Filmmakers

SFFILM Announces 2021 Documentary Film Fund Winners

SFFILM Makers Awards a Total of $60,000 to Four Projects in its 10th Year of the Granting Program

SFFILM Announces 2021 Documentary Film Fund Winners

SFFILM Makers Awards a Total of $60,000 to Four Projects in its 10th Year of the Granting Program

A collage of still images from the films that won the Documentary Film Fund Grant

Today SFFILM announced the four winners of the 2021 SFFILM Documentary Film Fund (DFF) grants totaling $60,000 which support feature-length documentaries in post-production. Now in its tenth year, DFF was created to support non-fiction films that are distinguished by compelling stories, intriguing characters, and an innovative visual approach. The SFFILM Documentary Film Fund is SFFILM’s largest support program for doc makers. Sarvnik Kaur’s Against the Tide, Nesa Azimi’s Driver, co-directors Silvia Castaños, Estefanía Contreras, Miguel Drake-McLaughlin, Diane Ng, Ana Rodriguez-Falco, and Jillian Schlesinger’s Hummingbirds, and Mathew Ramirez Warren’s Weed Dreams were each awarded funding that will help push each project towards completion.

“In an incredibly competitive slate of submissions, we are thrilled with the winning selections. All of these films explore the human experience in new and powerful ways that truly moved our jury to tears,” said Masashi Niwano, SFFILM Director of Artist Development.

Since its launch in 2011, the SFFILM Documentary Film Fund has distributed nearly $1 million to advance new work by filmmakers nationwide. The 2021 Documentary Film Fund is made possible thanks to support from Jennifer Hymes Battat and the Jenerosity Foundation.

The panelists who reviewed the thirteen finalists’ submissions were Jeanelle Augustin, Manager of Film Fellowships and Artist Development at NBCUniversal; Jennifer Hymes Battat, founder of the Jenerosity Foundation; Liza Mandelup, film director and 2018 DFF winner for Jawline; Joshua Moore, SFFILM Manager of Documentary Programs; Rosa Morales, SFFILM Associate Manager of Narrative Programs; Masashi Niwano, SFFILM Director of Artist Development; Sabrina Sellers, SFFILM Artist Development Coordinator.

“We are delighted to be able to support this fantastic slate of documentaries,” remarked the jury. “Each project focuses on underrepresented characters and fighters striving for a better world. We’re impressed by the visual palettes this talented group of filmmakers have used to create a beautiful tapestry of the diverse and vibrant communities captured in their stories, and we look forward to seeing them reach a wide audience.”

2021 Documentary Film Fund Winners

Against the Tide — Sarvnik Kaur, director/producer; Koval Bhatia, producer

A tale of love, brotherhood and resentments against the backdrop of an adoring sea, which is turning adverse under the menacing effects of an all-pervading calamity called climate change.

Driver — Nesa Azimi, director/producer; Ines Hofmann Kanna, producer

Driver follows three years in the life of long-haul truck driver Desiree Wood. Taking on an industry where multi-billion dollar megacarriers conspire to make individual drivers anonymous and disposable, Desiree brings together an unlikely group of women to find strength, solidarity, and self-determination on the road — all while she fights to sustain herself as a long-haul truck driver.

Hummingbirds — Leslie Benavides, producer; Silvia Castaños, co-director; Estefanía Contreras, co-director; Miguel Drake-McLaughlin, producer/co-director; Diane Ng, co-director; Ana Rodriguez-Falco, producer/co-director; Jillian Schlesinger, producer/co-director

In this collaborative coming-of-age film, best friends Silvia and Beba escape the cruel heat of summer in their Texas border town, wandering empty streets at night in search of inspiration, adventure, and a sense of belonging. When forces threaten their shared dreams, they take a stand and hold onto what they can — the moment and each other.

Weed Dreams — Mathew Ramirez Warren, director/producer; Barni Axmed Qaasim, producer

Black-owned businesses in Oakland, California try to break into the predominantly white legal Cannabis industry, through the nation’s first ever Cannabis Equity Program.

