The opening night gala for the 34th Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival featured cheers, tears and criticism for the current government shutdown.

Margaret McLarty, chair of the Hot Springs Documentary Film Institute’s board of directors, welcomed attendees to the screening of “Lost Wolves of Yellowstone,” giving her final opening night welcome as she will be stepping down next week as chair.

“It’s such a thrill to be here tonight as we kick off a nine-day celebration of the art of documentary filmmaking,” she said. “For 34 years, we have championed nonfiction storytelling and showcased world-class films that entertain, educate and broaden our collective perspectives.”

McLarty challenged attendees to show their support for the arts and documentary storytelling, in particular.

“In today’s world, the value of art and the importance of nonfiction storytelling is being questioned, and yet the very thing that brings us together here tonight is our shared belief in the power of documentary films,” she said. “We understand the value of art in all of its forms. It serves as a mirror to society, provoking thought, inspiring change and fostering empathy. Documentary filmmaking in particular, held a unique power to illuminate truth, challenge perceptions and give voice to the unheard. Because we recognize this value, we must also recognize our responsibility to defend it, to celebrate it and to invest in it.”

HSDFI Executive Director Ken Jacobson echoed McLarty’s words.

“At our fundraising party this past May, I mentioned that our core values were built on two pillars,” he said. “One, a big tent philosophy in which we are committed to presenting a wide range of views and perspectives on issues, people and events, both on screen and represented among our audiences. And two, a passionate commitment to the First Amendment. Both things are more important than ever.”

Jacobson said that when he first saw “Lost Wolves of Yellowstone,” he immediately thought of the connection between Yellowstone and Hot Springs national parks.

“The movie you’re about to see, ‘Lost Wolves of Yellowstone,’ obviously takes place in Yellowstone National Park,” he said. “We here feel pretty partisan about the national park called Hot Springs National Park. And you know, when I saw Tom Winston’s movie — which I just fell in love with immediately — of course, I thought about this connection with Hot Springs National Park.”

Prior to the film, Winston told the crowd he has enjoyed getting to show his film to audiences outside of the states connected to Yellowstone.

“I can’t wait for you all to see the film,” he said. “I will say this film has been especially fun seeing audiences outside of Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, all the states that have a little bit of Yellowstone in them, because I think you all are really more surprised by the story. Some of the people in our region, they lived through it.”

The film tells the story of how grey wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park in the mid-1990s after having been hunted to near extinction in the area. Mollie Beattie, the first female head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, championed the plan, literally helping to carry the first of the wolves into the enclosure where they were first reintroduced to the park, but she never got the opportunity to see how well the experiment worked.

Following the film, Winston told how he learned that a film crew had followed the project for the first two years, but the footage had been lost. He then asked Mike Phillips and Doug Smith, who were working with him on an unrelated project and had been part of the team that helped reintroduce the wolves to the national park, about Mollie’s Pack.

“I knew there was a Mollie’s Pack,” he recalled. “I filmed Mollie’s Pack for other projects many times, and I asked them, ‘What’s the story behind Mollie?’ In my head, Mollie was like an elder kind of employee of U.S. Fish and Wildlife, who’d been memorialized with this kind of like capstone in her career, and that’s the first time that told me Mollie actually carried the wolves in. She was 49, she was completely healthy, and a year and a half later, she passed away, and that’s where that story was. So it was those two threads that happened on that day that we then started to pursue.”

Rick Schwolsky, Mollie’s husband and one of the subjects of the film, said that while his wife had been a political appointee, she was “unpolitical.”

“She viewed the work that U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Park Service did as science, as fact-based, for the ecosystem,” he said. “And the attacks on science and on facts and on impartiality that we’re experiencing now, don’t help anybody. There’s no agenda; wolves have no agenda. But I think that a lot of people feel like government employees and scientists working for the government have that they’re angling for some outcome that they want to have, and the truth is that they are observing the truth and the evolution of their work when they step back and let nature do its thing.”

Yoga on the Rooftop starts at 9 a.m. today as the first installment of the festival’s Wellness Series, and Sunday at 9 a.m. the series continues with the Inspiration Hike and Meditation.

Today’s events include “The Balloonist” (Cinema 2, 10:30 a.m.), “For Venida, For Kalief” (Cinema 1, noon), “Mr. Scorsese” (Cinema 2, 12:30 p.m.), “Ask E. Jean” (Cinema 1, 2:30 p.m.), “The Inquisitor” (Cinema 2, 4:30 p.m.), “Diamond Diplomacy” (Cinema 1, 5 p.m.), ESPN Films’ 30 for 30 Panel on “The ‘85 Bears” with Dan Hampton (Cinema 2, 7 p.m.), and “Never Get Busted!” (Cinema 1, 7:15 p.m.).

On Sunday, the film program opens at 11:30 a.m. with “Backside” (Cinema 1) followed by “All the Empty Rooms” and a live recording of an episode of the podcast “Top Docs” (Cinema 1, 2:30 p.m.). Additional events include the first set of shorts, Crossing Borders (Cinema 2, 4:30 p.m.), “The Perfect Neighbor” and Impact Award presentation (Cinema 1, 4:45 p.m.), Shorts Program: The Natural State (Cinema 2, 7 p.m.) and “Natchez” (Cinema 1, 7:15 p.m.).

A full listing of the films and events at this year’s festival, descriptions and opportunities to purchase passes can be found at: https://bit.ly/3IlR6MI