Museum of the Moving Image and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation have recently announced finalists for the 2024 Sloan Student Prizes, as reported by Variety. The prestigious awards recognize two outstanding screenplays for feature films or scripted series, written by emerging filmmakers nominated by university film programs from across the country. Each screenplay integrates science or technology themes and characters into dramatic stories.
This is the fourth year that the Sloan Student Prizes are administered by Museum of the Moving Image, as part of the Museum’s wider Sloan Science & Film initiative. Both the Sloan Student Grand Jury and Discovery Prizes come with a cash award of $20,000 and year-round, dedicated mentorship from a scientist and film industry professional.
Established in 2011, the Grand Jury Prize includes finalists from each of six universities the Sloan Foundation has a longstanding relationship with: American Film Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Columbia University, New York University, University of Southern California, and UCLA. The 2023 winner Justine Beed has since gone on to participate in the 2023 Athena Film Festival Writers Lab as an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow, and in the 2024 TIFF Sloan Science and Technology Project Pitch.
In 2019, the Sloan film program expanded with the creation of the Discovery Prize, which recognizes finalists from six public universities not regularly affiliated with the Foundation. Once nominated, Discovery finalists work with writing mentors to refine their screenplays. This year’s mentors include filmmaker and academic Graham Sack (THE HARVARD COMPUTERS), screenwriter Gillian Weeks (LET THERE BE LIFE) and writer/director Temi Ojo (A MAN WITH A MISSING FACE)—previous Sloan grant winners—as well as filmmaker Chadd Harbold (THE WRATH OF BECKY) and screenwriter Jordan McCray (COMMITTED). The 2022 winner, Gerard Shaka, was recently recognized on the 2024 GLAAD List.
Winners will be selected by a jury of scientists and film industry professionals, currently set to deliberate in December. The winning filmmakers will be celebrated at MoMI’s First Look Festival in March 2025 with an awards ceremony and work-in-progress readings.
See below for more about the 2024 finalists and writing mentors.
The Sloan Student Grand Jury Prize 2024 finalists:
The finalists are nominated by six graduate film programs that have year-round partnerships with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to award screenplay grants for science-themed narratives.
IT REVOLVES AROUND TYCHO by Zoe Milenkovic (Feature)
American Film Institute
TAMARACK by Elle Thoni (Series)
Carnegie Mellon University
ERUPTION by Katla Sólnes (Feature)
Columbia University
CÉCILE by Sarah Morales (Feature)
University of California, Los Angeles
THIN ICE by Brittany Wang (Series)
University of Southern California
The Sloan Student Discovery Prize 2024 Finalists:
The finalists are nominated by film programs without year-round screenplay development partnerships with the Sloan Foundation.
GRAPEFRUIT by Aleeza Claire (Feature)
Florida State University
ABEL'S BABY by Hallie Stephenson (Series)
SUNY Purchase
TREAT ME WELL by Erika Lobati (Feature)
Temple University
IMPACT by Yoel Gebremariam (Feature)
University of Michigan
The 2024 Sloan Student Prize writing mentors:
Chadd Harbold is a Brooklyn-based producer, director, and writer, and the Head of Production of Post Film. He wrote, produced, and directed PRIVATE PROPERTY (2022; Lionsgate), and LONG NIGHTS SHORT MORNINGS (SXSW ’16; 1091 Pictures). Recently, he produced, along with Mandalay Pictures, Evan Ari Kellman’s BARRON’S COVE, starring Garrett Hedlund, Stephen Lang, Hamish Linklater, and Brittany Snow. In post-production, he has Courtney J. Camerota’s DEAD GUY, starring Michael Shannon, Eva Longoria, Luis Guzmán, and Judy Greer; and the third film in the BECKY franchise, directed by Matt Angel & Suzanne Coote, and starring Lulu Wilson and Neil Patrick Harris. His producing credits also include Colin West’s Sloan award-winning LINOLEUM (SXSW ’22; Shout! Studios), starring Jim Gaffigan and Rhea Seahorn; and Aharon Keshales’ SOUTH OF HEAVEN (2021; RLJE), starring Jason Sudeikis; among others. As a director and producer, his films have screened around the world, including AFI Fest, Film at Lincoln Center, International Film Festival Rotterdam, The Museum of Modern Art, Sitges Film Festival, and Tribeca Festival, among others. He is a Film Independent Spirit Award Nominee, Gotham Fellow, and graduate of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.
