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Meet the 2024 Documentary Film Fund Recipients

Supporting feature filmmakers since 2009

Since its launch in 2011, the SFFILM Documentary Film Fund (DFF) has supported feature-length documentaries in post-production that are distinguished by compelling stories, intriguing characters, and an innovative visual approach. DFF has distributed nearly $1 million to advance new work by filmmakers worldwide, many of whom go on to premiere at festivals like Sundance, our own San Francisco International Film Festival, Tribeca and more, as well as collect dozens of nominations and awards including the Oscars.

Previous DFF winners include Sarvnik Kaur’s Against the Tide, winner of the Sundance 2023 Vérité Filmmaking Prize; Alejandra Vasquez and Sam Osborne’s Going Varsity in Mariachi, winner of the Sundance 2023 Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award; Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh’s Writing With Fire, which won Audience and Special Jury Awards at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival; Ljubo Stefanov and Tamara Kotevska’s Honeyland, which won a record number of juried awards at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for Academy Awards for both Best Documentary Feature and Best Foreign Language Film; RaMell Ross’ Hale County This Morning, This Evening, which won a Special Jury Prize at Sundance 2018 and was nominated for the 2019 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, and many others.

“We’ve seen the number of Documentary Film Fund submissions continue to increase and along with it, more and more high quality films. Needless to say, this is a very competitive grant,” said Joshua Moore, Manager of Documentary Programs, Artist Development at SFFILM.

“This year’s recipients are a unique blend of profound personal journeys mixed with timely universal stories,” remarked the jury panel. “Each film masterfully challenges the perceived notions of their subjects’ point of views and illustrates the juxtaposition between character and environment.”

The jury was very excited and impressed by the high level of craftsmanship on full display. “The fact that each film is helmed by first time feature directors really wowed us and we couldn’t be more delighted to be offering this support to such talented filmmakers who are taking giant leaps in their respective careers as artists.”

This year’s jury consisted of Leslie Tai (director of How to Have an American Baby); Jennifer Hymes Battat (Jenerosity Foundation); Joshua Moore (SFFILM Manager of Documentary Programs, Artist Development); and Masashi Niwano (SFFILM Director of Artist Development).

The 2024 Documentary Film Fund is made possible thanks to support from Jennifer Hymes Battat and the Jenerosity Foundation along with Katie Hall and Tom Knutsen.

Meet the 2024 Documentary Film Fund Finalists

Coach Emily (working title)

Pallavi Somusetty, Director, Producer; Debra Wilson Cary, Producer; Jen Gilomen, Producer;
Emily Taylor, an Oakland-based queer Black climbing coach, trains a group of BIPOC kids to conquer the pervasive discrimination they face in the great outdoors. As they claim their place in nature, Emily embarks on a profound journey of self-care, while working to dismantle an industry rife with systemic racism.

Curse of the Mutant Heirloom

Debra Schaffner, Director; Julie Wyman, Producer
A daughter excavates decades of estrangement from her Holocaust-survivor mother, fueled by a less visible predator: the BRCA gene mutation. Robots and aliens join their human counterparts in this hybrid-documentary about family, forgiveness, and female body parts.

Jenin & the Nakba Between Us

Serene Husni, Director; Rula Nasser, Producer; Marc Serpa Francoeur, Producer
A diasporic Palestinian filmmaker struggles to make a contemporary portrait of Jenin, the city her parents fled following the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank, when her footage takes on radically new meaning in the wake of October 7th.

To Use a Mountain

Casey Carter, Director; Colleen Cassingham, Producer; Jonna McKone, Producer
Physics, geology, and democracy collide across the expansive American interior, in a series of vignettes from six candidate sites for a sacrificial nuclear dumping ground.

Stay In Touch With SFFILM

SFFILM is a nonprofit organization whose mission ensures independent voices in film are welcomed, heard, and given the resources to thrive. SFFILM brings the most exciting films and filmmakers to Bay Area movie lovers all year long. To be the first to know what’s coming, sign up for our email alerts and watch your inbox.