Previous Documentary Film Fund winners

The SFFILM Documentary Film Fund has an excellent track record for advancing compelling films that go on to critical acclaim. Previous DFF winners include 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; Liza Mandelup’s Jawline, which won a Special Jury Award at Sundance 2019 and is currently streaming on Hulu; Hassan Fazili’s Midnight Traveler, which won a Special Jury Award at Sundance 2019 and the McBaine Documentary Feature Award at the 2019 SFFILM Festival; Luke Lorentzen’s Midnight Family, which premiered at Sundance 2019 and won dozens of awards including a Creative Recognition Award for Best Editing from the International Documentary Association; Assia Boundaoui’s The Feeling of Being Watched, which has won audience awards at several film festivals and was broadcast nationwide on POV; Alyssa Fedele and Zachary Fink’s The Rescue List, which had its world premiere at the 2018 SFFILM Festival and was broadcast nationwide on POV; and Zachary Heinzerling’s Cutie and the Boxer, which won Sundance’s Directing Award for documentary and was nominated for the 2014 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

We can’t wait to welcome you back to the movies! The 65th SFFILM Festival takes place April 21–May 1 at venues across the Bay Area including the historic and beloved Castro Theatre! Festival Ticket Packs are on sale now at early bird prices for a limited time. Don’t miss the deal, get your ticket packs here.

2021 SFFILM New American Fellowship Winner: Get to know Gerardo del Valle

SFFILM has announced the winner of its New American Fellowship, a program started in 2017 to support international artists who have made…

2021 SFFILM New American Fellowship Winner: Get to know Gerardo del Valle

SFFILM has announced the winner of its New American Fellowship, a program started in 2017 to support international artists who have made the United States their home and want to tell their stories through film. The first of its kind in the US film industry, the New American Fellowship is made possible thanks to SFFILM’s collaboration with the Flora Family Foundation, and provides a $25,000 cash grant and a FilmHouse artist residency in San Francisco to an independent director or producer who has recently moved to the United States. Designed to amplify the voices of international filmmakers and to champion their work in the US, the New American Fellowship seeks to support films by new American artists, ultimately providing meaningful and challenging experiences to public audiences. Previous recipients of the New American Fellowship include Kirsten Tan, Siyi Chen, and Carlo Velayo.

The 2021 New American Fellow is Gerardo del Valle, a video producer from Guatemala currently based in New York City. He is currently in the early production stages for his project The Past is Waiting Up Ahead, about a poet who revisits his past in attempt to understand how his journey across the US-Mexico border shaped his life.

“I am beyond thrilled and honored to have been chosen for the 2021 SFFILM New American Fellowship. Emigrating is a challenging experience filled with uncertainty, discovery, and growth facing the great unknown. Receiving support at this early stage of production for “The Past is Waiting Up Ahead”, my first feature film, is an invaluable opportunity that I look forward to taking full advantage, and a reminder of the importance of transnational voices and stories.”

Gerardo studied Communications and Media at Universidad Rafael Landivar in Guatemala and has a Master’s degree in Journalism from the City University of New York. He was a New Media Narrative Director Fellow at the International Center for Photography (2020) a UnionDocs’ Summer Documentary Lab Fellow (2020) and is an IDA Enterprise Development and a Sundance Institute’s Documentary Film Program grantee.

Starting his career working as a video journalist in Plaza Pública, the first online newspaper in Guatemala, he’s gone on to work on long-form documentaries and web-based projects. He has collaborated with Vice, Univision, the BBC, Agencia Efe, and NBC’s Left Field. His work has been recognized by the Inter-American Press Association (2014) the Fundación Gabo (2019) and the National Press Photographers of America (2019).

Congratulations to Gerardo!

For more information, visit sffilm.org/makers.

Meet the 2022 SFFILM FilmHouse Residents

We are thrilled to to welcome a new group of Bay Area–based storytellers to take up residence at FilmHouse, SFFILM’s dynamic shared…

Meet the 2022 SFFILM FilmHouse Residents

We are thrilled to to welcome a new group of Bay Area–based storytellers to take up residence at FilmHouse, SFFILM’s dynamic shared workspace for independent filmmakers. FilmHouse residencies, made possible by the Kenneth Rainin Foundation with additional funding from the San Francisco Film Commission and the San Francisco Foundation, supports both narrative and documentary projects (including features, shorts, and series) by providing 12-month residencies to filmmakers actively engaged in various stages of production.

