If you know me by now, you know that I love a good film.  I love how I learn more about the world, but that the learning goes beyond the facts. Starting this Thursday, be ready to catch tons of high quality world savvy films at the Toronto International Film Festival. The festival runs from September 9th to 19th, and you can catch films all across the city.

As usual, we’ve done some digging for you and have found a bunch of girl-related films that you might want to check out (unfortunately I won’t be able to check them out because I just arrived in Vancouver!):

One of the films that I really want to check out is Pink Saris. It’s by Kim Longinotto, the same documentary filmmaker who made Rough Aunties that we watched during the HotDocs festival earlier this year (clearly a a major girl advocate).  I’ll keep you posted if I can find out how to see it for those of us not in Vancouver!

The film follows a group of women in India who have formed a gang to combat violence against women, wearing signature pink saris to make themselves recognizable. Here’s what the TIFF site has to say about the movie:

“If you’re shy, you’ll die.” This is just one of the catchy aphorisms uttered by the formidable Sampat Pal Devi, leader of the Gulabi Gang (a.k.a. the “Pink Gang”), the centre of this stirring film. Her base is northern India’s state of Uttar Pradesh, where entrenched tradition continues to condone child marriages, dowry deaths and abuse inflicted upon wives by husbands and in-laws. The Gulabi Gang seeks to help women from the lowest caste, known as dalits or “untouchables.” The female gang members assert their presence by wearing bright pink saris and make good on Sampat Pal’s assertion that: “there is no higher power than a woman.”

If you can’t make it to the screening (Sept 14@6pm, Sept 15@2:15, and Sept 18@9:30am), but want to learn more about the pink sari gang, check out this article from Slate.