Past SFFS / KRF Filmmaking Grant Winners: Short Term 12, Fruitvale Station, Beasts of the Southern Wild
Nine films have been selected to receive Fall 2013 funding in the latest round of San Francisco Film Society (SFFS) / Kenneth Rainin Foundation (KRF) Filmmaking Grants. The SFFS / KRF Filmmaking Grants are awarded twice annually to filmmakers for narrative feature films that will have significant economic or professional impact on the San Francisco Bay Area filmmaking community. Previous grant winners include SHORT TERM 12, Destin Cretton’s sophomore feature which won both the Narrative Grand Jury Award and Audience Award at South by Southwest 2013; Ryan Coogler’s debut feature FRUITVALE STATION, which won both the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award in the narrative category at Sundance 2013 and is an Oscar hopeful in multiple categories; and BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD, Benh Zeitlin’s debut phenomenon which won Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize and Cannes’ Camera d’Or in 2012 and earned four Academy Award nominations (including Best Picture).
SFFS / KRF FILMMAKING GRANT WINNERS
DOCTOR — Musa Syeed, director/producer/writer; Nicholas Bruckman, coproducer
$35,000 for screenwriting
Salim, a disgraced young doctor from India, will do anything to rebuild his former life. But when he starts practicing medicine illegally in New York, he’s drawn into a medical underworld where he risks losing everything.
ESCAPE FROM MORGANTOWN — Peter Nicks, writer/director
$25,000 for screenwriting
A young addict arrives at a federal prison camp with a plan to turn his life around, but is drawn into the intoxicating world of a crew of seasoned inmates.
THE FIXER– Ian Olds, writer/director; Caroline von Kuhn, producer
$25,000 for packaging
An Afghan journalist is exiled from his war-torn country to a small bohemian community in Northern California. When he attempts to turn his menial job on the local police blotter into “Afghan-style” coverage of local crime he gets drawn into the backwoods of this small town — a shadow Northern California where sex is casual, true friendship is hard to come by, and an unfamiliar form of violence burbles up all around him.
HELLION — Kat Candler, writer/director; Jonathan Duffy and Kelly Williams, producers
$70,000 for postproduction
When his delinquent behavior forces his little brother to be taken away, a motocross-obsessed teenager and his emotionally absent father must take responsibility for their destructive behavior to bring him home.
LITTLE ACCIDENTS — Sara Colangelo writer/director; Jason Michael Berman, Anne Carey, Thomas B. Fore and Summer Shelton, producers
$50,000 for postproduction
In a small American coal town, the disappearance of a boy draws a young miner, the lonely wife of a mine executive and a local 14-year-old together in a web of secrets.
LOS VALIENTES / THE BRAVE ONES — Aurora Guerrero, writer/director; Chad Burris, producer
$25,000 for packaging
Felix Lopez is gay, undocumented and living in San Francisco until his family obligations move him across the country to a small Pennsylvania mining town to join his undocumented sister. Once there, alienated by local and family politics, Felix finds unexpected solace in the company of one person: his sister’s husband.
LOVE IS STRANGE — Ira Sachs, writer/director; Lucas Joaquin, Jay Van Hoy and Lars Knudsen, producers
$70,000 for postproduction
A multi-generational story of love and marriage, Love is Strange depicts the delicate nature of any two people trying to build a long life together, and the possibility of love to grow deeper, and richer, with time.
LOVE LAND– Joshua Tate, writer/director/producer; Andrew Richey, producer
$35,000 for postproduction
Love Land follows Ivy, a young woman with a severe traumatic brain injury, as she faces her refusal to be identified as a person with an intellectual disability. When she is placed in an institution for being a danger to herself and others, Ivy will stop at nothing to prove to the world — and to herself — that she is “normal” enough to transcend the label of “special.”
MANOS SUCIAS — Josef Wladyka, writer/director; Elena Greenlee and Márcia Nunes, producers
$90,000 for postproduction
A desperate fisherman and a naive young man embark on a dangerous journey trafficking drugs up the Pacific coast of Colombia. Hidden beneath the waves, they tow a narco-torpedo filled with millions of dollars worth of cocaine. Together they must brave the war-torn region while navigating the growing tension between them.