Day Four Recap: Nevada Women’s Film Festival 2026
The 12th Annual NWFFest Closes With Its Biggest Night: The Femmy Awards
March 22, 2026 | Las Vegas, NV
Every film festival builds toward something, and for NWFFest, Sunday has always been that moment. Day Four of the 12th Annual Nevada Women’s Film Festival arrived with the particular feeling that comes at the end of something genuinely good a mix of satisfaction, fatigue, and the quiet wish that it wasn’t quite over. The UNLV campus delivered one final full day of cinema, community, and ceremony before sending everyone back out into the world with a lot to think about.
Building a Filmmaking Community: Eccentric Artists Takes the Stage
Sunday morning opened with the final panel of the festival: Building a Filmmaking Community at 10 a.m. in the FDH Screening Room 105. The conversation belonged to the team behind Eccentric Artists, a Las Vegas-based film and event production company that has spent six years building a creative community from the ground up, with a commitment to diversity, inclusion, and shared upward mobility for underrepresented artists. Their upcoming Filipinx Gothic Horror short Gamu-Gamo is in pre-production and already generating buzz. For creative entrepreneurs, this panel was a blueprint. Gamu-Gamo has currently raised: $14,000+ of their $35,500 goal.
The panel brought together co-founders Jemsen Yumico Bollozos, a three-time Emmy winner whose work includes the LVCVA series At the Heart of Vegas and the feature documentary Home: A Mother of 3000; Tiffanie Rose Ignacio, Director of Operations and Festival Director of the Shameless Plug Arts Festival; Veronica Castillo, a Mexican-Guatemalan filmmaker and UNLV Film graduate; Nadine-Gabrielle Natividad, writer and co-founder now based in Los Angeles with credits at NBCUniversal, HBO, Apple TV, and Disney; and Dani Ladner, who handles public relations and community outreach for the collective. Their upcoming Filipinx Gothic Horror short Gamu-Gamo, written by Natividad, is already generating serious attention ahead of production later this year.
The Final Screenings
Sunday’s screening blocks brought the festival’s 72-film run to a close, drawing from NWFFest’s full range of genres and countries. Films from Brazil, Hong Kong, Germany, and beyond shared the program with local Nevada voices — which has always been part of what makes NWFFest feel unlike any other festival in the region.
Nevada Woman of Achievement: Emily Skyle-Golden
At 6 p.m., the festival paused for one of its most meaningful traditions. Emily Skyle-Golden — award-winning writer, director, and producer whose work has appeared on HBO, Disney+, and Hallmark was presented with the 2026 Nevada Woman of Achievement Award. The conversation, hosted by Film Nevada Deputy Director Danette Tull, traced Skyle-Golden’s career from her screen credits to founding the Cordillera International Film Festival and building the Film Northern Nevada Initiative and the Future Filmmakers Foundation, which mentors underserved youth through hands-on filmmaking on the very sets those productions create.
The 12th Annual Femmy Awards
Nadya Rousseau, Co-founder and of Alter New Media
At 7 p.m., the FDH lobby filled for the Femmy Awards Reception, sponsored by Eat More Art Vegas, where filmmakers and guests toasted the weekend before the ceremony itself. At 7:30 p.m., Dr. Heather Addison took the stage in FDH Room 109 to host 13 awards across categories that reflect exactly what NWFFest values: not just technical craft, but activism, representation, community, and the courage it takes to tell stories that matter.
Several winners accepted via video message on the big Dolby screen. Silly Little Wounds, written, directed, and produced by Vanessa Magowan Horrocks Powers of Oxford Comma Films, earned a particularly strong response; her ensemble feature starring Marissa Moeller, Abbey Lowenstein, Haley Jacobsen, and James Wilsford already had a Best Minnesota Feature win at the Twin Cities Film Festival under its belt. No Baby on Board, directed by Julia Kots, brought genuine emotion to the room when Kots appeared on screen, directing viewers to @juliakots_film and NoBabyOnBoard.film. Betsy Kalin, director of Lesbians in Boystown, and her wife, Chris Chew, were in the room in person to accept their Femmy, one of the ceremony’s most powerful moments. And Kari Barber’s The Muralist swept both Best Short Documentary and Best Nevada Film, a double win that felt entirely right for a Nevada filmmaker telling a deeply Nevada story about artist Connor Fogal.
