WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — Film festivals with a political bent often risk falling prey to what Samantha Davidson Green, executive director of Junction Arts & Media, calls “the doom and gloom festival dilemma,” wherein audiences leave the theater feeling more hopeless than when they entered.

JAM leadership was wary of this phenomenon when planning the 20th White River Indie Film, or WRIF, Festival, opting for a lineup of global and local projects that marry humor, love and compassion with political resistance.

The festival opens at 2 p.m on Saturday, Feb. 8 at the Hopkins Center with “Soundtrack to a Coup d’État,” an essay-film about Louis Armstrong’s trip to the Congo during the Cold War. 

A stand-up comedy show at the Briggs Opera House featuring Tuck School of Business graduate Paul Ollinger, who recently headlined the New York City Comedy Festival, is slated for the following Wednesday.

Davidson Green said she hopes the Tuck connection will help introduce Dartmouth students to the film festival and JAM’s community offerings.

Next Thursday’s programming kicks off at 5:30 p.m. with WRIF’s third annual PitchFest.

In the shark-tank style competition, burgeoning filmmakers pitch their short film ideas to a panel of judges for the chance to win financial backing and technical support from JAM.

One of WRIF’s goals is offering tangible resources to local talent. PitchFest is one example of that effort.

“So many festivals and contests assume that you’ve had all this support and resources and then you compete for these little, tiny spaces on a festival schedule and there’s never enough room for all those worthy films. It’s this kind of  pun ish ing structure where you have to come up with resources over and over again,” Davidson Green said in an interview.

The competition is followed Thursday evening by    a screening of the three short films that came out of last year’s competition, plus “One Night at Babes,” Angelo Madsen Minax’s documentary about Babes Bar, Bethel’s beloved queer watering hole.

“Hundreds of Beavers,” a zany comedy about one man’s standoff against a legion of beavers depicted as towering mascots, closes the night.

Screenings of the winning films from WRIF’s Emerging Filmmakers Contest will take place throughout the week. The contest, which is open for new filmmakers throughout New England and Quebec, is another way WRIF tries to bolster burgeoning artists by granting them screen time at the festival.

This year, WRIF expanded the definition of “emerging filmmaker” to include anyone who identifies as one, rather than imposing an age restriction.

Two former winners from previous years, Cedar O’Dowd and Noah Mauchly, went on to work in leadership positions at JAM.

“The communal encouragement (at the festival) was so fun and exciting in a way that I hadn’t really experienced before as a filmmaker,” said Mauchly, who now helps manage the competition.

Providing opportunities to filmmakers and audiences to socialize and discuss the work they’d seen was another goal this year.

“Most festivals I go to ... you go, you see the movie, you get in your car and drive home ... but we really wanted to encourage people to come watch the movie and hang out,” Jordyn Fitch, JAM’s production manager and producer, said in an interview.

Festival-goers and filmmakers are encouraged to attend Friday’s Valentine’s Day party in the Briggs Opera House lobby to celebrate the festival’s 20th year with live music from jazz string trio Route 5 Jive.

Other events, like a Saturday yoga session hosted by Upper Valley Yoga, were incorporated into the programming to help audiences process the festival’s heavier films.

Saturday’s 2 p.m. screening of “No Other Land,” a documentary that traces the destruction of Palestinian villages in the southern West Bank by the Israeli military, for instance, will be accompanied by a panel discussion about the relationship between art and activism.

The public is also encouraged to fold paper cranes and doves as part of visual artists and panel members’ Mona Shiber and JuPong Lin’s PeaceBirds Project, an installation that reflects on lives lost during the war in Gaza. The exhibit will be on display at JAM’s office on South Main Street.

The festival closes Sunday, Feb. 16, with a series of global and local features, including the Zambian film “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl.”

“It’s really significant if a feature film is coming out of a country that doesn’t support filmmaking very well. ... That’s been a priority, trying to find those films,” Davidson Green said.

Tickets ($10+) for WRIF can be purchased at wrif2025.eventive.org.

Marion Umpleby can be reached at mumpleby@vnews.com or 603-727-3306.