Thursday, October 15, 2026 · 12:00 PM
FUSION | 708, 708 1st Street Northwest, Albuquerque
Free
Sanctuary Cinema is bringing the Sovereign Lens Film Festival to FUSION as part of the Rising High Arts Festival on Thursday, October 15, from 12 PM to 7:30 PM! The Sovereign Lens Film Festival is a one-day community-centered short film festival uplifting stories that reclaim, reframe, and celebrate historically excluded and self-determined storytellers. The festival is an evolution of Sanctuary Cinema’s work as a monthly, community-centered nonfiction film and conversation project. Founded in 2025, Sanctuary Cinema has hosted free public screenings across Albuquerque with facilitated panels, local nonprofits, shared meals, and audience participation grounded in the principle that storytelling is a shared ethical and communal practice. The Sovereign Lens Film Festival extends that mission into a dedicated festival platform, creating a space where filmmakers and communities can meet across difference, witness lived truth, and move toward action. Narrative sovereignty is the right and power of individuals or communities, especially those who have been marginalized or misrepresented to define, tell, structure, and control their own stories. It means shaping one’s own history, identity, perspectives, and representation on one’s own terms rather than having those stories imposed, filtered, or distorted by external forces whether media, institutions, dominant cultures, or colonial l…