Thirteen new independent feature projects from the U.S., Cuba, Kenya, Mexico, Morocco, and Palestine have been selected for the 2018 Sundance Institute Directors and Screenwriters Labs. At the Directors Lab (May 28-June 21), filmmakers will rehearse, shoot and edit key scenes from their scripts, working closely with industry advisors, actors, and production crews to help drive creative growth via an immersive and hands-on experience at the Sundance Resort in Utah. The Screenwriters Lab from June 23-28 fosters a similar environment of dynamic inspiration as participants focus on the art and craft of screenplay writing with one-on-one support from Institute advisors . Overseen by Feature Film Program Founding Director Michelle Satter and Labs Director Ilyse McKimmie, the Labs begin a year-round continuum of customized support for Fellows, which can include creative mentorship, granting, and guidance from industry professionals.
“We’re very excited to be supporting this remarkable group of storytellers whose work is defined by their bold and singular visions,” said Satter. “Using the art form of cinema to explore contemporary issues and our essential humanity, their films are deeply personal, powerful, and timely. We look forward to continuing our partnership with these artists as creative and strategic advocates throughout their filmmaking process.”
Advisors for the month include Robert Redford, Gyula Gazdag (Artistic Director for the Directors Lab), Miguel Arteta, John August, Ritesh Batra, Charlotte Bruus Christensen, Lisa Zeno Churgin, Sebastian Cordero, Joan Darling, Rodrigo Garcia, John Gatins, Lesli Linka Glatter, Keith Gordon, Randa Haines, Liz Hannah, Joe Hutshing, Azazel Jacobs, So Yong Kim, Ken Kwapis, Christine Lahti, Kasi Lemmons, David Lowery, Doug McGrath, Anthony Mackie, Walter Mosley, Dean Parisot, Rodrigo Prieto, Howard Rodman (Artistic Director for the Screenwriters Lab), Jennifer Salt, Susan Shilliday, Terilyn Shropshire, Peter Sollett, Dana Stevens, Robin Swicord, Joan Tewkesbury, Dylan Tichenor, John Toll, Audrey Wells, Tyger Williams, and Doug Wright.
Since 1981, the Feature Film Program has supported an extensive list of leading-edge independent filmmakers at Labs, including Ryan Coogler, Cary Fukunaga, Dee Rees, Benh Zeitlin, Haifaa Al Mansour, Damien Chazelle, Gina Prince-Bythewood, Marielle Heller, Paul Thomas Anderson, Miranda July and Quentin Tarantino, among many others. Lab-supported films that premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival to be released this year include American Animals, written and directed by Bart Layton, Monsters and Men, written and directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green, Nancy, written and directed by Christina Choe, Night Comes On, co-written by Angelica Nwandu and Jordana Spiro and directed by Jordana Spiro, Sorry to Bother You, written and directed by Boots Riley, and We the Animals, co-written by Daniel Kitrosser and Jeremiah Zagar and directed by Jeremiah Zagar.
Directors Lab projects
Doha –
The Rising Sun (U.S.A./Morocco) / Eimi Imanishi (writer/director): Disheartened by her deportation from Europe, Mariam is forced to return home to Western Sahara. Adrift in the very place that once was her home, she searches for the means to assert agency over her own life.
Eimi Imanishi is a Japanese American filmmaker who grew up in France. She directed two award-winning short films: Battalion to My Beat, which screened at the Toronto International Film Festival and won the Canal+ Award for Best International Short at Clermont-Ferrand in 2017, and One-Up, which won Best Narrative Short at Indie Memphis, was released online as a Vimeo Staff Pick film, and won Short of the Week. Imanishi was supported at the 2018 Sundance Institute Screenwriters Lab and the Film Independent Directors Lab of the same year.
Hawa Hawaii (Kenya) / Amirah Tajdin (writer/director): Hamedi, a Muslim drag queen, returns home to be with his dying mother. Back in Mombasa for the first time in decades, yet still facing his mother’s longstanding disapproval of his lifestyle, he decides that Taarab, the fading art of Swahili orchestral singing, may be the only way to mend their deeply fractured relationship.
