Reel Sisters presents a World Premiere for Hard & Special Screening of Wonders
On Sat., Oct. 21, 2023 at 3 pm, Reel Sisters proudly hosts a world premiere for Hard directed and written by Eboni Price. Wonders directed by Huriyyah Muhammad will screen as a special selection of Reel Sisters 2023 season. Yoruba Richen, the award-winning director of he Rebellious Life of Mrs Rosa Parks , will host the film chat. Reel Sisters Film Festival will be held in downtown Brooklyn at City Tech, 300 Jay Street. Yoruba Richen, director of How It Feels To Be Free (American Masters), will lead the film conversation following the screening.
TRAINS: F, A, C to Jay Street (MetroTech Center). For festival highlights visit www.reelsisters.org.
Tickets: $12 ($8 – seniors/students with valid I.D.)*
BRING A PAL Tickets: $6.50 (Must purchase 2+ tickets).*
*Eventbrite adds fees for processing tickets.
HARD
Director/Writer: Eboni Price
Producers: Lauren E. Banks, Kristofer Cross, Dot McDonald and Musau Onwubiko.
Narrative, 28 min.
Twelve-year-old Javonte is currently struggling with the woes of puberty. She’s being bullied, she doesn’t think she fits in, her home life’s a mess and on top of that, she’s still grappling with the loss of her brother. We open on her fighting her bully, Imani and losing in front of her entire neighborhood. What path will Javonte take in life — will she overcome her challenges or crumble under the weight of being “hard”?
Wonders
Producers: Okema Moore and Snyder Derival
Director/Writer: Huriyyah Muhammad
Narrative, 15 minutes.
Hardworking moms, Teeni and Cherice don’t ask for much. Like everyone else, they are on the grind, just trying to make a better life for themselves and their toddler. Struggling financially, things get worse when they come home to find an eviction notice plastered on their door. The solution however surprises even them when their cranky, constipated toddler poops three golden nuggets.
Guest Moderator
Yoruba Richen
Yoruba Richen is an award -winning documentary filmmaker whose work has been featured on multiple outlets, including Netflix, MSNBC, FX/Hulu, HBO and PBS. Her most recent film The Rebellious Life of Mrs Rosa Parks premiered at Tribeca Film Festival and won a Peabody Award. It is currently streaming on Peacock. Other recent work include the Emmy-nominated films American Reckoning (Frontline), How It Feels to Be Free (American Masters), The Sit In: Harry Belafonte Hosts the Tonight Show (Peacock) and Green Book: Guide to Freedom (Smithsonian Channel). She directed an episode of the award-winning series Black and Missing for HBO and High on the Hog for Netflix. Her film, The Killing of Breonna Taylorwon an NAACP Image Award and is streaming on HULU. Her previous films, The New Black and Promised Land won multiple festival awards before airing on PBS’s Independent Lens and P.O.V.
Yoruba is a past Guggenheim and Fulbright fellow and she won the Creative Promise Award at Tribeca All Access. She was a Sundance Producers Fellow and Women’s Fellow and is a recipient of the Chicken & Egg Breakthrough Filmmaker’s Award. Yoruba is the Founding Director of the Documentary Program at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.
About the Filmmakers
Huriyyah Muhammad
Huriyyah Muhammad is an award-winning writer, director and producer whose projects have been invited to the Sundance Film Festival, Tribeca Film Institute, AFI Fest, Austin Film Festival, New Voices in Black Cinema, American Black Film Festival, Black Star and many others. She is a 2023 AFI DWW+ Directing Fellow, was recipient of the 2020 Sundance Institute Producers Award for Farewell Amor, the Film Independent Amplifier Fellowship for her screenplay The Trickster, the 2021 SFFILM Rainin Grant for Screenwriting, and The Black List Feature Residency for her feature directorial debut screenplay, God Help the Gayes, currently in development.
Eboni Price
Eboni Price found her passion for filmmaking as a teenager in Birmingham, AL. She directed her first short film at the age of 17 through a program designed at teaching Black children in the south filmmaking. Now a director/writer based in Los Angeles, CA she aims to bring authentic and profound stories of Black women to the forefront of her lens. Currently working at Shondaland, Eboni’s previous work includes projects under Bad Robot, Legendary Pictures and BET Productions. In 2020, she was named a Finalist in the Sidewalk Film Festival for her script “Pandemonium”, chronicling the effects of Covid on Black families and has had other work featured in Reel Sisters Film Festival, HuffPost, Shadow & Act, and Black Enterprise. Her 2016 web series, #Adulting, was named a semi-finalist in Los Angeles Cinefest and is now streaming nationwide on Tubi.
Her short film, “Hard” is also the recipient of the 2022 Reel Sisters Film Festival Micro-budget Fellowship grant and will be premiering in 2023. Eboni has also recently completed her feature directorial debut with a film called “Free” starring Wendy Raquel Robinson, Clifton Powell and Imani Lewis. In 2022, Eboni was selected as a director’s shadow for the upcoming series Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story filmed in London, UK. She is also a graduate of Netflix’s Original Series Director Program. Eboni is a Howard University Alumna in which she received her B.A. in Film Production.