Industry

City of the Caesars (Chile), Cuando los Muertos Estan Mas Secos/When the Dead Are Drier (Bolivia), Elena (Brazil), The Shark’s Eye (Argentina), were announced as the award winners for the Tribeca Film Institute Latin America Media Arts Fund; and Las Marthas and Feriado (Holiday) the winners of the first-ever Heineken VOCES grant at a celebration over the weekend for Latin American filmmakers during the Tribeca Film Festival. The funds, totaling $60,000, support innovative Latin American film and video artists to help them explore stories reflecting diverse cultures and gain exposure in the film industry.

The TFI Latin America Media Arts Fund awards $10,000 grants to animation, documentary, or hybrid feature-length films in advanced development, production or post-production from filmmakers living and working in the Caribbean, Mexico, Central and South America. Grantees also receive exclusive guidance from TFI to ensure that each film reaches completion and enters the U.S. marketplace from the best possible vantage point.  The Fund is sponsored by Moviecity and CANACINE.

The following four films are winners of this year’s TFI Latin America Media Arts Fund:

City of the Caesars (Chile), Directed & Produced by Francisco Hervé, Edited by Andrea Chignoli — Two conspiracy theories. Two ordinary men. Wisdom, immortality and natural resources are at stake in a mythical place somewhere in Patagonia.

Cuando los Muertos Estan Mas Secos/When the Dead Are Drier (Bolivia), Directed & Produced by Claudio Araya Silva and Produced by Yara Morales Rivera — In the eighties, more than 50 women committed suicide in a small peasant community. Hermenegildo and Pedro return to their community, attempting to retrace the paths of memory regarding the deaths of their wives. The trip aims to unravel the mystery surrounding the life and death of these women.

Elena (Brazil), Directed & Produced by Ana Petra Costa – The film recounts the journey of Petra, a young Brazilian woman who dreams of becoming an actress but is warned not to do so by her mother. Against these admonitions, Petra moves to New York City where the reasons why she was advised against this path begin to unfold.

The Shark’s Eye (Argentina), Directed by Alejo Hoijman and Produced by Gema Juarez Allen — Summer is coming to Nicaragua and Maycol and Bryan will start to learn their families’ trade, shark hunting. In a place where traditional trades disappear in favor of drug trafficking, these two boys choose their future. A coming of age film set in the forgotten Caribbean coast of Nicaragua.

The winners of the first-ever Heineken VOCES grants include:

Heineken VOCES Award for Documentary
Las Marthas
A documentary about an extraordinary rite of passage in Laredo, Texas where Mexican-American debutantes are presented at a grand Colonial ball dressed as American revolutionaries – a border tradition that’s 114 years old.

Directed & Produced by Cristina Ibarra and Produced by Erin Ploss-Campoamor

Heineken VOCES Award for Narrative
Feriado (Holiday)

The sheltered life of Juan Pablo is turned upside down when he must spend the carnival holiday with his wealthy family at their hacienda in the Ecuadorian Andes and meets Juano, a self-assured black metal fan from the nearby pueblo.
Written & Directed by Diego Araujo

Produced by Hanne-Lovise Skartveit, Juan Sebastián Jácome & Andrés Longares
Executive Produced by Frida Torresblanco
Cinematography by Bradford Young

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Fifty-one entries from 29 countries, along with 518 entries from students representing 105 U.S. colleges and universities, are in competition for the 2012 Student Academy Awards. The competition – now in its 39th year – will culminate in the awards presentation, on Saturday, June 9, at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. The presentation will include screenings of the winning films.

The Academy established the Student Academy Awards in 1972 to support and encourage excellence in filmmaking at the collegiate level. Gold, Silver and Bronze Medal awards and corresponding cash prizes may be presented in each of five categories: Alternative, Animation, Documentary, Narrative and Foreign Student Film.

Past Student Academy Award® winners have gone on to receive 46 Oscar® nominations and have won or shared eight awards. At the 84th Academy Awards earlier this year, 2011 Student Academy Award winners Hallvar Witzø and Max Zähle were nominated in the Live Action Short Film category for “Tuba Atlantic” and “Raju,” respectively. James Spione, a Student Academy Award winner in 1987, earned a nomination in the Documentary Short Subject category for “Incident in New Baghdad.”

via press release AMPAS

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Three film projects, Unmanned, Computer Chess and Resonance, will receive financial and creative support from the TFI Sloan Filmmaker Fund, provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The film projects will be awarded a total of $150,000 and will be recognized at the annual Tribeca Film Festival, taking place April 18-29, 2012.

