. But after receiving pressure for her decision, she dropped off the festival within the last two weeks. She made a video on Instagram addressing the complicated issue and her reasoning that you can watch here.
“They called filmmakers, they called artists,” Waters says of those boycotting the festival. “And it was said on social media that their agenda was to annihilate us. It has been very difficult to deal with.” You can read the protesters’ call for boycotting RIFF here and here, including allegations that dissenting voices were not invited to speak at RIFF screenings.
It’s a controversy that has only been compounded in recent days by a national petition signed by more than 4,000 Hollywood professionals that pledges “not to screen films, appear at or otherwise work with Israeli film institutions — including festivals, cinemas, broadcasters and production companies — that are implicated in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people.” Many Israeli films receive government backing through its Israeli Film Fund, and Israel’s culture minister Miki Zohar has threatened to halt funding for the country’s version of the Oscars, the Ophirs, after “The Sea,” a story about a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, won its top award last week.
None of these escalating controversies have stopped the festival. This week, RIFF will feature another wide array of independent short and feature-length films from across the world — 165 at the Byrd Theatre and Bow Tie/Movieland, and an additional 60 online in a virtual edition. This includes 31 productions from Virginia filmmakers. More than a dozen Richmond bands and singers will perform throughout the week, mostly at Révéler Experiences in Carytown. While RIFF has scaled down its participating venues by half — events will also happen at Vagabond, New York Deli and Quirk Hotel — the number of films featured this year is their largest to date.
Over the course of two interviews, Style Weekly talked to Waters about this year’s festival, and about the controversies that have plagued RIFF over the last two years. The conversations have been edited for clarity and length.
Style Weekly: To your mind, what makes RIFF different from other local film festivals?
There are a lot of festivals in Virginia, but I don’t think there’s many like RIFF, and if somebody hasn’t experienced a six-day festival, where things are going morning to night with a combination of shorts, and narratives and feature length and then live music and all this stuff, they might be surprised. Once you’ve been exposed to short films, you might just get addicted. I think we all have aversions to try new things, with movies or with music. But coming early and staying late for some of the happy hours or the mixers or the meet and greets or the conference panels that we do — we’ve got nine of them spread throughout the week — it’s really a wonderful opportunity for our local artists, whether they’re being featured at RIFF or not, to come out, meet people and network.
On the trans issue
How have the controversies affected the festival? Let’s start with the trans controversy [from 2023].
Thank you for asking me that. I mean, it’s one of the reasons why I started the festival… to be transparent and to have dialogue. But we don’t look for films. And that was kind of the irony behind all of that. There was some misconception and quite frankly misinformation spread that we go out and curate and that we have an agenda. We don’t have a political agenda. It all came about from a film we had called “Affirmation Generation.” That film followed six or seven people who had transitioned and had surgery and then had issues, whether it be a lot of physical things or suicidal things. But it was very health related. So that was chosen as part of our health spotlight. We had about four films that year that were all a part of that.
But that was definitely a story told with an anti-trans perspective.
I think there’s a lot of people that would disagree with you on that. And I can say even from our staff, we did not perceive it like it was a slanted point of view. We genuinely did not. And I know other people from the LGBTQ+ community, and in the trans community, that also did not perceive it that way. That being said, we also understand that other people did, you know? But we really didn’t see that until literally the week of [the screening]. We didn’t know any of that. [“Affirmation Generation” has since been retitled “No Way Back.”]
Going through the archives, I see that RIFF has also shown films that could be perceived as pro-trans. Like “Another Shot” in 2021.
Right. I mean, we always do. That’s the point. But we don’t program based on that, we’ve just naturally been that way. I’ll give you an example. Last year, we had the controversy over the Israeli Palestine [conflict]. We had a film on the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks (“Supernova”) and we also had a Palestinian film [“Blood Like Water”] that was a wonderful narrative short film, incredibly well done. The storyline was that the IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] was basically framing this young Palestinian because he had his first homosexual experience and they were trying to blackmail him. We programmed that one, too [but] it didn’t show because the week of the festival, the group campaigning against RIFF unfortunately persuaded [the filmmakers] to pull out of the festival.
You say you want a dialogue here. Did you invite the critics to participate in a panel where you discuss all of this? They say you didn’t.
I have always said that my door remains open. The only difference right now is they’re not open to that. I invited them to take part in panels when all that was happening, I did all of that, and they said, no. I can guarantee you, I promise you, they were invited.
On the festival’s connection to Israel
Let’s speak to the Israel connection, because that’s the latest controversy, which prompted [local musician] Deau Eyes to cancel her appearance recently.
It was the same people who came back with a vengeance on us, you know, demanding that we divest from the Israeli embassy. And again, the embassy does not sponsor RIFF but they [the protesters] were saying that they basically fund us. Deau Eyes… her phone started blowing up because of these flyers that were put around all over town. It was very unfortunate because she was afraid. There was a lot of intimidation. I think harassment is an appropriate word. So instead [of her performance], I programmed a Virginia film that had already sold out at [Movieland], “Been Here, Stay Here,” about the environmental concerns surrounding Tangier Island. I added a second screening.
Is the Israeli embassy still sponsoring anything with the festival?
Well, the embassies, no, they don’t sponsor us nor any festival that I’m aware of. What the embassies do is they work with festivals; their cultural affairs and arts departments will share material from their country. They don’t select, or program, or do anything like that. This goes for Germany and Spain and Italy too, we’ve worked with a lot of the different embassies. So if a [foreign] film gets in to RIFF, we then circle back to that embassy or they reach out to us and say, ‘we see that you have three Italian films we’d like to help spread the word” and so they’ll do a number of things to co-promote and sometimes be involved in sponsoring a reception for the filmmakers, but not sponsoring the festival. There are three Israeli films this year and, this year, the Jewish [Community] Federation of Richmond is co-sponsoring a reception at Bow-Tie Cinemas…. as for the Israeli embassy, I’ve invited them to participate but it’s unclear to me whether they will. [One of this year’s Israeli films, “A Letter to David,” is about the Hamas attacks and was partially funded by The New Fund for Cinema and Television, an Israeli film fund.]
