MEDIA and NEWS
Spotlight from The New Canaanite
“New Canaan High School graduate and filmmaker Theo Avgerinos’s documentary, Rising Hope, will premiere Tuesday at the Playhouse on Elm Street. Screenings at 5 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. will be followed by a Q&A with Avgerinos. Rising Hope has won multiple awards, including LightReel Film Festival in Washington, D.C., and both Audience Award and Best Mississippi Film at the Oxford Film Festival. It tells a powerful story of resilience and hope in the impoverished Mississippi Delta. Next week’s special screening is presented by Stand Together Against Racism (S.T.A.R).
We put some questions to Avgerinos…”
spotlight from The Meridian Star
"Rising Hope attributes sweeping Delta poverty to industrial relocation, chronic underfunding of public schools and state policies historically oppressive to Black residents. Testimonials from those interviewed highlight the entwined nature of suffering and hope, such as ‘Everybody I talk to, they want a job. It’s a lie that people don’t want to work.’ Or in another testimony, a resident says, ‘It doesn’t matter where you come from, something beautiful and awesome can happen in your life.”
Recent Awards and screenings