Meet the 2024 SFFILM Rainin Grant Recipients

Celebrate these 2024 SFFILM Rainin Recipients with us

Supporting feature filmmakers since 2009

SFFILM is thrilled to announce the Recipients for the 2024 SFFILM Rainin Grant, the flagship artist development program offered by SFFILM Makers in partnership with the Kenneth Rainin Foundation. Twenty-three filmmaking teams have been shortlisted as contenders to receive funding and professional support for their narrative projects at different stages of production.

The SFFILM Rainin Grant program is the largest granting body for independent narrative feature films in the US. It supports films that address social justice issues—the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges—in a positive and meaningful way through plot, character, theme, or setting. Awards are made to multiple projects once a year, for screenwriting, development, and post-production. Recipients are offered a cash grant of up to $25,000, residency at FilmHouse, and SFFILM’s premier artist residency space.

The program is open to filmmakers from anywhere in the world who can commit to spending time developing the film in San Francisco. Applications for next year will open in early 2025.

Meet the 2024 SFFILM Rainin Grant Recipients

The Matriarch

Screenwriting
Zandashé Brown, Director/Screenwriter
A young woman, haunted by her mother’s long battle with psychosis, struggles to reconnect after her unexpected recovery. When the death of an estranged family matriarch brings them back to their ancestral home in rural Louisiana, she forms a mysterious connection with her late grandmother—one that threatens to unravel her own grip on reality.

Fonzel and Gloria

Development
Christopher Cole, Director/Screenwriter; Devin Tusa, Producer; George Rush, Producer; Caroline Kaplan, Producer
When an aging one-hit wonder is diagnosed with a terminal illness, she enlists her rapper grandson on a crime-filled bumbling romp from LA to Oakland.

Strangers

Screenwriting
Karishma Dev Dube, Director/Producer/Screenwriter
Pari and Tara are complete strangers, until a chance encounter on a New York City subway platform instigates inexplicable and profound connections between them. Set between New Delhi and New York, the film explores how these two women quietly unravel in tandem: with lovers, at home, and in public.

Requiem for a Glacier

Screenwriting
Stephanie Falkeis, Director/Screenwriter
When a young glaciologist returns to her remote ancestral village to assess the local glacier for its prospective use as a ski resort, she is confronted by her estranged eco-activist mother who is willing to defend the glacier from destruction at all cost. A feminist anti-western set in a dying landscape.

Dreamland

Screenwriting
Joie Estrella Horwitz, Director/Screenwriter
A love story blooms during the night shift in a slaughterhouse, where phantoms of the future sit with ghosts of the past.

Karolina and Udochi Dance in the Woods at Dusk!

Development
Osinachi Ibe, Director/Producer/Screenwriter; Thomas Ethan Harris, Producer; Megan Carlson – Producer
During their first summer apart, two childhood best friends discover they have fallen in love with each other and embark on a spiritual journey that changes them forever.

From a Crooked Rib

Screenwriting
Idil Ibrahim, Director/Producer/Screenwriter
Set against the backdrop of pre-independence Somalia, From a Crooked Rib follows independent yet naive Ebla (18) who dreams of life outside her suffocating village. When her grandfather promises her hand in marriage to Giumaleh, the oldest man in the village, Ebla makes a decision that alters the course of her life.

Mucho Power

Screenwriting
Fernando Frias de la Parra, Director/Screenwriter/Producer; Gerry Kim, Producer/Screenwriter
When a Korean immigrant opens up a store in a Mexican neighborhood outside of downtown Chicago, he expects that his hard work will translate into success. But his dreams can’t keep up with how quickly the world is changing around him.

Rosemead

Post-Production
Eric Lin, Director; Mynette Louie, Producer; Andrew Corkin, Producer; Lucy Liu, Producer
An immigrant mother in California’s San Gabriel Valley takes desperate measures to help her unstable teenage son as she uncovers his obsession with mass shootings. Inspired by true events.

Honeyjoon

Post-Production
Lilian T. Mehrel, Director/Screenwriter
Kurdish-Persian Lela and her American daughter June take a trip to the romantic Azores after their major loss—with polar opposite ideas about the trip, grief, and June’s bikini. Between happy honeymooners, Woman Life Freedom, and their hot tour guide João, they find each other… coming back to life.

Pangea Ultima

Development
Estevan Padilla, Director/Screenwriter
Determined to heal their fractured family, a misguided brother and sister take drastic action, kidnapping their estranged parents in a bid for forced reconciliation.