Amirah Tajdin is a Kenyan artist and filmmaker of Afro Arab and Indian heritage. Her co-directed short, Marea de Tierra, premiered in Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival as part of the Chile Factory Residency. The film also screened at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival and went on to play at over 20 film festivals worldwide. Her short films Fluorescent Sin and His To Keep played various festivals, with Fluorescent Sin garnering Jury Special Mention awards at the Zanzibar International Film Festival and Film Africa London.
The Huntress (U.S.A./Mexico) / Suzanne Andrews Correa (writer/director): In Juarez, Mexico, where violence against women goes unnoticed and unpunished, an unlikely heroine emerges to seek justice.
Suzanne Andrews Correa is a Mexican American screenwriter and director and a recent MFA graduate of the Film Program at Columbia University. Her latest short, La Casa de Beatriz, premiered at the 2017 Morelia International Film Festival, received awards from the Princess Grace Foundation and Directors Guild of America, and can now be seen on HBO Latino/HBO GO/HBO NOW. Andrews Correa was supported at the 2018 Sundance Institute Screenwriters Lab, where she was the recipient of the Sundance Latinx Fellowship, and a winner of the Atlanta Film Festival feature screenplay competition.
Josephine (U.S.A.) / Beth de Araújo (writer/director): After accidentally witnessing a rape in Golden Gate Park, eight-year-old Josephine is plunged into a maelstrom of fear and paranoia. Surrounded by adults helpless to assuage her and unable to understand her, she acts out with increasing violence, searching for any way to regain control of her own safety.
Beth de Araújo is a writer and director recently featured in Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film. Her feature screenplay, Josephine, participated in the 2018 Sundance Screenwriters Lab and is a recipient of the SFFILM Rainin Filmmaking Grant. Josephine will mark her feature directorial debut. In 2017, Araújo directed 2 episodes of television for Lifetime Movie Network and was a shadowing director within the Ryan Murphy HALF Program. Her recent short film, I Want To Marry A Creative Jewish Girl, was shot through the AFI Directing Workshop for Women, based on her Gawker essay of the same name.
The Life and Death of Cassandro (U.S.A.) / Roger Ross Williams (co-writer/director) and David Teague (co-writer): Saúl Armendáriz, a gay lucha libre wrestler, creates a powerful and popular alter ego named Cassandro to help him fight in the ring and face his personal demons. When Cassandro begins to take control, this superhero story gets turned on its head as it looks like Saúl’s alter ego may become his downfall.
Roger Ross Williams is the first African American director to win an Academy Award for his short film Music By Prudence. Williams has directed a wide variety of acclaimed documentary films including God Loves Uganda, which was shortlisted for an Academy Award, and Life, Animated, which was nominated for an Academy Award in 2017. He is on the Board of Governors for the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences representing the Documentary branch and serves on the Diversity Committee. The Life and Death of Cassandro will mark his debut as a fiction feature director.
David Teague is a writer and documentary film editor. He has edited five Oscar-nominated documentaries, including one winner. His work includes Life, Animated, Cutie and the Boxer, The Departure, E-TEAM, Mondays at Racine, and Freeheld.
Shock Labor (Cuba) / Marcos Díaz Sosa (writer/director): Cuba, 1988. Wilma struggles to maintain a small farm in the Cuban countryside while caring for her disabled husband, but her fortunes change when she is discovered to be a talented skeet shooter who can represent her country. As Wilma rises to stardom, a tornado sweeps her away to a vast luxury resort. Though she finds herself lauded by her country’s ruling class, Wilma realizes that there is no place like home and knows she must find her way back to her farm.
Marcos Díaz Sosa is a Cuban film director and playwright. At the age of 17, he directed Fractal, a 60-minute documentary that won an award at the fifth Muestra Joven in Cuba. His short film Natural Phenomena premiered in competition at the Guadalajara Film Festival . He has worked with the State Theatre of Jena, Germany, and co-directed the play Bad Taste at the Offene Welt Internationales Festival, Ludwigshafen, Germany, in 2015.
