The Denver Film Festival’s (official) closing-night spotlight Saturday was on the new space thriller “I.S.S.” and its director, Colorado Academy graduate Gabriela Cowperthwaite, who received the Women+Film Barbara Bridges Inspiration Award at a special screening at the Museum of Nature and Science’s Infinity Theater.

The premise for Cowperthwaite’s film is so timely, she wondered whether it could be released at all after the Russian military attacked Ukraine in February 2022. Her film imagines how the Russian and American astronauts on the International Space Station might respond after World War III breaks out back on Earth.

“Of course, we’d had decades of an adversarial relationship with Russia,” said Cowperthwaite. “It was only during post-production that the war broke out. So there was a very real conversation we had to have, asking, ‘Is it responsible for us to put this film out at this time?’ ‘Do we have the luxury of faking it on screen when there are real people dying?’ So it was tricky.

“But our film ultimately asks, ‘Can you still humanize one another when you are in these situations?’ ‘Can you still find our common humanity?’ And there’s something very specific about this being set on the Space Station, because that is all that they do all the time. There are truly no borders up there. These people are up there working together, basking in this shared humanity. And that’s the beautiful thing because, in the end, humanity transcends everything.”

Musical theater fans will geek out at the cast. Two of the leading roles are played by Ariana DeBose, who filmed ‘I.S.S.” just before landing her Oscar-winning role in “West Side Story,” and John Gallagher Jr., who originated the role of Moritz Stiefel in the Broadway production of “Spring Awakening.”

Last year, Cowperthwaite delivered one of the most powerful documentaries of the year, “The Grab,” which traces an invisible conspiracy to control the world’s water supplies. Denver Film Artistic Director Matthew Campbell said he can’t recall another director ever delivering a documentary and a narrative feature back-to-back like that.

Cowperthwaite said she is a documentarian to her core, but admitted that she’s partial to making narrative films. “I make fewer enemies as a result of not always poking the dragon,” she said with a laugh. “But I like both playgrounds.”

Terrifying real-life underscore

But there was a heaviness hanging over Cowperthwaite’s celebratory evening. She’s part of a prominent and well-known Denver family that dates back to 1860 on her father’s side.

A few days ago, Gabriela’s cousin, actor and ballet dancer Barton Cowperthwaite, announced he has been diagnosed with a Stage 2 glioma and will soon have surgery to remove a lemon-sized tumor. (Doctors won’t know for certain whether it is cancer until pathology results from the operation.)

He’s a 31-year-old actor who appeared on the Netflix series “Tiny Pretty Things.” He had been scheduled to appear in the upcoming off-Broadway revival of James McLure’s dark comedy “Lone Star,” which opens on Nov. 24.

Barton is a graduate of Denver School of the Arts and returned to Denver (and his alma mater) with the 2017 national touring production of the Broadway musical “An American in Paris.”

“It just breaks my heart, because he’s my baby cousin. He’s my guy,” said Gabriela Cowperthwaite. “It just brings everything into focus. Nothing is more important than Barton. He should be here tonight, but he did see it in New York.”

In anticipation of what are expected to be more than $100,000 in medical expenses, a GoFundMe has been launched that already has raised nearly $90,000.

The local and national outpouring of support since Barton’s  announcement, both for him and his mother, Laura Cowperthwaite, who co-founded Denver’s Curious Theatre, “has just been so touching,” she said. “I’m just praying for him.”