SPRING 2019 SFFILM WESTRIDGE GRANT WINNERS
The American Society of Magical Negroes
Kobi Libii, writer/director – screenwriting – $20,000
Omar, a young black man, is recruited into an undercover society of Magical Negroes who secretly conjure literal magic to make white people’s lives easier. Although initially enamored with his new powers, once he realizes they are using supernatural means to do the very thing he’s felt obligated to do his whole life, he attempts to buck the system and put his own dreams first.
Coyote Boys
Haley Anderson, writer/director/producer – screenwriting – $20,000
Homeless and living on the streets of New Orleans, Trey hangs on a promise that his estranged, graffiti-writer brother Marcus will come to claim him. After Trey learns of Marcus’s passing on the website Squat the Planet, he meets Luke, a train hopping crust punk who he has seen in pictures with his brother, an apparent friend. With nothing to lose and the possibility of retracing Marcus’s paths, Trey joins Luke and his family of runaways, artists, and activists on illegal train rides that take him deep into a world off the grid.
Dry Summer
Lakshmi Simhan, writer/director – screenwriting – $20,000
Leela is the only child of an unorthodox comp lit professor and a poet in the throes of writer's block. She's 17, Indian, and a recent transplant to the ranch country of the Columbia River Gorge. It's the summer before college, and she falls in with a group of Ukrainian teenagers. As her parent’s marriage slowly dissolves, she's caught up in a world of guns, religion, and mounting acts of petty violence.
El Otro Lado (The Other Side)
Barbara Cigarroa, writer/director; Julie O’Leary and Animal Kingdom, producers – screenwriting – $20,000
Set in Brownsville, Texas, during the child migration crisis, El Otro Lado (The Other Side) centers on Lucy, a low-income Mexican American teen who is forced to confront her own need for escape when her father decides to sponsor two undocumented minors for money.
Fight
Musa Syeed, writer/director – screenwriting – $20,000
In the American Rust Belt, two young boxers—one Arab American and one African American—train for their first professional bout. As their lives collide in a makeshift ring in a church rec hall in Ohio, the fight takes a fateful turn that alters the lives of both men, their families, and their communities.
The SFFILM Westridge Grant is part of a robust suite of funding and support initiatives facilitated by SFFILM Makers, the artist development branch of SFFILM. Additional programs include the SFFILM Rainin Grant, the SFFILM Documentary Film Fund, the FilmHouse artist residency program, and a range of fellowships and professional development opportunities. For more information, visit sffilm.org/makers. |