Wild Indian (U.S.A.) / Lyle Mitchell Corbine, Jr. (writer/director): Two Anishinaabe men are inextricably bound together after covering up the savage murder of a schoolmate. After years of separation following wildly divergent paths, they must finally confront how their traumatic secret has irrevocably shaped their lives.
Lyle Mitchell Corbine, Jr. is a filmmaker whose most recent short film, Shinaab, played at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, 2017 Toronto International Film Festival, and 2017 AFI Fest. He was supported at the 2017 Sundance Institute Screenwriters Lab and has been a recipient of numerous grants and fellowships from Sundance Institute, Time Warner Foundation, and the Minnesota State Arts Board. Wild Indian represents his feature directorial debut.
Wolf in White Van (U.S.A.) / Andrew Bruntel (director), Ben Collins (co-writer), and Luke Piotrowski (co-writer): Isolated by a disfiguring injury since the age of 17, Sean Phillips is the sole creator of The Trace Italian, a turn based, fantasy role-playing game run entirely through the mail. When tragedy strikes two of his young players, Sean is forcoed to re-examine his self-inflicted departure from the world in which most people live. Based on the novel by John Darnielle.
Andrew Bruntel was born and raised in a rural town on the edge of Pennsylvania’s rust belt. After studying experimental filmmaking and design in Baltimore, he moved to Los Angeles to work for Mike Mills at The Directors Bureau. He has since become a director and writer, creating award winning short films, commercials and music videos for artists such as Will Oldham, St. Vincent, No Age, and Liars.
Ben Collins was born in Alabama and spent the first 24 years of his life in the south. Collins and his wife moved to Los Angeles in 2009, where he worked in commercial casting for several years. He co-wrote the film Super Dark Times, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and was released in 2017.
Luke Piotrowski was born in the suburbs of Chicago, moved to the suburbs of Atlanta, and now lives with his family in the suburbs of Los Angeles. Along with Ben Collins, he co-wrote the 2017 feature Super Dark Times.
Screenwriters Lab Projects:
The Doubt (Palestine) / Ihab Jadallah (writer/director): After twelve years in prison, Ibrahim returns home to his wife and a son he has never met. He goes about rebuilding his life in the West Bank and begins to bond with his son, Yousef, but when he begins to doubt whether he is actually the boy’s father, his world starts to tear apart.
The Palestinian filmmaker Ihab Jadallah has written, directed, and produced several highly acclaimed short films, including The Flower Seller , which screened at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival and the Abu Dhabi Film Festival. The screenplay for his feature The Doubt was selected for the Development Lab at EICTV in Cuba, and received a grant from the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture.
The Legend of Ochi (U.S.A.) / Isaiah Saxon (writer/director): On the Island of Carpathia, a teenage girl breaks with her Cossack father to protect a mythical species of animals who communicate using a unique, non-verbal language. In the process, she sheds new light on the mystery surrounding her dead mother, whose absence from her life is more complicated than it seems.
Isaiah Saxon is a writer-director and a founder of the film and animation studio Encyclopedia Pictura. Isaiah has directed videos for Björk, Panda Bear, Kanye West, Grizzly Bear, and others. His work explores the uncertainties of our connection to nature and technology.
Noche de Fuego (Night on Fire) (Mexico) / Tatiana Huezo (writer/director): On a remote mountain in coastal Mexico, eight-year-old Ana and her two best friends, Paula and Maria, grow up in the shadow of cartel violence. They kill snakes, and play dress up in the houses of those who have fled, creating their own world in the midst of growing violence.
Tatiana Huezo is a Mexican-Salvadorian filmmaker. Her most recent film, Tempestad, was one of the most acclaimed documentaries of 2016. Following its premiere at the Berlinale, the film was recognized by the Mexican Film Academy with four awards, including Best Director and Best Documentary Film. Her first documentary , The Tiniest Place, was shown in over 50 international film festivals. Noche En Fuego will be her first fiction feature film.
