Meet the finalists for the Spring 2020 SFFILM Rainin Grants

It’s June, which means SFFILM’s spring season of filmmaker grant reviews is coming to a close. This week, SFFILM and the Kenneth Rainin Foundation are announcing the finalists for the Spring 2020 SFFILM Rainin Grant, the flagship artist development program offered by SFFILM Makers. Twelve filmmaking teams have been shortlisted as contenders to receive funding for their narrative projects in various stages of production, from screenwriting to post-production.

SFFILM Rainin Grant program is the largest granting body for independent narrative feature films in the US, and 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 twice a year, in the spring and fall, for screenwriting, development, and post-production. In addition to a cash grant of up to $50,000, recipients are offered a two-month residency at FilmHouse and benefit from SFFILM’s comprehensive and dynamic artist development programs.

The program is open to filmmakers from anywhere in the world who can commit to spending time developing the film in San Francisco. The Fall 2020 grant cycle is currently accepting applications; the deadline to apply is July 2. Learn more at sffilm.org/makers.

SPRING 2020 SFFILM RAININ GRANT FINALISTS

Catch the Fair One
Josef Kubota Wladyka, writer/director; Kimberly Parker and Mollye Asher, producers — post-production
In Catch the Fair One, a boxer plans her own abduction in order to find her missing sister.
 
Coyote Boys
Haley Anderson, writer/director/producer — development
Coyote Boys is a contemporary odyssey through fringe communities, centered on rootless train-hopping youth experiencing loss and loneliness, who are trying to find alternative ways of surviving 21st century America.

Estrada para Livramento (Road to Livramento)
Giuliana Monteiro, writer/director/producer; Beatriz Monteiro, co-writer — screenwriting
Two estranged brothers are forced together when their family home is destroyed by corporate greed. The stringent rules for financial compensation require them to embark on a long journey through the south of Brazil in search of their younger brother.

The Hole in the Fence
Joaquin del Paso, writer/director; Lucy Pawlak, writer; Fernanda de La Peza, producer — post-production
The first-year students of an elitist religious school attend a “faith and integration” camp outside the city. The tranquility is soon dissolved when a hole is discovered in the fence that walls the place, originating a chain of mysterious incidents that will reveal the school’s teaching methods.

If We Left
Moon Molson, writer/director; Andrew Burrows-Trotman, writer; Miles Maker, producer — screenwriting
A cook and a janitor stayed without pay to care for abandoned senior residents when their assisted living home was shut down in Castro Valley, CA. Their selfless act of friendship and heroism became the feel-good story of 2013 and led to the Residential Care for the Elderly Reform Act.

Karaoke King
Federica Gianni, writer/director; Lara Costa-Calzado and Tatiana Bears, producers — screenwriting
In the aftermath of an earthquake that destroys their village, a gay teenager and his ultraconservative brother are sent to live in the margins of Rome. Alone and in a big city, the brothers are forced to confront the different men they are becoming as they search to find love and work, and breathe new life in the crumbling infrastructures around them.

Madame Négritude
Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich, writer/director; Christine Sanders, producer — screenwriting
Madame Négritude is a technicolor adventure through the brilliant and mercurial mind of Martiniquan writer and political heroine Suzanne Césaire.
 
My Love Affair with Marriage
Signe Baumane, writer/director/producer/animator; Sturgis Warner and Roberts Vinovskis, producers — post-production
Starving for love and acceptance, Zelma feels incomplete. Hounded by three singing mythological sirens, she sets out on a 23-year quest for perfect love and lasting marriage. She is unaware, however, that her own biology is a powerful force to be reckoned with. 
 
On the Mat
Daniel Antebi, writer/director; Alexandra Byer, Madeleine Askwith, and Michael Gottwald, producers — development
Ilan, 16 and queer, must untangle himself from a secret relationship with his martial arts coach.
 
Philax
Ruken Tekes, writer/director/producer; Balam Bingul and Gabriele Oricchio, producers — screenwriting
Following a donkey as she changes various owners among the last Greek inhabitants of an island in Turkey, Philax depicts the flow of life in four seasons filled by feasts, resistance, fear, and hope.
 
Rolling Stone
Christopher Cole, writer/director — screenwriting
Doug is a disaffected music journalist who has ambitions of being an influential writer. Butcher is an egocentric superstar rapper. They look exactly alike. After Doug interviews Butcher, he haphazardly agrees to play his double in a music video. When one gig as Butcher turns into too many, Doug struggles to find his own voice while reckoning his relationship with the public, substances, and a budding romance with his new editor Ana.
 
SexGarage
Pier-Philippe Chevigny, writer/director; Geneviève Gosselin-G. and Galilé Marion-Gauvin, producers — screenwriting
July 1990. An LGBTQ+ party in Old Montreal. A brutal police raid. The next morning, survivors heal their wounds and unite, determined to expose the city police’s rampant homophobia. Shot in eight immersive long takes, SexGarage is a tense social drama inspired by real-life events often referred to as the “Montreal Stonewall.”

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