Love Visa

Screenwriting
PJ Raval, Director/Co-writer; Eileen Cabiling, Co-writer; Derek Nguyen, Producer
When Filipino hottie Jon Jon arrives in Texas to marry his Black closeted online lover Harvey, their relationship is put to the test by familial obligations and the social stigmas of a transactional marriage, all while attempting to fit into the American dream.

SummerWinterSummer

Development
Thy Tran, Director/Producer/Screenwriter
Grappling with a heartbreak, a gay, Vietnamese American creative drifts through the cycle of disappointment, rejection, and quiet despair, spiraling into self-destruction until he confronts the weight of familial scars and rediscovers his true self.

Half Orange

Screenwriting
Alejandra Vasquez, Director/Screenwriter
Lucia navigates life as a teenager born to now-divorced teenaged parents, shuttled between her mother’s place in rural Texas and her father’s suburban life in California. As she turns 16, Lucia finds herself in a coming-of-age story about three people, only two of those people happen to be her parents.

Mouna Tharangam (A Silent Wave)

Development
Sachin Dheeraj Mudigonda, Director; Janani Vijayanathan, Producer
In Post-Roe Texas, Amal, an Indian-American woman, grapples with an unexpected pregnancy when her path crosses with a newlywed Indian immigrant, Charulata. Their love sparks a journey of sexual awakening, cultural clash, and profound choices as the specter of abortion looms large.

No One Turned Away For Lack Of Funds: A Queer-Inclusive Memoir

Screenwriting
LaTajh Weaver, Director/Screenwriter; Sean Gillane, Producer
An escape room master builds an inescapable puzzle room for tourists, while trying to comprehend their own sense of belonging within Oakland’s surreal, radicalized Queer scene.

Sweeping Graves

Screenwriting
Kevin D. Wong, Director/Screenwriter; Vanessa Gentry, Producer/Screenwriter
A gentrification ghost story, Sweeping Graves is a modern-day folk tale that tells the story of Brandon, a San Francisco realtor who buys a property in Chinatown and evicts the tenants, intent on flipping it. But as Brandon begins to renovate the building, he starts to suspect that not all of the previous inhabitants have left—and that driving them out may cost him more than he ever bargained for.

Stay In Touch With SFFILM

SFFILM is a nonprofit organization whose mission ensures independent voices in film are welcomed, heard, and given the resources to thrive. SFFILM works hard to bring the most exciting films and filmmakers to Bay Area movie lovers. To be the first to know what’s coming, sign up for our email alerts and watch your inbox.

Meet the 2024 SFFILM Documentary Film Fund Finalists

Supporting feature filmmakers since 2009

The 2024 Documentary Film Fund is made possible thanks to support from Jennifer Hymes Battat and the Jenerosity Foundation along with Katie Hall and Tom Knutsen.

Meet the 2024 Documentary Film Fund Finalists

TheyDream

William D. Caballero Director/Producer
After an unexpected death in the family, a Puerto Rican-American filmmaker/animator teams up with his grieving mother to tell their stories of familial love and loss.

Jenin & the Nakba Between Us

Shifted Landscapes

Jamie Meltzer, Director; Annie Marr, Producer
“Shifted Landscapes” examines the pervasive effects of the climate crisis on the environmental, cultural and psychological landscapes of California. Weaving together a series of observational vignettes, the film visually articulates a larger system of climate change within the state.

To Use a Mountain

Issa’s House

Tomer Heymann, Director/Producer; Leigh Heiman, Producer; Estelle Fialon, Producer; Ahmad Amro, Producer; Ido Mizrahy, Producer
Issa Amro and his non-violent activists guard a Palestinian-owned home in Hebron. Issa’s House gives voice to their stories in the face of insurmountable oppression.

Somebody’s Gone

Cyrus Moussavi, Director; Hubert Taylor, Director; Brittany Nugent, Producer
Brother Theotis Taylor harvested turpentine, preached sermons, and sang spirituals in a sublime falsetto that made him the pride of South Georgia. Driven by a divine vision, his son, Hubert, filmed it all. Forty years later, Somebody’s Gone completes the story of a great artist through the archive of his prodigal son.

