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When 22 year-old Rae, a descendant of Holocaust survivors, is targeted by Neo-Nazis in Billings, Montana, her ancestors' trauma becomes real.
Project type: Fiction Feature
Director/Writer/Producer: Alana Waksman
Executive Producer: Neda Armian
Producer: Jeri Rafter
Producer/Editor: Marshall Granger
Director of Photography: B. Rubén Mendoza
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In 1960s California, an L.A. clinic opened its doors to offer conversion therapy to worried parents of LGBTQ children. Doctors wondered if identity was flexible, and designed a project to see if gender and sexuality were the results of nature or nurture. While seeking the truth in this story behind their own identities, two unlikely friends, come together to investigate the ongoing harm of conversion therapy shapes the lives of trans youth today.
Project type: Nonfiction Feature
Directors: Sé Sullivan & Mauro Sifuentes
Producers: Sé Sullivan & Mauro Sifuentes
Consulting Producer: Marc Smolowitz
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Rayelle Martin, a commercial cleaning woman in Gary, Indiana, stumbles into a new job cleaning the homes of several rich, suburban families. While working, she tells one small lie that spins out of control.
Project type: Fiction Feature
Director: Anu Valia
Producers: Olivia Wingate, Miranda Kahn, Joy Jorgensen, Alex Bach, Zachary Spicer
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In a broken neighborhood on the outskirts of Dublin, a tween struggles with mental illness discovers a hidden world through a graffiti mural, where she transforms into her punk rock alter ego and learns to embrace her true self.
Project type: Fiction Short
Writer/Director/Producer: Cassidy Harrison
Co-Writer: Adam Prince
Producer: Carbonated Comet Productions
Animation Producer: Johnny Semerad
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Having spent months consoling her recently dumped best friend Sofia, Rudy, a twenty-nine-year-old pushover must tell hysterical Sofia that she’s moving in with her own boyfriend only to realize that maybe she’s making a huge mistake.
Project type: Fiction Short
Writer/Director: Portlynn Tagavi
Producer: Greg Schroeder
Cinematographer: TJ Thickett
Editor: Camilla Bartoli
Production Designer: Kelly Stark Reckert
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As we near the “Sixth Extinction” of our planet, the evidence is clear: the insect population faces global obliteration, and humanity needs to be prepared. Weeping Rocks is a documentary that focuses on the critical role small organisms play in our fragile ecosystem and the frontline workers who have quietly dedicated their lives to tracing, studying, and cultivating these often overlooked creatures. “Love them or loathe them, we humans cannot survive without insects.”
Project type: Nonfiction Feature
Director: Karlis Bergs
Producer: Jackii Chun
Cinematographer: Alexey Kurbatov
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Weight of the World is a televised anthology series with fictional present-day storylines whose dialogue is solely derived from the original transcripts of the federal Workers’ Project Administration (WPA) interviews of formerly enslaved African-Americans during 1936-1938. This is American documentary theatre on screen.
Project type: Nonfiction Feature
Director/Producer/Writer: Michelle Renee Jackson, MDiv
Co-Producer: Mark Herzog
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A short film about two queer women recalling their awkward, closeted high school days of kissing boys and straight-girl crushes.
Project type: Fiction Short
Co-writer/Director: Niki Ang
Co-writer/Cinematographer: Karen Du
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What Color is Blue is about the internal impotence that we, as queer youth, feel while facing the people, politicians, and organizations that do not want us to exist.
Project type: Fiction Feature
Director/Writer/Cinematographer: Carman Spoto
Producers: Carman Spoto, Quinn Dougherty
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A young woman’s life is flipped upside down by secrets from her mother and she is forced to become the parent instead of the child.
Project type: Fiction Short
Writer/Director: Elizabeth Block
Producers: Daniel McGilvray, Debbie Brubaker
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When a couple arrives home with their newborn baby, all they want to do is sleep, rest, and bond with their little one; but their loud, and opinionated families show up uninvited and refuse to leave.
Project type: Fiction Short
Writers: Gabriela Garcia Medina, Vicki Syal
Director: Gabriela Garcia Medina
Producers: Gabriela Garcia Medina, Vicki Syal, April Chang
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The struggle of two codependent brothers deciding what to eat for dinner becomes a metaphor for larger life decisions when they stay the weekend in the vibrant chaos of LA’s Koreatown with the youngest’s willful girlfriend.
Project type: Fiction Feature
Writer/Director/Editor: Brent Howard
Producer: Heather Brawley
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Project type: Fiction Feature
Executive Producer/Director: Akemi K. Tosto
Producers: Takumi Saitoh, Tyler Condon, Maho Morita
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Cynthia, an impassioned disability activist, finds herself at a crossroads as her tireless advocacy remains largely overlooked. Struggling to stay afloat, she turns to her brothers with an uncomfortable proposition: to sell the family summer home, a relic of their departed parents.
Project type: Fiction Feature
Writer/Director: Courtney Marsh
Producer: Jerry Franck
Executive Producer: Nic Novicki, Gill Holland
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Inside a run-down diner on pleasure moon Huvi, a romantic psychodrama plays out between two waitresses and an odd stranger who may not be of this world.
Project type: Fiction Short
Director/Writer/Producer: Sonja Kelly
Director of Photography: Andrés Solórzano
Editor: Michael Tang
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When a high school counselor told him to quit his Black friends, Loannis Veliotes dropped out, took his drum set on the road, and became Johnny Otis–a decades long innovator and promoter of Rhythm & Blues and Rock & Roll. Calling himself “Black by persuasion,” Johnny Otis tore through taboos against white and Black musicians playing together and wrote dozens of R&B and rock hits along with books and articles promoting Black liberation.
Project type: Nonfiction Feature
Director/Producer: David Zeiger
Director/Producer: Mobolaji Olambiwonnu
Director of Photography: Jerry Henry
Director of Archival Research: Jayne Kennedy
Editor: Lindsay Mofford
Motion Graphics: Christopher Kirk
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Three athletes - Rachael, Akoray, and Joe - grew up sacrificing their bodies for their sport, not realizing they were sacrificing their bodies to eating disorders. Through their personal wins and losses, we learn how the fierce drive of these elite athletes contributes to a dangerous mental illness - and may be their key to recovery.
Project type: Nonfiction Feature
Project status: Production
Producer/Director: Chris Blunk
Executive Producer: Nancy Kerrigan
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A legendary coach and a talented team of outsiders transform the sleepy desert city of Tucson, Arizona into a crazed college basketball mecca.
Project type: Nonfiction Feature
Director/Producer: Sean P. Malone
Director/Producer: Brad Malone
Producer: Isaiah Leslie
Producer: Mustan Dawood
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In rural Montana, a rising MMA fighter’s reckless life in and out of the cage is derailed further when she is forced to attend equine therapy after clashing with the police.
Project type: Fiction Feature
Director/Writer/Producer: Joseph Marconi
Producer: Lysette Urus
Director of Photography: David Vollrath
Associate Producer: Chance Housley
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When a young girl is called upon in court as the sole witness in her father's sexual assault case, she must choose between telling the truth or protecting her family.
Project type: Fiction Short
Director: Mishal Mahmud
Producer: Nidhi Kulkarni
Producer: Aishy Vimal
Cinematographer: Kathryn Boyd-Batstone
Sound Recordist: Renia Akamatsu