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Fall 2021 ScreenCraft Film Fund Winners

by ScreenCraft - updated on May 3, 2022

Leading screenwriting education and talent-discovery organization ScreenCraft and Santa Monica-based media financier BondIt Media Capital have announced three recipients of the Fall 2021 ScreenCraft Film Fund Grant Program.

The first recipient is Dystopia, a feature documentary that follows what happens when a democracy falls from the edge. It investigates how an extremely religious and increasingly fundamentalist nation copes with leadership that is essentially anti-State during the Coronavirus pandemic. As we follow Igor, an evangelical pastor in a favela, and a range of other characters including doctors, nurses, and other religious leaders, we discover a country divided by a Holy War - with conflicting visions of faith, science, power and solidarity. In her follow-up to the Academy  Award-nominated The Edge of Democracy, Petra Costa, Co-Director & Producer, Alessandra Orofino, and producer, Georgia Kirilov investigate Brazil's descent into religious fundamentalism accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic and President Bolsonaro's leadership. 

The second recipient is Space Cadet, a live-action short about a troubled teenager with chaotic home life who is inadvertently transported to a distant planet, finding that Outer space may be exactly the kind of space she needs. In the short film, space is an imagined place with real-world consequences. The project is helmed by Writer/Director, Actor, Singer/Songwriter Jacob Anderson who is also an advocate for children's mental health. Space Cadet will also be producers Anna Hargreaves and Tilly Coulson's second collaboration.

The third recipient is Land of Gold, a feature film about Kiran, a first-generation Punjabi trucker and anxious father-to-be, who stumbles across Elena, a 10-year-old undocumented Mexican-American, during a cross-country trip. As Kiran helps Elena find her way home, the unlikely pair connect over a shared history and evolving expectations of what family truly is. The project is helmed by writer-director, actor and activist, Nardeep Khurmi and producers Pallavi and Keertana Sastry at Team Access Productions, and Emmy nominated producer Simon Taufique. As a South Asian immigrant from Switzerland raised in the suburbs of Philly, Khurmi explores an emotionally grounded a universal story about parenting while juxtaposing the lives of contemporary immigrants, both undocumented and 1st generation. Land of Gold has also been selected as the recipient of the Film Fund's Diversity Initiative. 

Congratulations to these winning writers and finalists, and thank you to everyone who submitted projects. This was a spectacular round of submissions and we want to shout out a few additional projects - 

The Garden by Guy Nattiv & Matt Miller

The Plutonians by Tim Delaney

Chronicles of a Wandering Saint  by Tomas Gomez Bustillo

The WASP by Kali Bailey

All You Hear is Noise by Matt Day & Ned Castle

View the Semifinalists and Finalists here.  

The ScreenCraft Film Fund is administered biannually to talented filmmakers with projects that display singular talent, originality, vision, impact and development potential. The program accepts documentary and feature submissions in addition to short films and online series.

ScreenCraft provides ongoing creative development and BondIt (with sister company Buffalo 8 Productions) offers guidance and resources throughout the project’s production. 

Previous ScreenCraft Fund recipients include filmmakers KEFF (Kevin Kai Ming Wang) whose film was selected for the 2020 Cannes Film Festival, Samira Shackle and Owen Kean whose film was acquired by VICE, BAFTA-nominated producer, Nick Taussig, and Danny Madden who has subsequently gone on to debut two films at the Sundance Film Festival. 

The Spring 2022 ScreenCraft Film Fund Grant Program is open for submissions. The Early Deadline ends on September 30th. Applications should be submitted via Coverfly or the ScreenCraft Film Fund Page page here.

And be sure to check out more of  ScreenCraft's recent success stories here. 


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