Coach Emily (working title)

Pallavi Somusetty, Director; Debra Wilson Cary, Producer; Jen Gilomen, Producer; Pallavi Somusetty, Producer
Emily Taylor, an Oakland-based queer Black climbing coach, trains a group of BIPOC kids to conquer the pervasive discrimination they face in the great outdoors. As they claim their place in nature, Emily embarks on a profound journey of self-care, while working to dismantle an industry rife with systemic racism.

Curse of the Mutant Heirloom

Barbara Forever

Brydie O’Connor, Director; Elijah Stevens, Producer
A time-bending, archival-driven examination of the iconic life, work, & legacy of Barbara Hammer reveals this pioneering lesbian experimental filmmaker’s unconventional attempts to live on forever.

The Last Nomads

Biljana Tutorov, Director; Petar Glomazić, Director; Biljana Tutorov, Producer; Quentin Laurent, Co-producer; Rok Biček, Co-producer
In the pristine mountains of Montenegro, a semi-nomadic mother and daughter defend their herding tradition and their land from becoming a NATO military training ground. A gripping family and environmental drama unfolds, as the story of violence against women echoes that of violence against nature.

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Doc Congress Keynote Address

Hear from Catapult Film Fund co-founder Bonni Cohen about her film In Waves and War and the state of the documentary filmmaking landscape

Photo by Pamela Gentile

A dynamic hub for influential conversations about non-fiction funding and the state of the industry, Doc Congress is an annual gathering that takes place during SFFILM’s Doc Stories. By bringing together documentary funders, filmmakers, and distributors to discuss the most prevailing topics of the non-fiction funding landscape, Doc Congress is one of the documentary showcase’s most vital events.

At the 10th Doc Stories, Bonni Cohen, co-founder of the Catapult Film Fund and of the San Francisco-based documentary production company Actual Films, served as Doc Congress’ keynote speaker. Join us as we revisit Cohen’s compelling address here.

In Waves And War: One Film’s Path To Being Made & Seen

In February of 2022, our film team arrived in Virginia Beach to interview retired Navy seal DJ Shipley for our latest film In Waves And War which we were producing in association with Participant Media RIP. It’s the story of three special OPS SEALs who returned from the 20-year war in Iraq and Afghanistan—broken both physically and mentally—and were setting an alternative and risky course for personal healing through an illegal psychedelic drug regimen.

We came to interview DJ but as I spent more time with his wife, Patsy, it became clear to me that her story was equally as important to the film we were making. The wives who ultimately saved the lives of their husbands and families—whose clarity, strength, and vision were the key to the success of the healing process for these guys. It wasn’t an easy story to tell as it was filled with pain, heartache, fear and, in Patsy’s case, betrayal.

Patsy had a number of reasons why she didn’t want to be on camera, not the least of which was that she and DJ have two little girls and she wanted to protect them, being well aware that our film could end up on a big streaming service and as they grew up, they would be surrounded by people who had seen the film and knew of their family trauma.

I could tell that Patsy and I had a connection and she was comfortable talking to me off camera. So, I made her an offer I had never made to a film participant before. I offered to do the interview and then check in with her later to see if she wanted to proceed. I would send her the interview transcript and she could get comfortable with what she revealed.

This kind of collaboration with a film subject is risky, as Patsy could decide to simply pull out and I would have no recourse. But, it was clear to me that a new approach was necessary here, given what this family had been through and I was willing to engage her in the process to the extent that she would feel comfortable enough to display her family’s trauma on screen. Her story is profound and was deeply moving to me.

As I sat through the interview, I realized again what a privilege we have as storytellers to speak to people about the most intimate and complicated aspects of their lives, often giving them an opportunity to realize something about their relationships that maybe they hadn’t hit on before. I was overcome with the reminder and feeling once again of my own passion to connect and help people through sharing stories.

Here I was, a San Francisco-based, and left-leaning, documentary filmmaker, and Patsy grew up in a military family in the heart of Navy SEAL country, widowed by her first husband who was also a SEAL and a stepfather who was part of NAVY SEAL leadership. We couldn’t be from more different backgrounds yet here we were coming together to share something about our common humanity.

