By Kim Kieler
The Reel Women’s Film Festival returns to Palm Springs on October 25 with films about women who pushed against the boundaries laid down for them. Now in its 13th year, the festival benefits Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest, supporting health care, education and advocacy throughout our region.
The film that most caught my attention is The Inquisitor, a documentary about the formidable Barbara Jordan.
If you have never heard Jordan speak, find a clip and turn the volume up. That voice could have rattled the silverware.
Jordan grew up in Houston’s Fifth Ward and went on to become Texas’s first Black state senator and, in 1972, the first Black woman from the South elected to Congress. During the Watergate hearings, this 38-year-old junior congresswoman sat before a room largely controlled by white men and spoke about the Constitution with such clarity and authority that the country stopped to listen. She became known as “The Inquisitor.”
But there was another Barbara Jordan the public barely knew.
Jordan shared her life and home for many years with Nancy Earl. She never publicly identified herself as lesbian, living in an era when being Black, female and openly gay could have ended a political career before it began.
That makes her story particularly poignant for many of us. Some women of Jordan’s generation changed the world while carefully guarding the very person they loved. They could stand before Congress and challenge a president, yet still could not safely say, this is the woman I share my life with.
The Inquisitor asks us to remember the whole woman, not simply the history-book version.
Also Showing
Samia tells the true story of Somali runner Samia Yusuf Omar, who grew up amid civil war in Mogadishu and refused to accept that running was something girls should not do. At just 17, she represented Somalia in the 200-meter race at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. She finished last, but the crowd roared for her. Her dream was to reach the London Olympics, and she was willing to risk almost everything for the chance to run freely.
The First Lady follows Efrat Tilma, who as a transgender teenager in 1960s Israel was threatened by police simply for walking through Tel Aviv as herself. She fled the country. Decades later she returned and became the first transgender volunteer in the Israeli police force. Now an LGBTQ+ activist, she has spent her later life defending freedoms she once had to flee her country to find.
Three very different women. A politician, a runner and an activist. Different countries, different generations, different battles.
But there is a thread running through all three stories: someone told a woman where the boundary was, and she kept going.
Event Details
13th Annual Reel Women’s Film Festival
Sunday, October 25, 2026 | 12:30–6:00 p.m.
Palm Springs Cultural Center
2300 E. Baristo Road, Palm Springs
The festival benefits Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest.
Tickets and festival information: planned.org/rwff