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the FilmHouse residency moved to a virtual workspace in 2020. For 2022, we have opened the doors of the FilmHouse once again, following all SF Public Health COVID guidelines, to support the filmmakers throughout their residency period. FilmHouse is the only year-round artist residency program of its kind. FilmHouse residents will be provided special access to established industry professionals offering artistic guidance and support from their various areas of expertise. Other resident benefits will include a robust guest speaker series, featuring lectures and presentations by leading industry professionals; workshops led by prominent filmmakers and other members of the independent film industry; peer-to-peer support; work-in-progress screenings; bi-weekly production meetings; access to meaningful networking opportunities; and numerous other community-building programs.

The selection committee for the 2022 FilmHouse Residents were:

Masashi Niwano, SFFILM Director of Artist Development
Joshua Moore, SFFILM Artist Development Manager of Documentary Projects
Rosa Morales, SFFILM Artist Development Associate Manager of Narrative Projects
Sabrina Sellers, SFFILM Artist Development Coordinator
Manijeh Fata, Acting Executive Director of Film SF
Maria Victoria Ponce, Writer/ Director and Former FilmHouse Resident
Tom E. Brown, writer/ director/ producer Creative Advisor

“We are excited by the diversity of identities represented in this group and noted that what these unique filmmakers have in common are their innovative and urgent stories that ponder where we are going and consider where we have been. We are honored to provide support and guidance to these promising local filmmakers as they craft their stories and we look forward to helping share their work with the world.” — 2022 FilmHouse Residents Selection Committee

Now let’s meet the residents that will be taking their projects to the next stage — whether it be screenwriting or post-production — at FilmHouse in 2022!

Patricia Lee

Hannah’s Family — Narrative Short

Hannah’s Family is a series of vignettes about the plurality of the Asian American experience within the bounds of one family. Although they live under one roof, each family member goes out to experience the world in ways completely unique to themselves.

Jessica Zitter & Cheo Tyehimba Taylor

The Chaplain of Oakland — Documentary Feature

Frustrated by watching Black patients needlessly suffer in hospitals due to end-of-life healthcare inequities, a crusading hospital chaplain works to transform an unfair healthcare system, one patient at a time.

Inês Pedrosa e Melo

The dark knot at the center (working title) — Documentary Short

In this unusual road movie set against American landscapes, an anonymous collective of women narrates their personal experiences with traveling long distances to access abortion care. Their voices reshape the road and the vast scenery around it, shedding light on realities of womanhood, sexuality and health care access in contemporary America.

Debra Schaffner

Curse of the Mutant Heirloom — Documentary Feature

What happens when WWII trauma and a genetic mutation collide in the suburbs of New Jersey? That’s what filmmaker Debra Schaffner is trying to figure out as she attempts to connect with her estranged mother who is battling ovarian cancer.

LaTajh Weaver & Hillary Pierce

Queerling Series — Narrative Episodic

After taking a cushy tech job to make ends meet, 25-year-old, Queer, Oakland native struggles to stay morally grounded while benefitting from the same luxuries that are destroying her community.

Chris Cole

Rolling Stone — Narrative Feature

A disaffected music journalist assumes the identity of a rising rap star.

Aurora Brachman

Still Waters — Documentary Short

A daughter asks her mother a question about her mother’s childhood. Her answer begs them to wade through its rippling effects throughout their lives.

Charlotte Gutierrez

John Juan — Narrative Feature
At 15, nerdy bookworm John Lopez is “too Mexican,” for his old private school and “too white” at his new public high school. When John meets Sandra, a militant LatinX activist, he struggles to impress her, and so reinvents himself as “Juan, Super woke Latino.”