We just premiered In Waves And War at the Telluride Film Festival this past month. Patsy and DJ were there. They experienced standing ovations from the audience even before the credits came on. There was a visible emotional response from the audiences that was more profound than anything we had experienced before. Tears were leaking from the eyes of a few streaming platform executives. For the filmmaker and subject, it was a home run.

Two months later, our sales agents are reporting back things like: although the film is beloved by all that have seen it, in today’s climate, streamers are looking for “content” that has been proven to generate millions of eyeballs. Insert your favorite celebrity here. It’s no secret that celebrity docs and true crime rule the day. We find ourselves in the awkward position of having made a powerful film that doesn’t have an easy way to foretell its success. We continue to work on the best distribution path for the film.

Bonni Cohen On Co-Founding The Catapult Film Fund

In 2010, I was set up on a blind lunch date with Lisa Kleiner Chanoff, who I knew through mutual friends. She was interested in the documentary field and wanted to know if there was a need to fill on the funding side that could be useful. In other words, rather than funding films one at a time, was there a hole to fill more globally?

Photo by Pamela Gentile

Lisa had dipped a single toe into the field, having funded a few individual projects but was looking to make more of a difference. I told her that the most difficult moment, in my opinion, for a documentary, is the early stage when it’s just an idea and can easily, without any support, die on the vine. It’s no secret that this has led to a barrier to entry for artists with fewer connections and means. I could see in Lisa’s eyes that she was intrigued and a few weeks later, we set the blueprint for The Catapult Film Fund.

There were a few organizations dabbling in development funding at that time, but we envisioned a fund dedicated to getting filmmakers over the line from just an idea to a sample piece that reflected the film they wanted to make for presentation to production funders. The idea for the fund was specifically about taking big risks.

[Now,] Catapult has funded 290 films in the last 15 years. In our first round, we invited 20 filmmakers to submit applications and this past round we received nearly 900 applications for 15 slots.

These projects take years to become All that Breathes and Crip Camp—and may have struggled longer to find those films without the support of Catapult.

Since Catapult was born there are now a whole slew of organizations out there that see the importance of development funding and have also made a big difference for the field including Sundance, Points North, Chicken & Egg Films, and Impact Partners, to name a few. We know that, as a field, we are capable of responding to the needs of filmmakers as those needs present themselves.

It is frustrating to sit here in 2024 and consternate about the state of documentary distribution, particularly at a time when truth is under attack and we know, as a community, how valuable our films are to righting the ship. But, let’s remember a few things:

In my lifetime, public television was born, cable TV was born, and streaming platforms came into view. Distribution is not a solid state. As Brian Newman writes in his Sub-Genre newsletter:

“I think that’s been the trouble we’re having in the film business as things have become stuck. People are looking at the old map for a way out of this mess, and it also doesn’t align with our new reality.”

We all need to be looking in new directions. The problem, however, is that much of our industry leadership is focused on putting out the fires, and on reading the old maps. We’re waiting for someone to come along with the new map. Luckily, I’ve been seeing a lot of such rumblings from both newer/upcoming leaders, and some who’ve been in the field for quite a while, but who have stayed nimble. I can’t report on all of those developments yet, because many remain behind the scenes as works-in-progress, but the next era’s winners are clearly going to be those who chart the new maps.

The State Of Documentary Filmmaking In 2024 & Beyond

I am looking for a miracle. And I am not pessimistic about finding one. I have seen this community step and solve seemingly insurmountable problems before.

There are clearly impressive and innovative experiments going on as we speak—inroads into self-distribution through a grant from FilmAid and the new platform for documentaries called Jolt, that Geralyn Dreyfous and Jim Swartz from Impact Partners are spear-heading. [There] are new experts in the field, like Mia Bruno, who are taking on indie theatrical distribution, and there are [tireless] filmmakers, like Brett Story with her incredible Sundance Award-winning film, Union, who have worked… to self distribute her film around the country to audiences who need to see it most.

Photo by Pamela Gentile

So, I get the irony here: I stand before you passionate but humble. I have not one, but two films that Actual Films has finished this year—In Waves and War and The White House Effect—…and neither of them have a distributor on board yet.

In the film, you see Patsy Shipley help save the life of her husband and play the central character in a great on-screen love story. Patsy ultimately [agrees] to participate in the film. We took a risk on Patsy, spending valuable production time on an interview that we might never have gotten permission to put in the film but, ultimately, Patsy told us how much she appreciated the interview and gave us permission to use her story.