🏆 2026 Femmy Award Winners & Nominees
The filmmakers gather on stage
Best Short Documentary — 🏆 The Muralist — Dir. Kari Barber (UNR) Featuring Nevada artist Connor Fogal
Nominees:
- Saving Sinterklaas
- Speed of Life
- The Theory of Spice
- With Grace — also nominated for Spirit of Activism
Best Live Action Short — 🏆 Cottonmouth
Nominees:
- Code Red — Dir. Jessica McGaugh
- Dead Weight
- I Wish I Were Pretty — Dir. Hanah Chang
- Live Long — Dir. Noelle P. Wilson — also nominated for Best Female Protagonist
- Swimming Holes
Best International Film — 🏆 Miss Canton
Nominees:
- Broken Dawn
- CHIKUWACCHA! — Dir. Chieko Misaka
- Jolanta
- Keep Him Safe
Best Experimental Film — 🏆 Azkena — Dir. Ane Inés Landeta
Nominees:
- The Celery Saga — Dir. Alexis Krasilovsky
- Dear Haunted
- Open Up
- Spiral — Dir. Mina Sadat Hosseini
Best Student Film — 🏆 Kool-Aid Stand — Dir. Jennifer Marie
Nominees:
- Ditched — Dir. Hannah Werner
- Good Enough
- The Heart Exhibit — Dir. Joffea Burgos & Zoe Malen (GoodKid Film Collective)
- On the Tip of the Tongue
Outstanding LGBTQ+ Representation — 🏆 Lesbians in Boystown — Dir. Betsy Kalin Accepted in person by director Betsy Kalin and her wife Chris Chew
Nominees:
- Cottonmouth
- Everything Good
- Daylight — Dir. Andrea A. Walter (Nevada)
Spirit of Activism — 🏆 With Grace
Nominees:
- Girls Don’t Cry — Dir. Sigrid Klausmann — also nominated for Best Feature Documentary
- Lesbians in Boystown — Dir. Betsy Kalin
- Unseen Territories — also nominated for Best Nevada Film
Best Female Protagonist — 🏆 Speed of Life
Nominees:
- Catalogue of Noses — Dir. Josie Andrews
- Dressing the Silence
- Insensible Losses
- Live Long — Dir. Noelle P. Wilson — also nominated for Best Live Action Short
Best Animated Film — 🏆 Mextron
Nominees:
- Dad Said
- Here Sits
- Rupture
- Welcome to Birdworld
Best Feature Film — 🏆 Silly Little Wounds — Dir./Writer/Producer Vanessa Magowan Horrocks Powers (Oxford Comma Films) Starring Marissa Moeller, Abbey Lowenstein, Haley Jacobsen, James Wilsford Accepted via video message
Nominees:
- Lolly Dagger Eats Sponge Cake — Dir. Aaron W. Brown (Nevada)
- Sunny Yard — Dir. Trina Colon (Las Vegas, NV)
Best Feature Documentary — 🏆 No Baby on Board — Dir. Julia Kots Accepted via video message
Nominees:
- Anxiety Club — Dir. Wendy Lobel — featuring Marc Maron, Aparna Nancherla, Baron Vaughn, Tiffany Jenkins, Joe List, Mark Normand, Eva Victor
- Girls Don’t Cry — Dir. Sigrid Klausmann
Best Nevada Film — 🏆 The Muralist — Dir. Kari Barber (UNR) Featuring Nevada artist Connor Fogal
Nominees:
- Maid to Shine — Dir. Giovannie Espiritu (Las Vegas, NV)
- Only Space and Time
- Unseen Territories
- Unsung
Audience Favorite — 🏆 Sunny Yard — Dir. Trina Colon (Las Vegas, NV)
A Festival Worth Coming Back For
Celebrating award winners! Lauren Jones and Nadya Rousseau of Alter New Media with Betsy Kalin and her wife, Chris Chew
Four days. 72 films. 15 countries. Panels on AI, vertical filmmaking, the state of an industry, and the quiet work of building something together. Screenings that ran from zombie thrillers to queer history documentaries to gothic comedy to stand-up as therapy. Mornings at a campus Starbucks and nights at Art Therapy Cafe and an 80s-themed bar on Maryland Parkway. And through all of it, the consistent presence of filmmakers from around the world who chose to bring their work to Las Vegas, and found a community here that was genuinely glad they did.
Danette Tull has a fireside chat with Emily Skyle-Golden before presenting the achievement award, several other awards, and recognition from the state of Nevada
A special note on Sunny Yard, Trina Colon’s Las Vegas-set debut, captivated audiences from its very first screening on opening night, and the Audience Favorite win feels entirely earned. This city voted, and it voted for itself.
The 12th Annual Nevada Women’s Film Festival is over. The 13th can’t come soon enough.
Chris Chew and Betsy Kaling celebrating their win!
The Nevada Women’s Film Festival is a project of Women in Film Nevada. Full details at nwffest.com.