Quiltro (U.S.A.) / Vuk Lungulov-Klotz (writer/director): Feña, a transgender Chilean-American “mutt,” stumbles through a hectic day, negotiating complicated dynamics with friends, lovers, and family as they navigate new incarnations of their relationships.
Vuk Lungulov-Klotz is a transgender filmmaker, born in New York City to Chilean and Serbian immigrants. He graduated from SUNY Purchase Film Conservatory and has been working and living in Brooklyn ever since. His debut feature, Quiltro, was part of the 2017 Sundance Screenwriters Intensive. His trans-themed short film, Still Liam, was part of the Inside Out 2017 Toronto LGBT Film Festival, the GAZE international LGBT Film Festival, and was an award-winner at the Trans Stellar Film Festival.
Righteous Acts (U.S.A.) / Alicia Ortega (writer): Homeschooled teenager Judith thinks she’s finally found her people when she joins the cast of a megachurch hell house, where evangelical teens aim to scare people into salvation. But when she doesn’t land the coveted role of the Abortion Girl, she convinces herself she’s the only player doing God’s work—and it’s her holy duty to expose the true wages of sin.
Alicia D. Ortega was born in Washington, D.C., but considers San Antonio her hometown. She holds a B.A. from Stanford and an MFA from Louisiana State University, where her novel The Ghost You Deserve won the Robert Penn Warren Award for best MFA thesis. A participant in the 2018 Sundance Screenwriters Intensive, Ortega recently returned to Texas.
The Sundance Institute Feature Film Program is supported by The Annenberg Foundation; Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; YouTube; RT Features; Will and Jada Smith Family Foundation; Time Warner Foundation; Universal Filmed Entertainment Group; Amazon Studios; Hollywood Foreign Press Association; National Endowment for the Arts; Sandra and Malcolm Berman Charitable Foundation; The Ray and Dagmar Dolby Family Fund; NHK Enterprises, Inc.; John S. and James L. Knight Foundation; SAGindie; Grazka Taylor; Rena Dillon Cruz and Rene Simon Cruz; Philip Fung – A3 Foundation; Directors Guild of America; and Writers Guild of America, West.
image credit: Cesar Cervantes and Vincent Reyna on the set of “Hot Clip” at the 2016 Directors Lab. © 2016 Sundance Institute | Photo by Brandon Cruz.
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Sixteen up-and-coming screenwriters have been selected to attend Sundance Institute’s 2018 Screenwriters Lab, an immersive five-day writers’ workshop taking place at the Sundance Resort in Utah, January 12-17, 2018. The Lab brings independent screenwriters together with accomplished writers, in an environment that encourages the art and craft of writing and creative risk-taking.
Through one-on-one story sessions with Creative Advisors, Fellows work intensively on their feature film scripts and engage in an artistically rigorous process that offers them indispensable lessons in craft. The Lab is the first step in a year-round continuum of customized creative and tactical support for each project and team.
The team of Creative Advisors includes Artistic Director Scott Frank, Andrea Berloff, D.V. DeVincentis, Naomi Foner, Richard LaGravenese, Kasi Lemmons, Jenny Lumet, Ole Christian Madsen, Walter Mosley, Jessie Nelson, Nicole Perlman, Howard Rodman, Michael Showalter, Zach Sklar, Joan Tewkesbury, Bill Wheeler and Tyger Williams.
Twelve films supported by the Feature Film Program will premiere at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. In U.S. Dramatic Competition, those films include American Animals, written and directed by Bart Layton; Blindspotting, co-written by Rafael Casal & Daveed Diggs and directed by Carlos López Estrada; I Think We’re Alone Now, written by Mike Makowsky and directed by Reed Morano; Monsters and Men, written and directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green; Nancy, written and directed by Christina Choe; and Sorry to Bother You, written and directed by Boots Riley. In World Cinema Dramatic Competition, those films include Butterflies, written and directed by Tolga Karaҫelik, and Un Traductor, written by Lindsay Gossling and co-directed by Rodrigo and Sebastián Barriuso. Other FFP-supported films include Night Comes On, co-written by Angelica Nwandu and Jordana Spiro and directed by Jordana Spiro; Skate Kitchen, co-written by Crystal Moselle and Aslihan Unaldi and directed by Crystal Moselle; and We the Animals, co-written by Daniel Kitrosser and Jeremiah Zagar and directed by Jeremiah Zagar, all of which will premiere in NEXT. Additionally, What They Had, written and directed by Elizabeth Chomko, will screen in the Premieres section of the Festival.