Jon Ayon

Mestizx: Aquí y Allá — Documentary Feature

Searching for ways to protect his daughter from the intergenerational trauma of immigration, a first-generation Latinx father travels along the U.S./Mexico border to record Indigenous and immigrant perspectives and chart a world where borders are inconsequential.

Kevin Wong & KarYin Tham

Home Is A Hotel—Documentary Feature

A composite portrait of housing inequality and community resilience, Home Is A Hotel exposes the human cost of housing insecurity through the eyes of 5 diverse San Francisco residents living in SROs.

Adrian Burrell

Cousins — Narrative Feature

Follow the lives of three kids coming of age in the ghettos of Oakland, CA as they are sent on a wild adventure after one of their cousins escapes house arrest (think “Boyz N Da Hood” mixed with “Stand By Me”).

Sanford Jenkins

Joy and Pain — Narrative Feature

An exploration of two families, through a young couple burying a parent and bearing their first child.

Morgan Mathews

Untitled Feature — Narrative Feature

When his estranged father moves back to town with a new family during summer break, a teenage boy is forced to reconcile with his complicated reality.

Lucas Guilkey

Untitled Prison Hunger Strike Film — Documentary Feature

A documentary film about the rise and fall of long-term solitary confinement in California prisons.

Natalya Samee

Doha Girls — Narrative Episodic

Three teen girls navigate the revelations and confusions of high school life amidst the ultra-conservativeness of the oil-rich monarchy of Qatar.

Shao Min Chew Chia

The Plutonians — Narrative Feature

When the official definition of the word “planet” puts Pluto under threat of expulsion, ninth planet expert Alvin Gibbs swoops into a sleepy international astronomy conference to save it. Bullying his peers with increasingly desperate ploys, Alvin fails to win this debate but rediscovers why Pluto matters to him in the first place.

Tsanavi Spoonhunter

Holder of the Sky — Documentary Feature

Holder of the Sky is a story of colonization’s continuum in modern-day America, documenting one tribe’s pursuit to reclaim historic treaty territory in Wisconsin, in the face of longstanding racism and lingering land lust.

Wei Keong Tan

Skin Coat — Narrative Animated Feature

A son forces his male lover to wear a woman’s skin coat in order to enter his home village to see his aging parents. After the death of his father, the short visit turns painfully unbearable for the trio who have to make sacrifices to protect the ones they love.

For more information about SFFILM’s artist development programs, visit sffilm.org/makers.

Meet the Finalists of the 2021 SFFILM Documentary Film Fund Grant

The SFFILM Makers team has selected 13 outstanding non-fiction projects to as finalists for this year’s Documentary Film Fund (DFF) grants…

Meet the Finalists of the 2021 SFFILM Documentary Film Fund Grant

The SFFILM Makers team has selected 13 outstanding non-fiction projects to as finalists for this year’s Documentary Film Fund (DFF) grants, which support feature-length docs in the post-production phase. A total of $60,000 will be distributed to the winning projects in this cycle, which will be announced in early December. The Documentary Film Fund next opens for applications in spring 2022.

Find out more about this and other filmmaking grant opportunities at sffilm.org/makers.

The SFFILM Documentary Film Fund supports engaging documentaries in post-production which exhibit compelling stories, intriguing characters, and an original, innovative visual approach.

The SFFILM Documentary Film Fund has an excellent track record for advancing compelling films that go on to critical acclaim. Previous DFF winners include Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh’s Writing With Fire, winner of Audience and Special Jury Prizes at 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; Liza Mandelup’s Jawline, which won a Special Jury Award at Sundance 2019 and is currently streaming on Hulu; Hassan Fazili’s Midnight Traveler, which won a Special Jury Award at Sundance 2019 and the McBaine Documentary Feature Award at the 2019 SFFILM Festival; Luke Lorentzen’s Midnight Family, which premiered at Sundance 2019 and won dozens of awards including a Creative Recognition Award for Best Editing from the International Documentary Association; Assia Boundaoui’s The Feeling of Being Watched, which has won audience awards at several film festivals and was broadcast nationwide on POV; Alyssa Fedele and Zachary Fink’s The Rescue List, which had its world premiere at the 2018 SFFILM Festival and was broadcast nationwide on POV; and Zachary Heinzerling’s Cutie and the Boxer, which won Sundance’s Directing Award for documentary and was nominated for the 2014 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

Since its launch in 2011, the SFFILM Documentary Film Fund has distributed nearly $1 million to advance new work by filmmakers nationwide. The 2021 Documentary Film Fund is supported by the Jenerosity Foundation.