The projects, which all emphasize science and technology in their storylines, focus on subjects including a new style of war fought by remote control, tensions between human ingenuity and machines in the computer chess tournaments of the 1980s, and the impact of brain abnormalities on interpersonal relationships.

The winning projects were selected by an Award Committee made up of film and science notables including actor Ryan Phillippe (Flags of Our Fathers, The Lincoln Lawyer); actor Stephen Lang (Avatar, Public Enemies, Terra Nova); producer Michael Shamberg (Pulp Fiction, Erin Brockovich, Django Unchained); neuroscientist Joseph E. LeDoux; professor of astrophysical sciences J. Richard Gott (Princeton); and molecular endocrinologist Dr. Carter Bancroft.

Selected projects for funding:

Unmanned
A young Air Force drone operator struggles to balance the stresses of going to war for the first time with the challenges of being a good father and husband, as he commutes each day between suburban family life and a new style of war fought by remote control. The short version of this film received an earlier Sloan Foundation production grant and is premiering at this year’s Festival.   Casey Cooper Johnson (writer/director), Casey Fenton (producer), Peter W. Singer (story by), Sevdije Kastrati (cinematographer)

Computer Chess
This film focuses on a computer chess tournament in the 80’s, transporting viewers to a nostalgic moment when the battle of technology versus the human spirit seemed a little more up for grabs. Andrew Bujalski (writer/director), Houston King (producer), Alex Lipschultz (producer)

Resonance
Two damaged young men trying to reclaim their lives, push each other to the breaking point until they realize that only their friendship will save them.  Portraying the crossroads of neurology and psychiatry, the film examines how the brain’s functioning affects the way we interact, and how medical science treats brain abnormalities. Dara Bratt (director/writer), Keiran Dick (writer), Andrew Fierberg (producer), Robert Gerber (executive producer)

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Penny Stock by Grainger David of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts was selected as the “best-of-the-best” screenplay, and the recipient of the 2012 Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Student Grand Jury Prize for Screenwriting $50,000 grant from the Tribeca Film Institute (TFI).

Grainger David from Wadmalaw Island, South Carolina will receive a $30,000 cash prize, as well as an additional $20,000 to be used in direct support of the project.  The award includes year-round support from TFI, including mentorship and guidance from scientific and film industry professionals, networking opportunities, and industry exposure.

Penny Stock is a feature screenplay about a community college geology professor, who risks everything on a bold new theory in the race to discover an epic diamond pipe in the Northwest Territories. Becoming a mining prospector was never in the professor’s plans – or his family’s – but he feels that he is on the cusp of discovering something great, and he’s willing to risk everything to prove it.

Last year’s inaugural prize went to Robert Cohen of NYU for his work Bystander, which is based on the 1964 rape and murder of Kitty Genovese in Queens. Though the attack lasted over 30 minutes, none of the 37 witnesses called the police or intervened until she was already dead.  Four years later, a groundbreaking psychological study on the “Bystander Effect” explained the inaction of the witnesses. Though a fictional account of the attack’s aftermath, the scientific research and theories in the script are historically and psychologically accurate.  Since winning, Cohen has been paired with an industry mentor, producer Alexis Alexanian (Pieces of April, Tadpole), who has helped him with re-writes and feedback on option agreements he has received. TFI is also providing a social psychologist who will serve as a mentor to help Cohen maintain the authenticity of the science.

The Sloan Student Grand Jury Prize was created to recognize the very best student screenplay in the nation that uses science and technology themes or characters to tell an engaging story.

The award was presented at an evening reception in New York City on Thursday, April 5, 2012.

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It’s official. The members of American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and Screen Actors Guild have voted to approve a merger, creating a new entity, SAG-AFTRA. SAG members voted 82 percent in favor of the merger. AFTRA members favored the merger with 86 percent, exceeding the 60 percent threshold needed for both unions’ membership for passage.

The merger is effective immediately, and brings under a single union banner more than 150,000 actors, announcers, broadcasters journalists, dancers, DJs, news writers, news editors, program hosts, puppeteers, recording artists, singers, stunt performers, voiceover artists and other media professionals.

