When Geena Davis launched the Bentonville Film Festival 11 years ago, it was a bold leap into uncharted territory. A festival in a town with no movie theaters? It sounded wild. But for Davis, it was about more than logistics — it was about shifting culture. “My hope is that this festival can impact how commercial films are made. They can be created by people with voices that we typically don’t hear from and populated by characters that we typically don’t see, and broaden our perspectives,” Davis said in a recent interview with Blavity. “We already know that films with very diverse casts make more money and are incredibly popular, and the more diverse it is, the better off they are. We’re not [the industry] acting on that as much as we can, so we’re really trying to show through what we show here at the festival that this is an important thing to think about when you’re making something.” From its earliest days, Bentonville has prioritized underrepresented storytellers, especially...