Rooftop Films awarded fourteen cash and service grants to alumni filmmakers, including The Rooftop Filmmakers’ Fund Piper-Heidsieck Feature Film Grant, which was awarded to director Ana Lily Amirpour. Amirpour was feted at a Piper-Heidsieck champagne reception at the spectacular garden rooftop of John Jay College on Monday in New York City and will receive a monetary grant of $10,000 to help finish her new film, The Bad Batch, the follow up to her critically acclaimed feature film debut,  A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night.

Selected for its grand and bold style of storytelling, Amirpour’s film is a highly twisted, unusual, romantic, and innovative movie set in a future dystopia. In a desert wasteland in Texas, a muscled cannibal breaks one important rule: don’t play with your food. The Bad Batch is a savage love story, like a psychedelic Road Warrior, inspired by films like El Topo and Wild at Heart. Shot in bold saturated hues and stylings of the ’80’s & ’90’s the film will also feature a wicked techno & western-laced soundtrack.

“Piper-Heidsieck has a long history of supporting the cinema, and we’re delighted to continue this tradition by recognizing Ana Lily Amirpour as the first-ever recipient of the Piper-Heidsieck Feature Film Grant,” says Romain Pianet, Senior Brand Director for Piper-Heidsieck. “The grant was created to support grand and bold direction in cinema, and we have selected a filmmaker whose past work and upcoming film exemplifies this direction.  We are excited to be able to help bring this film to fruition.

COMPLETE LIST OF 2014 ROOFTOP FILMMAKERS FUND GRANTS:

Rooftop Films / Piper-Heidsieck Feature Film Grant:
Ana Lily Amirpour, The Bad Batch

In a desert wasteland in Texas, a muscled cannibal breaks one important rule: don’t play with your food. The Bad Batch is a savage love story and a psychedelic Road Warrior, inspired by films like El Topo and Wild at Heart, and shot in bold saturated hues and stylings of the 80’s & 90’s, with a wicked techno & western-laced soundtrack.

Rooftop Films / Technological Cinevideo Services Camera Grant:
Rachel Israel, Keep the Change

Based on Israel’s Columbia thesis short film, “Keep the Change” stars non-professional actors Brandon Polanksy and Samantha as two individuals with autism who fall in love. Polanksy stars as David, a man who tries to hide his high-functioning autism, but is nonetheless forced to attend a support group for people with disabilities. There he meets Elisofon’s character, a shy woman with autism.

Rooftop Films / Eastern Effects Equipment Grant:
Christina Choe, Nancy

Nancy, is a psychological drama about a 35-year old serial imposter who lives at home with her abusive, elderly mother. Desperate for love, she creates a fake blog and catfishes a lover, until her hoaxes cause epic and tragic consequences. NANCY will be Christina’s feature directorial debut.

Rooftop Films / Edgeworx Post-Production Grant:
Bernardo Britto, Jacqueline (Argentine)

Starring Camille Rutherford as a “25-year-old French Edward Snowden-type” who takes refuge in Argentina after leaking government secrets, Jacqueline (Argentine) is a live action feature film that will be shot from the perspective of a documentary crew she’s hired to trail her while awaiting the fallout.

Rooftop Films / DCTV Equipment and Services Feature Film Grant
Trey Shults, Krisha

Adapted from an award-winning short film of the same name, KRISHA tells the story of a multi-generational family that is gathering for Thanksgiving. Krisha has not seen her family for ten years, but when she decides to join her family for a holiday dinner, tensions escalate, and Krisha struggles to keep her demons at bay.

Rooftop Films / DCTV Equipment and Services Short Film Grant:
Frances Bodomo, Beatdown
Steven Girard, Floaters Dot Com

Frances Bodomo | Beatdown
Beatdown is a web series that follows a carefree black vigilante girl gang. Our protagonists skip school (“they’re not teaching our history anyways”) to loiter, chat, protect New York’s unprotected, and avenge the crimes that the NYPD won’t touch: from getting their hair petted to “columbusing” to gentrification. It begins as a series of vengeful (and comedic) wish fulfillments that grow bloodier and bloodier … until we start to question & complicate our discourse on brutality, power, female weakness, justice, etc. Beatdown asks the question: when the violence against us isn’t physical, how do we fight it? 

Steven Girard | Floaters Dot Com
“Floaters Dot Com” is a half animated, half live-action short film about two men who work for a company that “collects” human beings. Floaters employees beam targeted civilians with a hallucinatory impulse to login to floaters.com, where the victim is sucked into his/her computer and dragged through a slew of websites. After the victim’s deepest fantasies and worst nightmares come true, he/she is “ejected” from the computer’s drive as a Free Trial disk.