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Heather Cochran and Bill Kramer have been named to two newly created senior positions as part of the continuing progress of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, it was announced today by Dawn Hudson, CEO of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Cochran has been elevated to Managing Director, Academy Museum Project, and Kramer will serve as Managing Director, Development. Both will report directly to Hudson.

“With Heather and Bill in place, the Academy is poised to move the museum to the next phase and beyond,” said Hudson. “Each brings a wealth of experience that will be critical as the museum project continues to gather momentum.”

In her new position, Cochran, who has been involved with the project since its inception, will help manage and execute the overall vision for the museum, which will be built into the historic May Company building, currently known as LACMA West. Kramer will oversee the museum’s capital campaign and future fundraising efforts for the Academy.

Cochran joined the Academy staff in 2004 as Museum Project Administrator. In that capacity, she served as the Academy’s liaison with city officials and has been involved in master planning, strategic communications and other facets of the project. She also has shepherded the development of the Academy’s Hollywood properties, supervising the design and construction of its new outdoor amphitheater. Previously, she held the post of director of online development for Communications Development Incorporated, where she spearheaded digital initiatives for a number of foundations, nonprofits, and multilateral agencies, including the United Nations, the World Bank, National Geographic Society, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Kramer began his fundraising career in 1999 at the Sundance Institute. Most recently, he served as the chief advancement officer for the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), the independent architecture and design school located in downtown Los Angeles. At SCI-Arc, Kramer established the school’s first external affairs office, which included development, public relations and alumni outreach functions. He also developed multiyear fundraising partnerships with major foundations and individuals. Kramer has also served as director of development at Columbia University School of the Arts, as senior director of development for the VH1 Save The Music Foundation, and as executive director of development for the Campaign for Cal Arts, which raised $150 million for the school.

[via press release]

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[caption id="attachment_2604" align="alignnone" width="550"]William J. Saunders’ Billy Mize & the Bakersfield Sound [/caption]

Film Independent announced the filmmakers and projects selected for its second annual Documentary Lab. The Documentary Lab is an intensive seven-week program in Los Angeles, with the main focus of assisting documentary filmmakers on their works-in-progress and providing creative feedback.

This year’s Lab Mentors include filmmakers Laura Gabbert (No Impact Man), Doug Blush (The Invisible War), Sundance Film Festival Senior Programmer Caroline Libresco and producer Eddie Schmidt (This Film Is Not Yet Rated). Guest speakers include filmmakers Ava Duvernay (The Middle of Nowhere), Lucy Walker (Waste Land), Katherine Fairfax Wright (Call Me Kuchu) and Malika Zouhali-Worrall (Call Me Kuchu).

The 2012 Film Independent Documentary Lab filmmakers and their projects are:

1. American Revolutionary – A 96-year-old revolutionary philosopher in Detroit offers a voice of hope and a program of action for transforming her city, the United States and the world.

Grace Lee is a director/producer whose most recent feature film, American Zombie, premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival, screened at SXSW and Sitges Fantastic Film Festival and was released by Cinema Libre in 2008. Prior to that, she produced, wrote and directed The Grace Lee Project, a feature documentary that was called “ridiculously entertaining” by New York Magazine. The film opened theatrically in several cities, was broadcast on Sundance Channel and is distributed by Women Make Movies. Grace received her MFA in Directing from UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television where her thesis film Barrier Device won a Student Academy Award and Directors Guild of America award, screened in dozens of festivals, aired on Sundance Channel, and is distributed by Shorts International. She is the recipient of the Henry Hampton Award for Excellence in Digital Media, a Rockefeller Media Arts grant, the PPP Pusan Prize, as well as funding from the NEA, Center for Asian American Media, UCLA Institute for American Cultures and others. Other documentary credits include Best of the Wurst, which is permanently featured at the Currywurst Museum in Berlin and Camp Arirang. Grace is currently in post-production on the feature documentary American Revolutionary.

2. Billy Mize & the Bakersfield Sound – A performer on the brink of fame, Billy Mize’s story is a spectacular tale about identity and sacrifice in the music industry woven between acts of personal inspiration and horrible tragedy.

