SFFILM News

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 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 Finalists

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

 
Shared with permission. Story by Mark Taylor, SFCM. Originally posted on October 16, 2024.

Picture a world where a students’ musical dreams reach the magic of the silver screen faster than ever before. That’s becoming a reality as the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) and SFFILM join forces for a groundbreaking collaboration.

For student Theo Popov (‘25) it’s a long-time wish come true. “Young composers rarely get a shot to work on movies that reach such a wide audience, so it feels like SFCM is propelling us forward in our careers before we’ve even graduated!” Popov said.

Popov is one of 15 Technology and Applied Composition (TAC) students at SFCM who will spend the next year collaborating with SFFILM-supported directors to to provide original score, sound design, and sound mix for films that will be presented during the annual San Francisco International Film Festival in April 2025.

“This new partnership gives our composers, sound designers, and producers real-world experience as they work alongside amazingly talented filmmakers,” said Executive Director of the TAC program Steven Horowitz. “Directors will have a chance to polish and complete their soundtracks in our state-of-the-art studios alongside our young composers. Perhaps best of all, these projects will become part of the 68th San Francisco International Film Festival.”

SFFILM is northern California’s premiere film organization. Since 1957, SFFILM has produced the longest-running film festival in the Americas, and has grown to provide a comprehensive artist development program for new generations of filmmakers through grants, fellowships, and residencies.

“This new collaboration allows us to shine a spotlight on the process of music and sound design, focus on cross-discipline collaborations, and celebrate the cinematic form in a unique way,” said Anne Lai, SFFILM’s Executive Director. “Our desire to provide access, resources, and expertise to ensure that independent voices in film can thrive through all stages—from development to being seen—is what drives our mission forward. We’re delighted to launch this new partnership with SFCM.”

Masashi Niwano, the Director of SFFILM’s Artist Development program concurs, “The SFFILM Sound and Cinema Fellowship exemplifies our mission by uniting our SFFILM supported filmmakers with SFCM’s Technology and Applied Composition (TAC) students to create original, independent work, and to have the opportunity to be showcased at our Festival.”

Over the school year, as part of their course curriculum, TAC students will essentially become a given film’s music and sound department, working with directors on four different short films. Directors and their films come from SFFILM’s FilmHouse Residency program, which provides San Francisco Bay Area-based filmmakers with artistic guidance and support from established film industry professionals.

The San Francisco International Film Festival produced by SFFILM is renowned for bringing voices and stories from around the world to audiences in the San Francisco Bay. In addition to exhibiting completed films, SFFILM provides support to all stages of filmmakers’ careers and creates opportunities for growth around every stage of filmmaking from development to post production.

For the students involved, they can’t wait to get started. “I’ve never worked on a project this big before, and it’s really exciting,” said student Rafe Axne (‘26). “Getting exposed to some of the work we’ll be doing in the future as composers and sound designers this early on is invaluable experience. I’m excited to get to know the producers and directors and work with them to make their film come to life,” he added.

“This project also does something else that is very important,” Horowitz added of this unique partnership. “It brings together two vital SF artistic communities that will help to raise the bar and foster a more vibrant and cohesive climate for all Bay Area artists. I really think this kind of collaboration between organizations is a big win-win for the entire SF creative arts scene.”

At the conclusion of the program, the films will be presented, with directors and composers in attendance, in a screening on campus as part of the SFFILM Festival in April 2025.

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.

Learn more about Technology and Applied Composition at SFCM.

This story is written by Mark Taylor and was first published on the blog of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.