Jordan McCray is an African American, LA-based writer, born in Dallas, Texas. She graduated from Rice University where she played Division I soccer and earned a BA in Sociology with a focus in Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies. Jordan began her writing career in the Television Literary Department at CAA and went on to foster her own writing at UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television. She most enjoys indulging in her fears through genre writing and most recently finished working on the Netflix series, THE WITCHER: BLOOD ORIGIN and THE MAGIC ORDER.
Microchip engineer-turned-filmmaker Temi Ojo was born in Lagos, Nigeria. He left his family at age 15 for university in California to pursue a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, graduated with honors and worked in Silicon Valley for almost a decade before concurrently attaining a Master of Business Administration (MBA) in Marketing and Entrepreneurship and a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Motion Pictures and Television with emphasis in Directing. He has crafted commercial content for a diversified portfolio of brands and was honored by the Association of Independent Commercial Producers' Commercial Director's Diversity Program (AICP-CDDP). His short films have screened in numerous international film festivals, winning several accolades. His MFA thesis film RENOUNCING ANGELICA was awarded a BNP Paribas Humanitarian Prize, honored with a profile on BET’s Lens on Talent and lauded "a heart-rending short work” by the San Diego Union Tribune. His next short HABITUAL AGGRESSION premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for an Africa Movie Academy Award. He is currently packaging his first feature film SEEDLESS and developing his second, A MAN WITH A MISSING FACE, which won the SFFILM Sloan Science in Cinema Fellowship.
Graham Sack is an award-winning filmmaker, new media creator, and academic whose work explores the intersection of narrative, scientific discovery, and emerging technologies. He is the founder of Chronotope Films and the recipient of the 2021 Sundance Institute / Alfred P. Sloan Episodic Fellowship for THE HARVARD COMPUTERS, an original TV series based on the true story of America’s first female astronomers. Previously, he adapted and directed George Saunders’s best-selling novel Lincoln in the Bardo for the New York Times newly formed virtual reality division, for which he was shortlisted for an Emmy Award for Innovation in Interactive Programming. His other projects have received support from Google, Samsung, and Felix & Paul Studios and appeared at Tribeca Film Festival, SXSW, New York Theater Workshop, Sotheby’s, and Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona. Currently, he is the inaugural Dracopoulos-Bloomberg iDeas Lab Fellow in the Berman Institute of Bioethics at John Hopkins University, where he is developing film and media projects that dramatize the ethical conundrums raised by emerging biotechnologies, including CRISPR, brain-computer interfaces, and life-extension. He is also Research Fellow and Lecturer in Immersive Storytelling & Emerging Technology at Johns Hopkins University and was previously a Visiting Scholar in Data Poetics at the Lucy Family Institute for Data and Society at University of Notre Dame and an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Modeling Interdisciplinary Inquiry at Washington University in St. Louis. He holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Columbia University, an MSc in Economics from the London School of Economics, and a BA Honors in Physics from Harvard College. He began his career in entertainment as a child actor on Broadway and is a member of the WGA, AEA, and SAG.
Screenwriter Gillian Weeks turned to narrative film and television after a decade in the documentary world which included her role as VP of Development at Jigsaw Productions. In 2018 and 2019, screenwriter Gillian Weeks won two Sloan grants back-to-back for her project LET THERE BE LIFE. In 2021, it was announced she’d be adapting Jeffrey Kluger’s biography of polio vaccine creator Jonas Salk SPLENDID SOLUTION, with Jeremy Strong set to star. Her script OH, THE HUMANITY appeared on the Black List in 2022. She now has multiple features and series in various stages of development, including the limited series THE LOST LEONARDO. Gillian has been a Sundance and Tribeca Film Institute fellow, and participated in labs with the Black List, the Cannes Film Festival, and the Screenwriters Colony. Gillian graduated with a BA in Political Economy from Williams College and Oxford University.
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