Best Grad Prof, pg. 3

in public administration. Her project has continued since 2015 and is critical to the Gender Inequality Research Lab at Pitt.

Through Finkel’s efforts, every year, six graduate students from Pitt work with UNDP regional hubs as summer researchers.

Her projects outside of the classroom have also had resonating effects on students. For example, when Mallik discussed her post-grad plans, she mentioned her interest in sanitation and waste management.

“I will be attending a UN water conference soon, in which I am hoping to make connections,” Mallik said. “I’m interested in working with displaced people through climate crises and political displacement down the road, and Dr. Finkel’s capstone course inspired this as I want to work in South Asia, India or Nepal after graduating.”

Finkel continues to be a leader in her field, according to her students. She even started a new comparative project which focuses on online violence against women in politics in Turkey and Brazil.

“It has allowed me to forge new collaborations with colleagues from different disciplines, which is always inspiring and energizing,” Finkel said. “The downside is now I feel the need to learn Portuguese.”

Finkel said in her limited free time she enjoys traveling, reading mysteries and watching tennis. She even has a goal to learn how to play pickleball this spring.

If she had one wish for her students, it would be for them to travel to one place that isn’t typically on a “Best Places to Travel List.” She said it is both important and rewarding to pick a place where students will “find themselves lost and challenged to step outside their comfort zones.”

“It is in those rare instances I believe we all get to rediscover our core strengths, our common humanity, and gain empathy and humility, and travel really opens us up to new insights and opportunities,” Finkel said.

“I think there were two relationships I was particularly interested in understanding, which were then the foundation that I needed to find, and I think those two relationships were with the father … and the other relationship was with Mumtaz,” Junejo said. “I think these were the two things that kind of gave me a way to Haider … at least a trajectory that I could follow.”

Rasti Farooq, who played Mumtaz, said she spent a lot of time trying to understand the marriage between her and Junejo’s character.

“I think for me, what helped was spending a lot of time on the script and talking extensively with Saim and also Ali, who I spent a lot of time with in the film, and Mumtaz and Haider share a very particular relationship,” Farooq said. “We just spent a lot of time talking about the particularities and peculiarities in their relationship and their marriage … and what happens to them when they kind of fall out of that ‘togetherness.’”

Jolanta Lion, the festival’s director, said after managing the festival for 17 years now, it’s easier to recognize which films to feature.

“I’ll be watching about 20 minutes of the film, or even less, and I just know if that film will be a good feature for the festival,” Lion said. “What’s important is what different elements are at play, like the language, the music, how the story and characters develop, the camera work. After so long, you just know.”

Lion said the festival receives funding from a variety of sources, ranging from educational institutions to national consulates.

“The festival is well known on the national and the international level,” Lion said. “For example, we have two Polish films and we get support from the Slavic Department at the University of Pittsburgh, but also the Polish Consulate of the Republic of Poland in New York. The same thing happened with the Taiwanese film, where an intern secured funding from the Taiwanese Culture Center in New York.”

Curtis said the festival is lucky to have connections within the Pittsburgh community to gain traction and support.

“We have connections with the cultural communities that exist in Pittsburgh,” Curtis said. “Pittsburgh is home to a ton of immigrant communities and a ton of diversity that is often overlooked. Through that, there’s a really strong moral support to show what we’re doing has an impact and people are receiving that very well.”