The projects and fellows selected for the 2018 January Screenwriters Lab are:
Afrika (Bulgaria) / Maya Vitkova (writer/director): Afrika weaves together the stories of a family over the course of one year, a fantastical journey of love and loss, across three generations.
Maya Vitkova is a director, screenwriter, and producer, whose debut film, Viktoria, was the first Bulgarian feature in competition at the Sundance Film Festival. The film played at more than 70 international festivals, including Rotterdam, Karlovy Vary, Busan, AFI Fest and BFI London, and received praise from the Hollywood Reporter, IndieWire, Vogue Magazine and other publications. The New Yorker listed it at number 4 of the best films of 2016, and named Maya Vitkova one of the five best directors in the world. Vitkova was chosen as a European Film Promotion’s “Producer on the Move” in Cannes and is an EAVE 2017 graduate.
Broadway (Greece) / Christos Massalas (writer/director): A band of young street performers and pickpockets find an unlikely home in an abandoned mall in Athens. The balance of their makeshift family is threatened when a former member of their group returns after being released from prison.
Born in Greece, Christos Massalas is a graduate of the London Film School. His short films have received awards from around the world and have screened at international film festivals including Cannes, Locarno, AFI Fest, Guanajuato, BFI, and Nouveau Cinéma, among others. His latest short film Copa-Loca is nominated for the European Film Academy Award. Broadway will be his feature directorial debut.
Doha (U.S.A. / Morocco) / Eimi Imanishi (writer/director): Disheartened by her deportation from Europe, Mariam is forced to return home to Western Sahara. Adrift in the very place that’s supposed to be her home, she searches for the means to assert agency over her own life.
Eimi Imanishi is a Japanese American filmmaker. She earned her BFA at the Slade School of Art, University College London where she majored in sculpture. She has directed two award-winning short films, Battalion to My Beat and One Up, that have played at numerous festivals including the Toronto International Film Festival and Clermont Ferrand.
The Huntress (U.S.A. / Mexico) / Suzanne Andrews Correa (writer/director): In Juarez, Mexico, where violence against women goes unnoticed and unpunished, an unlikely heroine emerges to seek justice. This project is the recipient of the Feature Film Program Latina Fellowship.
Suzanne Andrews Correa is a Mexican American director and screenwriter based in New York City. A recent MFA graduate of the Film Program at Columbia University, she has worked in the industry for almost a decade as a member of IATSE. Her latest short, La Casa de Beatriz, premiered at the 2017 Morelia International Film Festival and received awards from the Princess Grace Foundation and Directors Guild of America. The Huntress will be her feature directorial debut.
Josephine (U.S.A.) / Beth de Araújo (writer/director): After accidentally witnessing a rape in Golden Gate Park, eight-year-old Josephine is plunged into a maelstrom of fear and paranoia. Surrounded by adults helpless to assuage her and unable to understand her, she acts out with increasing violence, searching for any way to regain control of her own safety. This project is the recipient of the Asian American Fellowship.
Beth de Araújo is a Los Angeles-based writer and director recently featured in Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film. In 2017, her feature screenplay Josephine participated in IFP No Borders and was a recipient of the SFFILM Rainin Filmmaking Grant. Araújo has directed two episodes of television for Lifetime Movie Network and is currently in post on two short films, one of which she shot through the AFI Directing Workshop for Women. Josephine will mark her feature directorial debut.
Katie Wright (U.S.A.) / C. Wrenn Ball (writer): Just as the Wright Brothers are about to capitalize on the invention of their airplane, Orville is badly injured in a public crash, and sister Katie unexpectedly emerges to lead their business. Fighting resistance from businessmen, society, and even her own brothers, she strives to keep the family together and claim her place as part of their legacy. Based on the forgotten true story. This project is the recipient of the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship.
