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AFI DOCS: Michelle Ferrari on THE VOTE

“To me, it’s a rare art that can entertain and enlighten even as it informs – that can make you think differently – and festivals that showcase and promote documentaries are critical to keeping that art form alive.” -Michelle Ferrari, THE VOTE

THE VOTE  is having its Virtual World Premiere at AFI DOCS 2020. Two episodes are screening June 18 through June 21. 

When director Michelle Ferrari began work on the documentary about the approaching centennial of the 19th Amendment, she realized that she knew remarkably little about how women won the right to vote.

“I don’t think there’s much awareness of the lengths to which women had to go in their pursuit of the ballot, particularly in the movement’s final decade: that suffragists were the first Americans to picket the White House, for example, or that many of those women were jailed, and went on hunger strikes, and were force-fed by authorities,” said Ferrari. “I’d seen a few documentaries that dealt with the suffrage movement, but none that explored the events of that militant, momentous, astonishingly well-documented final decade in depth, or highlighted the ways in which it was animated by still-enduring issues in our democracy. So I saw an opportunity to reframe the story, and to tell it in a way that would be fresh, surprising, and also resonant.”

THE VOTE is available on demand June 18-21 at DOCS.AFI.com. Get ticket to online screening. Following the film, watch a recorded discussion with director Michelle Ferrari and subject Martha Jones.