William J. Saunders is a director/producer and has written, directed, edited and produced features and documentaries for broadcast and cable networks such as HBO, FOX, ABC, CBS, ESPN, MTV, NFL Network and the BBC.  As a Director, William has received many awards, including an Emmy® Award for his documentary Big Charlie’s. He has enjoyed success in non-fiction, as well as fiction and animated filmmaking. His short film Dash Cunning, received the 20th Century Fox/Farrelly Brothers Award for outstanding achievement in comedy. William’s first feature film, Sweet Little Lies, won several awards on the festival circuit before being distributed by Film Works Entertainment in the spring of 2012.  He currently works for Mark Osborne on the animated feature adaptation of The Little Prince.  After obtaining a B.A. in cinema from Southern Methodist University, William received his Masters degree in Directing from Columbia University’s School of the Arts.

3.   Boone – Three goat farmers in Southern Oregon are transformed by the physical and emotional grit of living a life of self-reliance in Boone, an exploration of what is possible when personal beliefs are aligned with action.

Christopher LaMarca is the director/cinematographer of Boone and is a first time filmmaker and professional photojournalist. He published his first monograph, Forest Defenders: The Confrontational American Landscape, in 2008 with Powerhouse Books. His work has been shown at the International Center of Photography’s triennial exhibition and published in both Aperture and Art and Review. His awards include NPPA’s Best of Photography and PDN’s 30 emerging photographers. Editorial clients include Rolling Stone, GQ, Time, Newsweek, New York Magazine and London Sunday Times Magazine.

Katrina Taylor is the producer/assistant editor of Boone and is an award-winning documentary filmmaker based in Portland, Oregon. She was assistant editor for the Academy Award-winning The Empowerment Project, as well as the grassroots coordinator for distribution. As associate producer for the Discovery Channel Global Education Project, she created and customized educational programming for an international audience. Katrina most recently acted as Director of Acquisitions for Collective Eye, spearheading the acquisition of socially engaging documentaries, as well as marketing and digital delivery to the educational market. She contributed to the success of the company’s latest film Queen of the Sun, through assistance with educational distribution and strategy.

4.   Cocaine Prison – From inside Bolivia’s craziest prison, a cocaine worker, a drug mule and his little sister reveal the country’s relationship with cocaine.

Violeta Ayala is an award-winning filmmaker, accomplished writer and theatre actress. In 2006, Violeta and Dan Fallshaw established UNITEDNOTIONS FILM to create thought-provoking media. They started their work in North Africa on a short film about corruption in the oil industry. In 2009, their first feature documentary Stolen premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, screened at IDFA in competition and has been shown in more than 70 prestigious international festivals, winning 14 awards along the way. Violeta is currently working on her latest films, Cocaine Prison and The Bolivian Case. She is a Tribeca Film Institute Fellow, and is also writing a screenplay called El Comunista, based on her grandfather’s life, with the support of the Australian Film and Television Radio School. She gives master-classes at the National Film School in London and the Edinburgh College of Art. Accolades include Best Feature Doc at the 2010 Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles, Grand Prix at the 2010 Art of the Document Film Festival in Warsaw, Golden Oosikar Best Doc at the 2010 Anchorage International Film Festival, Best Film at the 2010 Festival Internacional de Cine de Cuenca in Ecuador and many, many more.

Daniel Fallshaw is the producer/director of photography for Cocaine Prison and is an award-winning producer with international experience. He produced, shot and edited the feature documentary Stolen, which has garnered much press worldwide and will be broadcast on public television in the US in 2012. Dan’s films have been selected to pitch at international forums from AIDC to Sheffield and IDFA. His projects have received funding from Screen Australia, Screen NSW, the Norwegian Film Institute, Tribeca Film Institute, IDFA’s Jan Vrijman Fund and Fond Sud.

5.   Dancing in Jaffa – Pierre Dulaine, an internationally renowned ballroom dancer, is fulfilling his lifelong dream of returning to his birthplace, Jaffa, to teach Palestinian and Israeli children to dance together. The film explores the stories of four children forced to confront issues of identity, segregation and racism as they dance with their enemies.