[Waters later sent Style a clarification to this question:]
At RIFF, our mission has always been to bring people together through film, music, and dialogue. RIFF works with cultural offices at embassies from many nations — including the Israeli Embassy — because dialogue and artistic exchange builds bridges, not walls. While we are aware that parts of Hollywood are signing pledges not to work with Israeli institutions, our position is they are misguided. RIFF takes the opposite approach: we believe exclusion undermines humanity and the power of art to connect people. Our guiding principle is simple — peace and understanding begin with inclusion and engagement. We believe in freedom of expression and constructive conversation across all cultures — even, and especially, when there is disagreement.
“We are not going to punish the artists for what a country’s government may or may not be doing. We don’t get involved with politics. We support artists and share stories, and I refuse to divest from any country.”
Do you have any Palestinian films on the schedule this year?
No, because none were submitted to us.
Do you understand the concern? The critics say working with Israel is “artwashing genocide”
We are not going to punish the artists for what a country’s government may or may not be doing. We don’t get involved with politics. We support artists and share stories, and I refuse to divest from any country. Through the years, we’ve had these things occasionally pop up and people will demand that we refuse films from Russia or China or certain Latin American countries. I mean, following that logic, you could make an argument that we shouldn’t show U.S. films because our own country is in such a mess. I mean, people could say that of our own government right now.
The United Nations recently found “four of the five genocidal acts defined under international law have been carried out [by Israel] since the start of the war with Hamas in 2023.” So you have no problem [working with] or spotlighting films approved by Israel in light of this?
I don’t believe that Israel is practicing genocide. That is not what I believe. Do I believe that the Palestinian people need humanitarian support and water? Yes, but I’ve also studied the issue. My senior grad paper was on Hezbollah. I’ve been studying terrorist groups for 20 years, and they do put their people in harm’s way. It’s public knowledge.
I don’t know why all sides are not coming at this from a framework that is a holistic way of analyzing these issues. That’s part of the problem. That’s why Republicans don’t get along with Democrats and Democrats don’t get along with Republicans, because everything is so black and white. It’s not black and white. We’re not living in a black and white world. And yet we have people in all these groups creating terror and intimidation if you don’t think like them and say exactly what they want. That is not right. It’s making things worse, much, much worse. To me, a logical way to have this conversation is simply to look at Hamas and investigate what they are doing to the Palestinians, their own people. Then look at Israel. Investigate what they’re doing.
So the UN is wrong?
As of at least last week, they hadn’t condemned the October 7th attacks that Hamas [started]. Have you seen the footage? Why hasn’t the UN condemned the thing that started all of this?
It’s probably because Hamas isn’t a country, it’s a terrorist organization. So, again, this UN proclamation doesn’t dissuade you from working with the embassy this year or in the future?
No, it doesn’t. I’m not going to be persuaded by anybody to go against what I feel is the right thing to do. And that is really my bottom line.
On this year’s festival
What, if anything, is going to change this year with the fest?
One is that I got rid of half of the venues, so this year we only have six. We picked up Révéler, which has become a really big partner, and not just on the music side. There are VIP lounges and the “Bare Naked” press room and we’ve even got a deal room where filmmakers can go in and do deals. We are kind of taking over that space for five full days. It’s also a nice little easy stroll down to the Byrd Theatre. The other thing is on the music side. It’s all Virginia artists this year, incredible acts like Los Hermanos Alacranes and Kadencia Orchestra and Rodney [Stith].
I know you are opening at the Byrd with this lauded indie film, “Omaha.”
People need to know that all of our films are submitted to us, so we don’t go out and curate and handpick them. They’re submitted. ‘Omaha’ is an incredible film that stars John Magaro. [Director Cole Webley] and the producer [Preston Lee] will be here for opening night. We have a great film with Glenn Close, the closing night film, “The Summer Book.” We’ve got one with Mahershala Ali, “Taste the Revolution,” which is pretty cool. Ali is also our Founder’s Award recipient this year. But this is the first film he ever did and it was shelved. The footage just sat there until last year when the producers reached out to him and asked him if he’d be OK with them finishing the editing on it. And he was, like, yes, please do. So it’s a pretty cool project as far as that goes.
On producing and the future of RIFF
The festival requires year-round planning, Waters says. “This year, I actually produced a feature film [“YOYOs,” slated for 2026 release], so it was like quadrupling the load.”
Is producing movies something you want to keep doing?
That’s actually how I started. I was producing and directing and co-writing before I ever started the film festival. So I’d been doing it for a while but, you know, I missed it. I made a film last year too but that was a short [“A Mother’s Promise”]. Taking on producing a feature film, it was so much harder to do when working on RIFF at the same time. But I love it. I need it. And we shot the film in Virginia which, as you know, is a lot of what I do year-round with the RIFF Arts Institute… growing production of film and music across the state.
Over 14 years, has RIFF gotten easier to program or harder?
There’s such a big difference from year one in terms of quality of content. It’s definitely getting better from Virginia filmmakers, which is part of what we do at the RIFF Institute year round, labs and workshops and things like that. Plus I think that the festival’s reputation has grown. The longer a festival is around, any festival, the quality grows because people know it and it gets more submissions.
The Richmond International Film Festival runs Sept. 23-28 in venues across town. For a complete lineup of films, concerts and events, and to watch selected movies online, go to https://www.rvafilmfestival.com/