Adams’s Apple
Amy Jenkins, director/producer

Adam’s Apple is an intimate exploration of what characterizes “maleness” for today’s gender-redefining youth, filmed from the perspectives of director Amy Jenkins and her teenage transgender son, Adam, each with a camera in hand. Vérité and artistic imagery chronicle the evolution of Adam’s identity beginning at toddlerhood, unveiling the ever-shifting family dynamic as Adam charts his path toward manhood.

Against the Tide
Sarvnik Kaur, director/producer; Koval Bhatia, producer

A tale of love, brotherhood and resentments against the backdrop of an adoring sea, which is turning adverse under the menacing effects of an all-pervading calamity called climate change.

Between the Rains
Andrew Harrison Brown, director/cinematographer, editor; Moses Thuranira, Samuel Ekomol, Ngaihike Napuu, producers

As a prolonged drought intensifies the conflict between two pastoral tribes over grazing lands in Kenya’s northern rangelands, an orphaned shepherd boy searches for a path forward while his village questions why the world around them is eroding.

Black Mothers
Débora Souza Silva, director/producer; David Felix Sutcliffe, producer

Violence. Outrage. Impunity. Repeat. Black Mothers follows the journey of two African-American women battling to break America’s cycle of racist police violence. As one mother investigates the cover-up of her son’s attack by Alabama police, the other channels her grief into organizing mothers across the country as they fight for justice.

Driver
Nesa Azimi, director/producer; Ines Hofmann Kanna, producer

Driver follows three years in the life of long-haul truck driver Desiree Wood. Taking on an industry where multi-billion dollar megacarriers conspire to make individual drivers anonymous and disposable, Desiree brings together an unlikely group of women to find strength, solidarity, and self-determination on the road — all while she fights to sustain herself as a long-haul truck driver.

Hakuchu Munayta
Augusto Zegarra, director; Claudia Chavez, Paloma Iturriaga, producers

A young indigenous man is trying to save a language from extinction. Fernando is an independent voice artist from Cusco, Peru who dreams of dubbing the animated classic The Lion King to Quechua, the language of the Incas. This epic endeavor of contacting Disney will make him re-examine his own identity, his role as a father, and test his commitment to his native language and culture.

Home Is Somewhere Else
Carlos Hagerman, co-director/producer; Jorge Villalobos, co-director; Carolina Coppel, Albie Hecht, Andrew Houchens, Susan MacLaury, Martha Sosa, executive producers

Accessing the American Dream is still not possible for all, much less those who come from immigrant backgrounds. For undocumented youth, their hopes for the future coexist with permanent fear of possible deportation. A fully animated 2D feature documentary, Home Is Somewhere Else is a window inside the hearts and minds of young Dreamers and the undocumented, amplifying and giving intimate voice to a growing community, still widely unrepresented and underserved.

Hummingbirds
Silvia Castaños, Estefanía Contreras, Diane Ng, co-directors; Miguel Drake-McLaughlin, Ana Rodriguez-Falco, Jillian Schlesinger, producers/co-directors, Leslie Benavides, producer

Jose and Derek
Keira Sultan, director; Arielle Knight, producer

An exploration of community, memory, and image making, Jose and Derek interweaves 25 years of footage to tell the intergenerational story of a Philadelphia boxing gym and the mother-daughter pair behind the camera. Through the process of revisiting her mother’s unfinished film, director Keira Sultan is confronted with questions around image-making and authorship that alter the course of the film and catalyze reflections around her role as a director and outsider.

