The eighth annual Portland Oregon Women’s Film Festival, a.k.a. POWFest, unspools March 12 with the first of over 60 films directed by women hitting the Hollywood Theater.

The festival is designed to showcase the work of female directors, while creating professional development and networking opportunities for women working in film over four days of film fun. 

Highlights for this year's POWFest include Laura Poitras's Citizenfour, the Academy Award-winning documentary on Edward Snowden and his exposure of the NSA's widespread electronic surveillance. 

Caryn Waechter’s The Sisterhood of Night–a modern day Salem witch trial by social media–is the opening night feature film, with a special screening of local director Heather Harlow’s short film, The Punishing Business starring Storm Large, beforehand.

The festival will also screen Mentor, which delves into bullying and harassment in an upper-class Ohio town by following the families of two teenagers who committed suicide there, and States of Grace, about a pioneering AIDS specialist struggling to come to terms with life after an accident on the Golden Gate bridge left her in a wheelchair.

POWFest also offers a Meet the Directors Reception as part of its bid to foster the women filmmaking community, as well as six series of shorts with different unifying themes.

For more information about the line-up and how to get tickets or festival passes, check out powfest.com.