Hilla Medalia is a George Foster Peabody Award-winning director and producer, and has received 3 Emmy Award nominations and won the Paris Human Rights Film Festival Jury Award, Fipa Biarritz Jury Award, Golden Warsaw Phoenix Award, Faito Doc Grand Jury Award, and more. Hilla directed and produced the documentary After the Storm, a film about a group of New York Broadway actors who travel to New Orleans to offer the remedy of art and expression to thirteen kids in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The film aired on MTV/Logo, broadcast on Ch8 Israel, participated in film festivals around the world, including the Los Angeles Film Festival, and won the Audience Award at the Woodstock Film Festival and Crystal Heart Award at the Heartland Film Festival. Hilla directed and produced To Die in Jerusalem, a story about a Palestinian suicide bomber and her unlikely Israeli doppelganger, who died at only 17 years of age in a Jerusalem market. It was broadcast in the United States on HBO and has aired on television globally, including YES in Israel, RAI is Italy, M6 in France, NHK in Japan, and numerous others. Hilla was a senior producer on 39 Pounds of Love (2005-HBO and Cinemax film), which was a Winner of the Ofir Award (Israeli Oscar) and shortlisted for an Academy Award. Other titles include Happy You’re Alive (ch1 Israel), Caught In The Net (Impact Partners, Tribeca Gucci, Chicken & Egg, YES Israel), which is currently in production and Dancing In Jaffa. Hilla has a Master’s Degree in Film and Television from Southern Illinois University.

6.  Gore Vidal’s America – The film dramatizes Gore’s political and social views using recent interviews and historical footage and draws powerful conclusions on the fate and future of the nation through the eyes of one of its fiercest critics.

Nicholas Wrathall is an award-winning director first recognized for his documentary Abandoned: The Betrayal of America’s Immigrants, which won the 2000 Alfred I. Dupont Columbia Award for Broadcast Journalism. Nicholas also directed the documentary Haitian Eksperyans and produced and directed several short documentaries, including the story the New York Times picked up of modern-day gulags operating in Far East Russia. He has worked as a series producer on Surgery Saved My Life for the Discovery Network. For the past 10 years, he also produced television commercials and music videos for many high-level clients. Nicholas attended the Film Independent Producers Lab with this project at its inception.

7.   Journey Into Africa – An Atlanta charter school 8th-grade class travels to Ghana, Africa to explore and connect with their ancestral roots. Through seeing life outside of America, they discover a new world inside themselves.

Redelia Shaw is a director/producer and began working professionally in entertainment in 2000 while completing post-graduate work in Atlanta as a development and production executive for Point 7 Entertainment. She worked closely with the Production and Development Teams to scout talent, pitch ideas to networks, and develop content and was also responsible for supervising and coordinating the production of original programming in Los Angeles and Atlanta. Redelia relocated to Los Angeles in 2005, and has been working as Talent Coordinator for various specials and comedy programming and as a creative consultant for independent production companies. In 2008, Redelia was selected as a Film Independent Project Involve Fellow and the Directors Guild of America Training Program Trainee. Currently, Redelia is a DGA 2nd assistant director and works on commercial television and film projects. This year, she was awarded an Artist-in-Residence Fellowship to the Wexner Center of the Arts to complete post-production for Journey Into Africa.

8.   Now En Español – In a feature documentary that chronicles the ups and downs of being a Latina actress in Hollywood, Now En Español addresses issues of Latino identity and representation through the lives of the 5 dynamic women who dub Desperate Housewives into Spanish for American audiences.

Andrea Meller is a Los Angeles-based filmmaker, born and raised in New York after her parents emigrated from Santiago, Chile. She has produced and shot for programs on PBS, MTV, TLC, Food Network, WE and Style. She recently co-directed the Emmy-nominated Hard Road Home, a feature length documentary that follows three men as they return home from prison. Hard Road Home had its premiere at SXSW Film Festival and screened at the New York International Latino Film Festival. The film was broadcast nationally on Independent Lens/PBS in 2008. Her directorial debut, 156 Rivington, a one-hour documentary about a community center founded by squatters, was broadcast nationally on the Sundance Channel and has screened at film festivals and by community groups in the U.S. and abroad. Andrea has also collaborated with producer Aaron Woolf to co-produce and edit 9/12, a film that captured the grief and recovery processes of airline workers post-9/11. The one-hour piece was produced in cooperation with United and American Airlines, Boston Medical Center, and the Robin Hood Foundation. Her shorter documentary work has been screened at the Netherlands Architecture Biennale, Museum of the City of New York, Storefront for Art and Architecture, Artist Space, and Apex Art Gallery. She is a fellow of the PBS/CPB and NALIP Producers Academies and participated in the NALIP Latino Media Market with Now En Español.

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The deadlines to submit entries for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ 2012 Student Academy Awards competition are Friday, March 23, 2012 for the Foreign Student Film category and Monday, April 2, 2012 for all other categories).

