Between the Mountain and the Sky clinched both the Audience Choice Award and the Student Choice Award amidst emotional acclaim from filmgoers and reviewers.
Celebrating an Award-Winning Film Festival Weekend
Telluride, Colorado, June 25, 2024 — Between the Mountain and the Sky, a documentary featuring nonprofit BlinkNow Foundation and its Co-Founder and CEO Maggie Doyne, premiered in May at Mountainfilm festival, in Telluride, Colorado, earning critical acclaim and clinching both the Audience Choice Award and Student Choice Award.
The premiere was attended by BlinkNow Co-Founders Doyne and Tope Malla, Director Jeremy Power Regimbal, and young adults who have graduated from BlinkNow’s Kopila Valley School in Nepal.
Early reviews have praised Doyne, Regimbal, Malla, and their work while also hailing the uniqueness of this humanitarian story. Telluride Inside calls the film “an intimate documentary spanning nearly two decades, traversing the landscapes of Nepal, the Netherlands, America, and Canada.”
Stephen Saito on MoveableFest.com highlights the intimacy of watching Doyne’s struggle with grief and her tension between two cultures, calling it “unusually refreshing when it doesn’t linger on the selfless work that Doyne has done, but provocatively asks at what point she needs to protect herself from giving too much to be useful.”
BlinkNow has long been known for its focus on quality relationships with those people it serves in Nepal, as well as with supporters, volunteers, and donors across the globe. This was evidenced by a large number of BlinkNow “extended family” who traveled to Telluride to watch the film premiere and celebrate its release with the founders.
Director Jeremy Power Regimbal, who is also featured in the film and married to Doyne, was overwhelmed with the outpouring of excitement and attendees from the BlinkNow supporter base and Mountainfilm audiences, who traveled from across the U.S. and globally to attend the premiere. “I am just so grateful… without humans that are taking risks and living the way that Maggie and Tope live, there’s no film. I was very lucky to be in the right place at the right time and feel so blessed to be part of this family.”
Doyne expressed her gratitude as well as her hopes for the future at a premiere party hosted by BlinkNow. “We have the best people in the world who have walked us through this story of love and are standing here today. I hope the world will see that loss is not the end, that the hard parts of life are not the end. I want people to be reminded that love is the greatest healing force we have. And if we take care of children, children take care of the community, the country, and the world.”
