Sundance Film Festival’s 40th edition continues with an announcement of the latest artists to earn recognition from its Science-In-Film Initiative in partnership with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
Filmmaking duo Sam and Andy Zuchero’s feature debut LOVE ME, starring Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun, received the 2024 Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize. Selected by a jury of film and science professionals and presented to an outstanding feature film focusing on science or technology as a theme, or depicting a scientist, engineer, or mathematician as a major character, the prize includes a $25,000 cash award. The 2024 jury included Dr. Mandë Holford, Dr. Nia Imara, Matt Johnson (BLACKBERRY), Theresa Park (AFTER YANG), and Courtney Stephens (THE AMERICAN SECTOR).
“We are delighted to honor Sam and Andy Zuchero’s LOVE ME, an original and wildly imaginative film about the nature of human identity and our connection to each other in a post-human world mediated through artificial intelligence,” said Doron Weber, Vice President and Program Director at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. “In a year when Chris Nolan’s great-man-of-science biopic, OPPENHEIMER, based on the Sloan book American Prometheus, broke box office records and garnered acclaim, we are especially pleased to award three screenwriting fellowships to four outstanding writers who dramatize the unique obstacles and underappreciated contributions of exceptional women in science and technology. This year’s winners are wonderful additions to the nationwide Sloan film program and further proof of the vitality of our pioneering, two-decade partnership with Sundance.”
In addition to the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize, recipients of three artist grants supporting projects in active development were announced. The filmmakers were celebrated at a reception in Park City, preceded by a talk entitled The Big Conversation: Screen of Consciousness, where the Zucheros discussed cinema’s portrayal of artificial intelligence with neuroscientist and clinical psychologist Dr. Heather Berlin.
Read more about all of the winning projects and the artists behind them below.
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Winner of the 2024 Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize:
LOVE ME
Sam Zuchero, Andy Zuchero
Long after humanity’s extinction, a buoy and a satellite meet online and fall in love.
Winner of the 2024 Sloan Episodic Fellowship:
TEKTITE
Emily Everhard
In 1970, five elite female scientists arrive in the U.S. Virgin Islands to join NASA’s aquatic mission, “Tektite.” While NASA secretly psychologically surveils the aquanauts, the women must unite to survive life-threatening obstacles in the depths of the ocean.
TEKTITE previously won the 2023 Sloan Screenwriting Grant at Columbia University.
Winner of the 2024 Sloan Development Fellowship:
SATOSHI
Sara Crow, David Rafailedes
The potentially true story of a teenage anime-obsessed hacktivist who, after losing her scholarship to Stanford, returns home to Arizona to become the mysterious inventor of a new digital currency called Bitcoin.
SATOSHI was previously awarded the 2023 Sloan $100K First Feature Award at New York University’s Tisch Schol of the Arts.
Winner of 2024 the Sloan Commissioning Grant:
INVERSES
Lizzi Oyebode
The story of the Nazi takeover of the world’s leading university math department and the lone Jewish woman professor central to the resistance: Emmy Noether.
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