Rooftop Films / Domicile NYC Sound Mix Grant:
Jarred Alterman and Ryan Scafuro, American Renaissance

AMERICAN RENAISSANCE is a short documentary that takes place at the largest outdoor Renaissance Faire in America. Knights, wizards, goths, fairies and demons all stood in front of our static lens and slowly, stories began to unfold… A family who chose to raise their 13-year-old son on the road. A Parisian expat, performing as a mime. A young woman who left the “real world” behind after the death of a close friend.

Rooftop Films / Adrienne Shelly Foundation Short Film Grant For Women:
Debra Granik, Second Act

Second Act is a documentary about inmate re-entry. Once released, felons often find themselves held apart from mainstream society, particularly in regards to employment. To survive, many turn to various forms of entrepreneurship. This film follows a man recently released from prison who is attempting to build his own business. In pursuing his dream, the subject of our documentary must navigate the transition from one lifestyle to another, negotiate a new and unfamiliar world, and wrestle with the question of who he is and what he wants.

Rooftop Filmmakers’ Fund Short Film Grant:
Joanna Arnow, Bad at Dancing
Frances Bodomo, Beatdown
Reka Bucsi, LOVE
Steven Girard, Floaters Dot Com
Efren Hernandez, Ham Heads

Joanna Arnow | Bad at Dancing
Bad At Dancing. A perpetual third wheel and awkward outsider, Joanna increasingly inserts herself into the relationship of her more charismatic roommate Eleanore. The two women test each other’s sexual and emotional boundaries in this surreal dark comedy.

Reka Bucsi | LOVE
An animated short film about love that will show love in three chapters: Longing, Love and Solitude. Haiku-like scenes will show different characters evolving along these states of emotions. The goal is to capture feelings through pictures and surreal situations which are undescribable by words.

Efren Hernandez | Ham Heads
Barry and Larry are the world’s oldest living conjoined twins. After retiring from the sideshow circuit, they move into their brother’s house. Barry is sick and he’s getting worse, Larry not far behind him. As their sickness develops, they take trips to the beach; they waltz together; they fight about the volume on their separate television sets. They look out of their living room window at their old-lady neighbor who drinks too much beer. They play games with their teenage nephew and Larry verbally harasses the doctor who checks up on them. They get visits from old friends and spend every moment of every day together. Whether it is good or bad, it is their life together.

“A record number of entries were received this year and it was tougher than ever to select our winners from what was a stellar crop of films and scripts,” says Dan Nuxoll, programming director of Rooftop Films. “Each of the filmmakers that we awarded grants to this year have screened their impressive work at Rooftop Films events in the past and have demonstrated their talent, passion and perseverance throughout their careers. We are particularly excited to be supporting Ana Lily Amirpour’s latest work. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night screened this summer at Rooftop Films and that film showcases her extraordinary talent and unique flair for bringing unexpected, artful and innovative twists to a genre film. We are confident that The Bad Batch will be an exciting next step for one of the most promising new filmmakers working in independent cinema today. A special thanks to Piper-Heidsieck –and all of our other sponsors, community partners, and audience members– for their significant help and commitment in support of these new and talented films and filmmakers.”

Amirpour was selected to attend the Sundance Screenwriters Lab in 2014 for her script for The Bad Batch and the film is set to begin pre-production this fall and will begin shooting in the spring of 2015. Amirpour’s debut feature film, the Iranian Vampire Western A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, premiered in the NEXT section of the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, screened to a sold out crowd on the roof of Industry City as part of the Rooftop Films Summer Series, and was opening night selection of the New Directors/New Films series at the MoMA. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night will be released in theaters this autumn by Kino Lorber.

Amirpour joins the ranks of past Rooftop Filmmakers Fund grantees, an illustrious group that includes Gillian Robespierre with her indie hit Obvious Child, Lucy Walker with her Academy Award-nominated short documentary The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom, Jeremy Saulnier’s Blue Ruin, which premiered at Cannes Director’s Fortnight and garnered the FIPRESCI Critics’ award, Keith Miller’s critically acclaimed and Tribeca Film Festival award winning Five Star, and Benh Zeitlin’s Academy Award-nominated Beasts of the Southern Wild. Other Rooftop Filmmakers’ Fund grantees have achieved tremendous success at film festivals and their films have reached audiences worldwide.  

image: Romain Pianet, Senior Brand Director for Piper-Heidsieck, presents Ana Lily Amirpour with the inaugural Piper-Heidsieck Rooftop Films Feature Film Grant on the roof of John Jay College Monday night.