Heartland Film Festival Featured Women Directors, Unreleased Film

The president of the Indiana-based firm Business Consulting Incorporated for 10 years, Thomas Stoughton built a reputation as a distinguished public policy and educational technology consultant. Aside from his successful consulting business, Thomas Stoughton founded the Heartland Film Festival, held each year in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Held in October 2018, the 27th annual Heartland Film Festival screened more than 100 feature-length films on a wide variety of subjects. One of those screenings was of the motion picture What They Had before it was released nationwide. Featuring two-time Academy Award winner Hilary Swank, What They Had tells the story of a family that struggles when confronting the matriarch’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis. Released everywhere on October 19, 2018, the film also stars Blythe Danner, Michael Shannon, and Robert Forster.

Aside from the buzz about the unreleased film, this year’s Heartland festival was marked by progress toward the goal of promoting gender equity. In 2018, the directors of half of the finalist films in the narrative and documentary categories were women. The festival also included a documentary about gender equity called Seeing is Believing: Women Direct. For information on the 2019 Heartland Film Festival, visit HeartlandFilm.org.