The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is committed to creating opportunities for diverse, emerging filmmakers interested in science storytelling at the university-level and beyond. In addition to the screenwriting and production grants offered at Sloan’s partner universities, filmmakers have the opportunity to receive fiscal and creative support through the long haul of the development process. The latest crop of winners from the Athena Film Festival and New York University Tisch School of the Arts includes promising new filmmakers and a few familiar talents whose progress demonstrates the far-reaching support of Sloan’s filmmaker development pipeline:
Rosalind Grush’s THE HOME FRONT was first recognized by Sloan in 2020 with a screenwriting grant at UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. Mirella Christou’s PUSH IT! was recognized at the 2021, North Fork TV Festival Pitch Forum, and Gina Hackett’s A BRIDGE BETWEEN US won back-to-back Sloan grants in 2019, first the Columbia University School of the Arts Screenwriting Grant, followed by the SFFILM Science in Cinema Filmmaker Fellowship.
Stay tuned for further coverage on all of these projects as they develop.
Winner of the 2023 Athena Film Festival Sloan Fellowship for Screenwriting:
THE HOME FRONT by Rosalind Grush (TV Series)
After German troops in World War I use a deadly poison gas on the battlefield for the first time in history, a female chemist at Imperial College London secretly organizes a team of women scientists to begin the development of an arsenal of new wartime technology to help the Allies win the war. Inspired by true events.
Winners of the 2022 Athena Film Festival Sloan Fellowship for Screenwriting:
A BRIDGE BETWEEN US by Gina Hackett (Feature)
When the chief engineer of the Brooklyn Bridge is paralyzed in the early stages of its Victorian-era construction, his high-society wife Emily reluctantly steps up to act as his intermediary, courting jealousy and hostility as she blossoms into an engineer in her own right. Based on a true story, A BRIDGE BETWEEN US tracks the building of a bridge and the collapse of a marriage.
MILEVA by Emilija Gašić and Nicola Lanthier-Rogers (Feature)
MILEVA is the story of an incredible woman whose cosmic collision with Albert Einstein results in a star-crossed romance, a brutal divorce, and the theory of relativity itself.
PUBLIC HEALTH by Myra Aquino (TV Series)
A disgraced surgeon is forced to take on a temporary job at a decrepit Public Health department in South Florida, and must figure out how to get her old job back.
PUSH IT! by Mirella Christou (TV Series)
PUSH IT! is the story of an under-the-radar women’s rights activist who fights an uphill battle with heavy personal costs to finance and orchestrate the creation of the revolutionary birth control pill.
Winners of the 2022 NYU Tisch School of the Arts Screenwriting Grants:
AT THE HEART OF EVERYTHING by Mayanka Goel (Feature)
When Doctor Sarah D'Mello dies unexpectedly, she leaves behind a will to donate her organs, a 12-year-old daughter ASH, and an incomplete research paper. Her older and estranged daughter Trisha comes back to town expecting to sign some papers at most, but instead finds herself swept away by Ash and family trauma she thought she had overcome. This is a drama-comedy about grief and family, in which two siblings attempt to use science to come to terms with their mother's loss.
COPYCATS by Mattan Hamou (Feature)
Inspired by true events, a troubled Gunn High School Senior and detached CDC Researcher launch separate, yet interconnecting investigations to uncover the cause of the suicide epidemic that is plaguing the teens of Silicon Valley.
Winner of the 2022 NYU Tisch School of the Arts 100k First Feature Award:
THE PECULIAR CASE OF MARION J. SIMS by Samantha Chamblee (Feature)
In a world where your body is not your own, 15-year-old Maisey is sold to the good doctor J. Marion Sims. While working in his “haunted” house, she has to discover what makes him so peculiar in time to save herself from the man who would heal us all.
Winner of the 2022 NYU Tisch School of the Arts Gaming Center Production Award:
GENOME by Abigail Yaffe (Game)
GENOME is a narrative sci-fi game that explores the profound effects and influences of gene editing through satire. You play as a recently deceased inhabitant of the last remaining city on earth, Arglax, elevated to limited godhood to manage time and the changing expectations of two other gods.
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