The 39th Annual Student Academy Awards presentation will be held on Saturday, June 9, 2012, at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.

The Academy established the Student Academy Awards in 1972 to support and encourage excellence in filmmaking at the collegiate level. Past Student Academy Award® winners have gone on to receive 46 Oscar® nominations and have won or shared eight awards. At the 84th Academy Awards earlier this year, 2011 Student Academy Award winners Hallvar Witzø and Max Zähle were nominated in the Live Action Short Film category for “Tuba Atlantic” and “Raju,” respectively. James Spione, a Student Academy Award winner in 1987, earned a nomination in the Documentary Short Subject category for “Incident in New Baghdad.”

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The deadlines to submit entries for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ 27th annual Don and Gee Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting competition are: Thursday, March 15, 2012 (early bird); and Tuesday, May 1, 2012 (regular). An entry fee discount applies to scripts submitted by the early bird deadline.

The Nicholl competition is open to any individual who has not earned more than $5,000 from the sale or option of a screenplay or teleplay, or received a fellowship or prize of more than $5,000 that includes a “first look” clause, an option or any other quid pro quo involving the writer’s work. To enter, writers must submit a completed online application, upload one PDF copy of their original screenplay in English and pay the entry fee US$35 before 11:59 p.m. PT on March 15, or US$52 before 11:59 p.m. PT on May 1.

Entry scripts must be feature length and the original work of a sole author or of exactly two collaborative authors. The scripts must have been written originally in English. Adaptations and translated scripts are not eligible. The Academy presents up to five $35,000 fellowships each year.

Last year’s competition drew a record 6,730 entries. Since the program’s inception in 1985, 123 fellowships have been awarded. Among the recent achievements by Nicholl fellows: Destin Daniel Cretton wrote and directed “I Am Not a Hipster,” which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival; Andrew Marlowe created and executive produces and Terri Miller serves as a writer-producer on the ABC series “Castle”; Susannah Grant created and executive produces the CBS series “A Gifted Man”; and Jeffrey Eugenides’ third novel, The Marriage Plot, was a 2012 National Book Critics Circle award nominee.

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[caption id="attachment_2560" align="alignnone" width="550"]Anurag Kashyap, kalki Koechlin and Sudhir Mishra attend Mumbai Mantra | Sundance Institute Screenwriters Lab 2012.[/caption]

The inaugural Mumbai Mantra | Sundance Institute Screenwriters Lab 2012 has selected eight feature film projects of Indian screenwriters.

These Screenwriting Fellows will have the opportunity to work intensely on their feature film scripts with the support of Creative Advisors (established Screenwriters and Directors).

This year’s Screenwriting Fellows who will go through a five day workshop (March 11-16) at a Club Mahindra Resort are:

Charudutt Acharya (Sonali Cable Centre)
Shonali Bose & Nilesh Maniyar (Margarita, With a Straw)
Vikas Chandra (Toothache)
Rajnesh Domalpalli (Avani)
Prashant Nair (Umrica)
Anusha Rizvi & Mahmood Farooqui (Opium)
Ajitpal Singh (Manjhi)
Kartik Singh (Public School)

The group of Creative Advisors, include Guillermo Arriaga (Amores Perros, 21 Grams), Marcos Bernstein (Central Station, Foreign Land), Michael Goldenberg (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Contact), Asif Kapadia (The Warrior, Senna), Shekhar Kapur (Bandit Queen, Elizabeth), Kasi Lemmons (Talk to Me, Eve’s Bayou), Anjum Rajabali (Rajneeti, Aaraakshan), José Rivera (The Motorcycle Diaries, On the Road), Howard A. Rodman (Savage Grace, Joe Gould’s Secret), Malia Scotch-Marmo (Hook, Once Around), and Audrey Wells (Under the Tuscan Sun, Guinevere).

The Mumbai Mantra | Sundance Institute Screenwriters Lab is the first step in a three-year creative and strategic partnership that includes a robust plan to help Indian filmmakers connect to ever-increasing global audiences.

In addition to the annual Screenwriters Lab, the group has also instituted the Sundance Institute | Mahindra Global Film Making Award (GFA). The 2012 award winners were Etienne Kallos / Vrystaat (FREE STATE) (South Africa), Ariel Kleiman / Partisan (Australia), Dominga Sotomayor / Tarde Para Morir Joven (Late To Die Young) (Chile), and Shonali Bose / Margarita. With a Straw. (India).

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