Sundance Institute Names Latest Nonfiction Grantees

47 Projects from 27 Countries Receive Over $1.5 Million in Grants

Los Angeles, CA - Sundance Institute today named the global cohort of independent nonfiction film projects that comprise its latest Documentary Fund Grantees, including specialized grants administered by The Kendeda Fund and the Stories of Change Fund.

Unrestricted granting support, totaling $1.5 million, will be extended to independent nonfiction films across various stages of development, production, post-production and audience engagement; Sundance Institute's Documentary Film Fund granting is made possible by founding support from Open Society Foundations. This granting cycle's supported projects come from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Israel, Lebanon, Madagascar, Mexico, Myanmar, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, the Philippines, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Sweden, the U.K., and the U.S.A.

These grantees comprise a snapshot of the boldest visions in nonfiction storytelling today, said Hajnal Molnar-Szakacs , Director of the Documentary Film Programs Film Fund. From the intimate to the epic, their scopes and ambitions illuminate not only the world around us, but new ways of seeing, telling and showing.

Today's slate of grantees includes the latest cohort of the Stories of Change Fund, a creative partnership with the Skoll Foundation designed to connect independent storytellers with renowned social entrepreneurs, to foster story skills and networking among these communities, and to support compelling films that inspire and enlighten audiences with solutions to urgent social issues. Over eleven years, the Stories of Change Fund has granted $2.6 million across 49 projects from 94 filmmakers, and connected 90 social entrepreneurs with that community. Today's Stories of Change Fund-supported projects are Awavena, The Concession, Cross My Heart, Decoding America, First Time Stories, Kianas Mission, Kokoly, The Legend of the Vagabond Queen of Lagos , The Mystery of Epilogue and The Pushouts.

Also among today's announced projects are focused grants from The Kendeda Fund, providing specific support for projects addressing environmental themes and the challenges of gun violence. Those projects, detailed below, are Awavena, Landlock, Madidi, and Paradise.

The latest grantees, presented by production stage and grantor, are:

DEVELOPMENT About the End (Sweden)

Dir. Cristina Picchi

Prod. Costanza Julia Bani, Jesper Kurlandsky

A film about the apocalypses that we have survived, and those that were still waiting for.

Airborne (India)

Dir. Shaunak Sen

Prod. Shaunak Sen

A story of Delhi's apocalyptic air is told through the black-kite and the dragonfly, and their human entanglements. Two brothers, ex body-builders, open a healing-centre for kites in their tiny garage, treating thousands of injured kites every year. An ecologist wages an absurd battle to re-settle dragonflies outside of Delhi. Together the stories of humans, birds, insects and machines weave an intimate account of living in a challenging urban ecosystem.

El Juicio - The Trial (Argentina)

Dir. Ulises de la Orden

Prod. Ulises de la Orden

Argentina, 1985, at the trial of the last dictatorship's military juntas. On the stand, the six judges; on one side, the prosecution, and on the other, the military personnel accused of genocide. In the center, the witnesses. Over 90 days, horror stories were heard. And the final sentence: Never again.

Florence From Ohio (U.S.A.)

Dir. Stephanie Wang-Breal

Prod. Carrie Weprin, Stephanie Wang-Breal

A real-life, genre-twisting film about an immigrant Chinese woman, Florence Wang, and her first-generation American daughter deconstructing their relationship with fashion, identity, race and their hometown of Youngstown, Ohio.

Softly In All Directions (U.S.A., Romania)

Dir. Anna Barsan

Prod. Shannon Fitzpatrick

A record of living history, an exploration of family lineage, and a probing of memory. Weaving together a tapestry of stories that traverse migration, political repression, and desire, the film combines a poetic and investigative approach that explores how trauma and transformation reverberate across generations.

Tailings (Brazil, U.S.A.)

Dir. Pedro de Filippis

Prod. Leonardo Mecchi, Bronte Stahl, Tarsila Nakamura

In the interval of three years, two mining tailings dams broke in Minas Gerais, Brazil, causing the country's worst socio-environmental disasters. After seeing his village washed away, an exile in Portugal attempts to digest the trauma through dance. An environmentalist is forced to leave her life of isolation for the international media spotlight. A school teacher keeps watch at night for the imminent break of a third dam that can bury his town in an estimated eight seconds.

The Weavers' Songs (Mexico)

Dir. Ismael V squez Bernab

Prod. Ismael V squez Bernab , Alaya Dawn Johnson

An examination of struggles within the indigenous Mexican director's community, the village of the weavers, that exemplifies the inter-generational complexity underlying the crisis facing indigenous folk traditions throughout the Americas. The first feature-length film made entirely in the Amuzgo language, Observational filmmaking follows three principal characters: Zoila, a local weaver; Donato, the town's most famous violinist; and Lorenzo, his son. Zoila's loom creates a natural music to tell the story of the life and death of Donato-whose older son burned his violin as an instrument of the devil on the day of the funeral-and Lorenzo, Donato's younger son, who has discovered one last chance to revive his father's music, thirteen years later.

To Use A Mountain (U.S.A.)

Dir. Casey Carter

Prod. Colleen Cassingham

Seconds of exposure, generations of deb

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