Peter Nelson received $30,000 for White (working title), which weaves together five narratives of individuals reflecting on their whiteness. Historically, race has been viewed as a non-white issue, and the burden to understand race and racism in recent years has been overwhelmingly put on people of color. This project seeks to engage white people in a self-examination of their whiteness. Nelson will use stop-motion animation and recorded interviews to reveal white perspectives, biases, and blind spots as individuals consider their roles in white privilege, white solidarity, and white fragility.

Catherine Licata received $23,360 for The Lobby (working title), a narrative short film about Josefina, a hotel housekeeper determined to improve her life with the aid of her favorite self-help audiobook. A cinematic response to the performative “hustle” of late capitalist America, Licata entwines the issues of economic and class mobility with the contemporary immigrant experience.  This short character-driven drama deals with structural inequalities beyond any one person’s control, playing with audience expectations on class and societal roles.  

Photo by Monique Walton.

Alison Guessou received $30,000 for Happily Married After, a short satirical film that takes on the perfections and imperfections of marriage and individual versus societal expectations. A young couple has been selected by a documentary crew to be followed for a few weeks and interviewed as part of a series about what makes a marriage successful. Both partners (unbeknown to the other) overcompensate for the perceived shortcomings of the other until the hidden flaws are exposed. The couple finds themselves in a situation that can either make their marriage stronger or pull it apart. Through a series of flashbacks, character dialogue, and talking-head interviews, we see how they navigate for the sake of their relationship.

Photo by Brian Few, Jr.

Kiera Faber received $21,540 for The Garden Sees Fire, an enigmatic animated narrative exploring the untamed wildness of the mind, the land, and the burning desire to besiege and control both. Inspired by the frontier writings of Conrad Richter and her family's hereditary struggle with bipolar disorder, the imagery interweaves three distinct visual strands: puppet stop motion and drawing animation, hand-manipulated 16mm film, and an intermediary space that conjoins the external real-world imagery with the internal constructed world of the animations. This film is Faber’s second installment in a trilogy exploring mental pathologies and is loosely inspired by specific literary works.

Photograph by Eric Mueller.

Mónica Savirón received $30,000 for The Ledger Line. This experimental film enacts what ledger lines do, bringing voices difficult to be heard and be accounted for into the musical score. Shifting from archival and found footage to original imagery filmed by Savirón, this work extends the space for what one can hear and express, especially when it comes to sexism, racism, and climate crisis. Sound is the guiding force for the images to move and evolve, tracing lines of cause and effect between our actions and the world.

Isabel Sandoval received $15,100 for Lingua Franca, a narrative feature about an undocumented Filipina transwoman who works as a caregiver to Olga, an elderly Russian-Jewish woman with dementia. She becomes involved with Alex, Olga’s adult grandson, who is unaware that Olivia is transgender. This film, inextricably linked to Sandoval’s intensely personal journey, explores the nuanced and layered contemporary issues of immigration and transgender rights through the lens of a romantic drama.

Photo by Isaac Banks.

Michael Premo received $30,000 for Homegrown. The documentary follows three Trump supporters from different backgrounds who unite to campaign across America in 2020, advocating for his re-election while laying foundations for what they hope will be a long-lasting political movement. Premo is a filmmaker and impact producer, whose work illuminates timely issues of crisis and recovery through participatory documentary.

Photo by Kisha Bari.

Keith McQuirter received $30,000 for The 3,000 Project (working title), a documentary film exploring how Wisconsin, one of the states with highest rates of incarceration in America, abolished parole and changed the fate of 3,000 parole-eligible inmates in its prison system. The film shares personal stories of the impact of parole laws and delves further into the state’s heated debates over solutions to reduce its massive inmate population.

Photograph by George Del Barrio / The Vanderbilt Republic.

Shalini Kantayya received $30,000 for Coded Bias. Merging cinema vérité and sci-fi elements, the film captures MIT researcher Joy Buolamwini’s startling discovery that most facial recognition software does not accurately see dark-skinned faces. Through Joy’s journey to push for the first-ever legislation in the U.S. to govern this technology, Coded Bias sheds light on the threat artificial intelligence poses to civil rights and democracy.

Photo by Omar Mullick.

Chithra Jeyaram received $30,000 for Our Daughters (working title), a transracial open adoption story that flips the narrative. A single white mother makes a bold departure from the norm and chooses an Indian American couple to be her twin daughters’ adoptive parents. Drawn to stories at the intersection of race, religion, immigration, and family, Jeyaram’s documentary provides an immigrant’s perspective on interracial adoption while examining the development of cultural dexterity in familial settings.