On behalf of National School Choice Week, please join us for a special screening of Miss Virginia. Hailed as a "must-see" movie by USA Today, the film follows a struggling inner-city mother who sacrifices everything to give her son a good education. Unwilling to allow him to stay in a dangerous school, she launches a movement that could save his future—and that of thousands like him.
After the movie, meet and talk with legendary school choice advocate Virginia Walden Ford (the real-life Miss Virginia!), who will join us in New Haven for this special event. She will also sign copies of her new book, School Choice: A Legacy to Keep.
Free popcorn and soda will be served during the movie.
This is a free event and an RSVP is required.
Miss Virginia is rated PG-13: Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.
Miss Virginia is inspired by the story of Virginia Walden Ford, a struggling single mother from a low-income neighborhood in Washington, DC. Affectionately called “Miss Virginia” and “the Education Lady” by neighborhood children, Virginia fought to create a scholarship program for her at-risk son and children like him. And she won.
In 2004, after years of activism, Virginia secured legislation that gave thousands of impoverished, largely minority children access to safe, high-quality schools. Many have since gone on to college and rewarding careers, an outcome that would have been unimaginable without the educational boost Virginia’s law provided.
Lana Link, the Moving Picture Institute's vice president of talent development, recruits filmmakers into their grant programs and classes. She produces films and masterclasses. She also writes original screenplays as a member of MPI's creative team. Lana is a graduate of the University of Chicago and a former Fulbright grant recipient in Vienna, Austria. She earned her JD from Pepperdine University School of Law and her certificate in independent producing from UCLA Extension.
R. J. Daniel Hanna is a Toronto-born, Arkansas-raised writer, director, and editor. He has directed commercials for Coca-Cola, Subway, Cole Haan, and numerous other brands, but his true passion is independent cinema that can ignite social change while delivering a powerful human story.
His feature screenplays have received dozens of awards and accolades, with his script Shelter Animal making the Top 50 Scripts (out of 8,000) in the Academy of Motion Pictures’ Nicholl Fellowship. His short film SHELTER, starring Clea DuVall (ARGO, ZODIAC) and April Grace (WHIPLASH, MAGNOLIA), played at the SAG Short Film Showcase and won the Audience Award from the NewFilmmakers LA festival, among other accolades. His most recent award-winning film, EVERYTHING, is based on a true story of a mother searching for a bone marrow donor for her daughter. It was featured in the Wall Street Journal and is spurring reform in the marrow donation industry.
Working both in narrative and documentary form, Hanna also brings an editor’s eye to his sets. Films he has edited have won awards from the Emmy Foundation, the Director’s Guild of America, BAFTA, the USC Editing Faculty, the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, and dozens of film festivals. Hanna is repped by the Gersh Agency and Luber-Roklin Entertainment.