Hailing from North Carolina, C. Wrenn Ball exchanged life in the Southeast for work as an assistant on network television. He directed web series pilots in Los Angeles before completing an MFA at USC’s John Wells Division of Writing for Screen and Television. Obsessed by the twang and rhythm of life, Ball is constantly merging his Southern sensibilities with feature and television writing.
Let’s Not Get Crazy (U.S.A.) / Joey Ally (co-writer/director) and Catie Ally (co-writer): It’s the night before Christmas, and two estranged sisters are about to do something crazy to help their mom get sane.
Joey Ally is a writer, director, and actor who first realized she wanted to make films while volunteering at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. Her short film Partners screened at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival and can be seen on Vimeo Premieres. Her most recent film, Joy Joy Nails, was made for American Film Institute’s Directing Workshop for Women, premiered at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival, and can be viewed as part of The New Yorker’s “The Screening Room.” She is a fellow of the Tribeca Chanel Women’s Filmmaker Program: Through Her Lens, the Universal Filmed Entertainment Group’s Directors Intensive, and the Fox Filmmakers Lab.
Catie Ally graduated from the New School with honors in Creative Writing and Film Theory. She is between hometowns and careers right now as she makes the move from copywriter in Brooklyn to screenwriter in Seattle. When she’s not packing her entire life into the back of her car, she enjoys small dogs and Chopped reruns. Ally’s lifelong passion for movies is largely thanks to a mother who indulged her love of film from a young age (and took her to see Boogie Nights when she was eight years old.)
Nobody Nothing Nowhere (U.S.A.) / Rachel Wolther (co-writer/co-director) and Alex H. Fischer (co-writer/co-director): Just like everyone she knows, Ruth is a “non-person” in a solipsistic universe built around the only being to truly exist, a congenial Midwestern bachelor named Dave. Tired of serving someone else’s story, she unexpectedly upends the narrative when she has the audacity to demand a life of her own.
Rachel Wolther is a director and producer whose work has screened at the Berlinale, BFI, Rotterdam, and New York Film Festivals, among others. Since 2015, she has directed episodes of GE Podcast Theater’s science fiction series The Message, which was the #1 podcast on iTunes and won numerous awards. Wolther was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Film in 2017, along with her directing partner, Alex Fischer.
Alex H. Fischer is a writer and director with a body of work including music videos, experimental shorts, ads, and funny videos. His longest movie yet, Snowy Bing Bongs Across the North Star Combat Zone (co-directed with Rachel Wolther) premiered at BAM Cinemafest this year.
Silhouette (U.S.A.) / Amman Abbasi (writer/director): Pakistani immigrant Raju is chasing his dreams of success, trying to work his way up the ladder of an unsavory pyramid scheme and pursuing MMA matches for which he is woefully underprepared. But when someone who strikingly resembles him commits a local terrorist act, Raju becomes increasingly isolated and identifies with the perpetrator in progressively unsettling ways.
Amman Abbasi is a Pakistani American writer/director, editor and composer from Little Rock, Arkansas. His first feature film, Dayveon, premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival and screened at the 2017 Berlinale. For Dayveon, Abbasi has been nominated for the Someone To Watch Award and the John Cassavetes Award at the 2017 Independent Spirit Awards.
The Sugar Hill Express (U.S.A.) / Christopher Grant (writer/director): Found to be an unfit parent because of her mentally ill husband, a desperate mother steals her children from New York City’s Child Protective Services and goes on a raucous journey to evade the cops and finally find a safe home for her family. Based on a lot of people’s true stories.
Christopher Grant is an African American filmmaker based in New York City. His short film work has won numerous festival awards including screenings in the Showtime Black Filmmaker’s Showcase, the Clark Atlanta Festival, and the Mill Valley Film Festival. After a prolific career as a television producer, Grant has most recently worked as a Creative Director at two of the Discovery Networks: Destination America and The American Heroes Channel. Additionally, he’s received multiple New York Foundation of the Arts Grants for improvisational theater and film production.