Mija
Isabel Castro, director/producer; Tabs Breese, Yesenia Tlahuel, producers

Doris Muñoz is an ambitious music manager whose undocumented family depends on her ability to discover aspiring pop stars. At just 26, she has already launched multiple Chicanx musicians, carving out space for her culture within a turbulent industry. Mija dives into the world of a young woman hustling harder than anyone else, because for Doris and her family, “making it” isn’t just a dream — it’s a necessity.

Time Bomb Y2K
Brian Becker, co-director/producer; Marley McDonald, co-director/editor; Penny Lane, Gabriel Sedgwick, producers

As the clock counts down to the dawn of the new millennium, the world mobilizes to face the largest technological disaster to ever threaten humanity. Told entirely through archival footage, Time Bomb Y2K decodes the truths and myths of the Millennium Bug in an electrifying race against time and technology.

Untitled
Sura Mallouh, director/producer; Laura Poitras, Yoni Golijov, producers

Two friends uncover a conflict that divides their already embattled community. Told from all sides, with unprecedented access to courtrooms, anonymous sources and community leaders, this observational film unfolds in real-time.

Weed Dreams
Mathew Ramirez Warren, director/producer; Barni Axmed Qaasim, producer

Black-owned businesses in Oakland, California try to break into the predominantly white legal Cannabis industry, through the nation’s first ever Cannabis Equity Program.

Meet the winners of the 2021 SFFILM Sloan Stories of Science Development Fund

Two screenwriters, Christopher Au and Jonathan Sethna, have been selected to receive funding through SFFILM’s Sloan Stories of Science…

Meet the winners of the 2021 SFFILM Sloan Stories of Science Development Fund

L to R: Christopher Au, writer; Jonathan Sethna, writer

Two screenwriters, Christopher Au and Jonathan Sethna, have been selected to receive funding through SFFILM’s Sloan Stories of Science Development Fund, which is part of a suite of screenwriting programs that cultivate narrative feature films exploring scientific or technological themes and characters. This artist support program was developed in partnership with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the nonprofit dedicated to bridging the cultures of science and the humanities, and focuses on the adaptation of important scientific and technological discoveries to the big screen.

The Sloan Stories of Science Development Fund supports the screen adaptation of specific scientific articles and discoveries, catalogued in the Sloan Stories of Science Sourcebook as inspiration for filmmakers. These winners each receive a $10,000 cash grant and access to a two-day filmmaker retreat designed to provide guidance and mentorship from scientists, science and tech journalists, and film industry professionals to help them shape their storytelling vision; and from producers and legal advisors to help navigate adapting true stories to the screen.

Christopher Au, writer

Project

Airborne
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, a scrappy group of university research scientists take on skeptics, conservative politics, and the World Health Organization to uncover a startling truth about the nature of coronavirus transmission.

Biography

Christopher Au wrote, directed and produced the comedy series Bulge Bracket on Amazon Prime, which was featured on the front page of Bloomberg and Yahoo Finance, and was selected for the Gotham Week Project Market (formerly IFP) and SeriesFest, among others. His feature film producing credits include the neo-noir mystery Drive All Night, which debuted at Cinequest in 2021. As a commercial producer and director, Au won an Emmy for his work with Fox Sports Net. He was previously Head of Business Development for the iBrands group at AOL (now Verizon Media), overseeing strategic partnerships for its portfolio of media brands including TechCrunch, Engadget, Autoblog, Moviefone, MAKERS and others. He serves on the Board of Directors at the Center for Asian American Media, and holds film and business degrees from Yale and NYU respectively.

Jonathan Sethna, writer

Project

Fishes & Phages
When an antibiotic resistant Vibrio Bacteria outbreak threatens to wipe out local fish and oyster farms, the conservative fisherfolk of Greenport are forced to call in Dr. Manning Cesario, a flamboyant bacteriophage expert from the Philippines, for help. Culture clashes and science skepticism are tackled head on as Manning and his local liaison Jaxi, the town pariah, deal with more than just the marine contagion.

Biography

Jonathan Sethna writes contemporary narratives about the promise and peril of cutting-edge technologies and radical ideas. He lives in New York, but is proudly inspired, informed, and guided by the values and spirit of the Bay Area and the Jedi Order.