Meet the 2021 Sundance Institute Documentary Fund Grantees

Los Angeles - The Sundance Institute today announced the latest cohort of Sundance Institute Documentary Fund Grantees. A total of $590,000 in unrestricted grant support has been provided to 18 projects in various stages including five in development, eight in production, and five in post-production. Grants are made possible by The Open Society Foundations, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and Luminate.

This granting cycle's supported projects are from 20 countries and territories across five continents (Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, and South America), with over half the projects having international roots. Granting focused on projects by artists from historically underrepresented communities, ensuring that these stories are being told from within the communities.

This year all of the U.S. films granted are helmed by at least one BIPOC director. The Fund's commitment to gender equity is evidenced in the 72% of granted projects that are helmed by women directors; additionally, 72% of grantees are early career filmmakers, working on their first or second feature film. These statistics reflect the Fund's commitment to emerging artists whose voices have been historically marginalized in hegemonic Western societies.

Supporting equity in storytelling by elevating diverse cohorts is central to our mission, added Hajnal Molnar-Szakacs, Documentary Film Fund Director. Sundance funding can play a vital role in creating a space for freedom of speech, stimulating local documentary production and ensuring that nonfiction narratives from around the world are elevated.

This cohort of grantees reflects deeply artistic and personal storytelling, as they explore and reveal the contemporary human condition in all its complexity, said Carrie Lozano, Director of the Institute's Documentary Film Program.

The Documentary Fund supports the work of nonfiction filmmakers from around the globe. In a changing media landscape, the fund has been a stable, progressive force in supporting work that has expressed the world in creative, complex, beautiful, and provocative ways, and has created real cultural and social impact around some of the most pressing issues of our time.

Recent projects supported include: American Factory, Collective, Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution, The Edge of Democracy, Of Fathers and Sons, Hale County This Morning, This Evening, Hooligan Sparrow, Minding the Gap, The Mole Agent, One Child Nation, Strong Island, and Time.

The application for the next cycle of funding is currently open and closes July 26. The application can be found here.

The Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program is made possible by founding support from The Open Society Foundations. Generous additional support is provided by Ford Foundation; John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; Luminate; Sandbox Films; The Kendeda Fund; The Charles Engelhard Foundation; CNN Films; Compton Foundation; Genuine Article Pictures; Nion McEvoy & Leslie Berriman; Violet Spitzer-Lucas and the Spitzer Family Foundation; Code Blue Foundation; EarthSense Foundation; Harbour; Adobe; WNET New York Public Media; and two anonymous donors.

The latest grantees, presented by production stage, are:

DEVELOPMENT The Gardeners (U.S.A.)

Director: Crystal Kayiza

Producer: Crystal Kayiza

The Gardeners follows the Worthy Women of Watkins Street, keepers of one of the oldest Black cemeteries in Mississippi.

Gross National Happiness (Bhutan, Hungary)

Director: Arun Bhattarai, Dorottya Zurb

Producer: No mi Veronika Szakonyi, Arun Bhattarai

Amar and Gunaraj are not only close friends, but also Happiness Agents who work together for the Happiness Ministry of Bhutan travelling door to door measuring people's happiness level while searching for their own among the remote Himalayan mountains. On their mission, they encounter various people chasing their dreams. This satirical road movie through a mosaic of different stories discovers the real desires of a society behind a national identity created by the Happiness Ministry of Bhutan, a closed country for centuries.

The Ship and the Sea (Mozambique, Brazil, Portugal)

Director: Lara Sousa, Everlane Moraes

Producer: Matheus Mello, Emerson d'Almeida, Joelma Oliveira Gonzaga, Elsa Sertorio

A cinematographic essay that portrays two crossed travels, weaved by travel diaries between two Africas . Everlane leaves for Mozambique looking for the roots of a cultural matrix that is the cradle of Afro-descendants in Brazil. Lara searches in Everlane's country's Afro-descendant culture for traces of her erased identity. Later, both meet in Lisbon, the former colonial metropolis, where they cross experiences to shed light on the issue of black identity inside and outside of Africa.

The Tongue of Water (France, Cambodia)

Director: Polen Ly

Producers: Rithy Panh, Lucas S n caut, Thibaut Amri

Neang, an indigenous woman, struggles to rebuild a new life after a hydropower dam's reservoir swallowed her entire village, broke up her family, and forced them to live in a new place. This journey of resilience will show Neang's determination to protect her family's lifestyle between memories of her land, and harmony and connection with nature.

Under the Dance Floor (Hungary)

Director: S ra Tim r

Producer: Krisztina Meggyes

S ri, a young photographer, lives with her family in a villa house in Budapest which is saturated in the atmosphere of folk dance. For a long time, nobody cared about the cellar under the house which served as a secret prison for the defendants of the show trials in the communist era. But the descendants of the formal residents suddenly appear and unsettle the everyday life of the family. S ri attempts to untangle the knots of the past. But does she know what it takes?

PRODUCTION Against the T

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