Thomas in 10 Dimensions (Norway) / Jakob Rørvik (writer/director): Quantum physicist Thomas believes he is about to crack the code of the universe, but he can’t seem to untangle the mysteries of his own life, even as the people he loves most—his young son, ex-wife, and mother—all try to bring him back to earth.
Norwegian writer/director Jakob Rørvik received his MA from the National Film & Television School in the UK. His award-winning shorts have screened at numerous festivals including Cannes, Cinéfondation, South By Southwest and Aspen Shortsfest. His latest short, Nothing Ever Really Ends, was recently selected as a Vimeo Staff Pick Premiere. He is currently in development on both a television series and Thomas in 10 Dimensions, which will be his feature directorial debut.
Wolf in White Van (U.S.A.) / Andrew Bruntel (director), Ben Collins (co-writer), and Luke Piotrowski (co-writer): Isolated by a disfiguring injury since the age of 17, Sean Phillips is the sole creator of the The Trace Italian, a turn based, fantasy role-playing game run entirely through the mail. When tragedy strikes two of his young players, Sean is forced to re-examine his self-inflicted departure from the world in which most people live. Based on the novel by John Darnielle.
Andrew Bruntel was born and raised in a rural town on the edge of Pennsylvania’s rust belt. After studying experimental filmmaking and design in Baltimore, he moved to Los Angeles to work for Mike Mills at The Directors Bureau. He has since become a director and writer, creating award winning short films, commercials and music videos for artists such as Will Oldham, St. Vincent, No Age, and Liars.
Ben Collins was born in Alabama and spent the first 24 years of his life in the south. Collins and his wife moved to Los Angeles in 2009, where he worked in commercial casting for several years. He co-wrote the film Super Dark Times, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and was released in 2017.
Luke Piotrowski was born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago before moving with his family during his sixth grade year to the suburbs of Atlanta, where he stayed until he was able to make a family of his own and move them to the suburbs of Los Angeles, where he currently resides. Along with Ben Collins, he co-wrote the 2017 feature Super Dark Times.
Image: Sundance Institute Feature Film Program Director Michelle Satter at the 2015 Screenwriters Lab. (c) 2015 Sundance Institute | Photo by Brandon Cruz.
Eight filmmaking teams will receive a total of $300,000 in funding in the latest round of SFFILM / Rainin Filmmaking Grants to help with the next stage of their creative process, from screenwriting to postproduction.
SFFILM / Rainin Filmmaking Grants are awarded twice annually to filmmakers whose narrative feature films will have significant economic or professional impact on the Bay Area filmmaking community and meaningfully explore pressing social issues. More than $4 million has been awarded since the launch of this grant program in 2009, making the SFFILM, in partnership with the Kenneth Rainin Foundation, the largest grant-maker for independent narrative films in the United States.
The SFFILM / Rainin Filmmaking Grant program has funded more than 50 projects since its inception, including Geremy Jasper’s Sundance breakthrough Patti Cake$, which is on its way to a July theatrical release; Alex and Andrew Smith’s Walking Out starring Matt Bomer and Josh Wiggins, which premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival; Chloé Zhao’s Songs My Brothers Taught Me, which screened at Sundance and Cannes in 2015 and has created buzz across the international festival circuit; 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 the 2014 Film Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature, the Un Certain Regard Avenir Prize at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, and both the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award in the narrative category at Sundance 2013; and Ben Zeitlin’s debut phenomenon Beasts of the Southern Wild, which won Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize and Cannes’ Camera d’Or in 2012 and earned four Academy Award nominations (including Best Picture).
The jury noted in a statement: “This group of finalists was exceptionally strong, and we are thrilled to support these eight bold and deeply human films, which collectively represent such a wide range of tones, styles, voices, and artistic visions. These filmmakers showcase the ever-growing talent coming out of San Francisco, and their work will contribute to the growing strength, diversity, and richness of the Bay Area filmmaking community.”