Being open to a new way of working paid off for us and, part of what we do as artists and storytellers is to figure out new pathways we don’t have an ending for. Industry wide, we are now in such a moment. I continue to be optimistic about what we can innovate as a field to get these critical films out in the world.

I came out to the Bay area to attend the Stanford Documentary Graduate Program in the early ‘90s. Being there, not only did I meet my life partner in life and film, I was privileged to sit at the foot of the documentary masters—Jon Else, Kris Samuelson, Debbie Hoffman, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman to name just a few. I began to realize that there was something special here in San Francisco, [something] unique to the independent documentary voice, and I harnessed it.

There has always been excitement and fear for me as a documentary filmmaker. Excitement for the stories we are allowed to tell and fear that those stories might never get seen.

But, if we examine the waves of history in our field and how we have exhibited documentary film here and around the globe, there have been trends of distribution that have not supported massive audiences and there have been times when our documentaries have had the experience of being viewed by millions around the world.

Why are we making these films? Who are they for? What is the measure of success in audiences and exhibition?

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Meet the 2024 SFFILM Rainin Grant Finalists

Celebrate these 2024 SFFILM Rainin Finalists with us

Supporting feature filmmakers since 2009

SFFILM is thrilled to announce the finalists for the 2024 SFFILM Rainin Grant, the flagship artist development program offered by SFFILM Makers in partnership with the Kenneth Rainin Foundation. Twenty-three filmmaking teams have been shortlisted as contenders to receive funding and professional support for their narrative projects at different stages of production.

The program is open to filmmakers from anywhere in the world who can commit to spending time developing the film in San Francisco. Applications for next year will open in early 2025.

Meet the 2024 SFFILM Rainin Grant Finalists

The Matriarch

S.Q.A.G. (Short Quiet Asian Girl)

Screenwriting
Benedict Chiu, Director/Producer/Screenwriter
A S.Q.A.G. (short quiet asian girl), in a desperate effort to upend her anonymity, disguises as another student to take a test in her place, only to stumble upon a Secret Society that specializes in underground cheating operations.

Fonzel and Gloria

Strangers

Rainbow Girls

Screenwriting
Nana Fobi Duffor, Director/Screenwriter
As San Francisco’s tech boom gentrifies their city, three young black trans women decide to take matters into their own hands, staging a string of robberies targeting the city’s most exclusive luxury brand stores.

Requiem for a Glacier

Dreamland

Screenwriting
Joie Estrella Horwitz, Director/Screenwriter
A love story blooms during the night shift in a slaughterhouse, where phantoms of the future sit with ghosts of the past.

Karolina and Udochi Dance in the Woods at Dusk!

From a Crooked Rib

Mucho Power

Rosemead

Honeyjoon

Daraluz

Screenwriting
Asia Nichols, Writer/Director
Returning home to honor her late mother in one of Mexico’s most religious states, a forlorn puppeteer becomes afflicted by a recurring pregnancy and must confront a fabled tunnel mummy hellbent on forcing the birth.

Searching for Mateo

Development
Nico Opper, Director/Screenwriter; Maria F. León, Producer
A queer couple from the Bay Area take their 10-year-old adopted son on vacation to Honduras, where his birth family is from, hoping to strengthen his connection to his roots. But when he suddenly disappears, the entire family must navigate the complexities of love, loss and belonging that bind them.

Pangea Ultima

Love Visa

If we don’t burn, how do we light up the night

Post-Production
Kim Torres, Director; Alejandra Vargas Carballo, Producer
In a realm where mystique weaves through the ordinary, thirteen-year-old Laura ventures into a secluded town, haunted by tales of a beast that preys on women. When she meets the radiant Daniela, their friendship quietly—but surely—takes her on a journey that unravels the true nature of the beast.

Fishtank

Screenwriting
Wendi Tang, Director/Screenwriter
Jules, a 28-year-old Chinese-American woman grappling with her troubled past and present, vomits living goldfish whenever she’s triggered. Haunted by her unstable reality, Jules must face the darkest secret she’s been hiding from the world and uncover the truth behind it.