Mission & Vision

Over the past thirteen years, the Athena Film Festival has established itself as the premier festival dedicated to celebrating and elevating women’s leadership. Our festival highlights films showcasing women’s leadership from underexplored perspectives; women leading in all places and spaces who are resisting and refuting preconceived notions of all they can be and do. Through our Creative Development Program we are bolstering the pipeline of women creatives who are telling these stories and fostering a network of women in film.

The Athena Film Festival is a joint project of Barnard College’s Athena Center for Leadership and Women and Hollywood. The festival’s founding sponsor is the Artemis Rising Foundation and its CEO Regina K. Scully.

The Athena Film Festival Ethos

Women’s leadership takes no singular form. Stories of women leaders, in all their forms and all their complexity, are rarely shown on the big screen. Women whose leadership has been questioned, dismissed or erased, women who have risen up, spoken truth to power, women who empower their communities, inspire and educate, or women who simply survive – these are the stories we want to see. These are Athena stories.