The 2025 Annual Athena Film Festival (AFF) marks the festival’s crystal anniversary, celebrating 15 years of showcasing works which advance a new understanding of women’s leadership in society. The festival’s ongoing partnership with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, designed to break the status quo by supporting inspiring films about women in STEM, includes a development grant and a screenwriting fellowship. The Alfred P. Sloan AFF Writers Lab Fellowship enables a woman filmmaker to attend one of AFF’s three-day creative development workshops, biannual labs which provide artists with creative guidance and foster the growth of a supportive network within the entertainment industry.
In addition to a presentation of Stephanie Falkeis’s Sloan-supported film ELEGY FOR A GLACIER , the festival also saw the announcement of the 2025 Alfred P Sloan Writers Lab Fellows. Read more about these exciting projects below.
BEAVERTON by Emma Parker (episodic)
In 2047, adopted siblings Circe, Orion, and Electra, must assuage unrest in their climate-positive town after an elderly citizen is injured by a moose.
EXODUS by Leslie Borchert (episodic)
When a Mars Colony shuttle crashes in the Atlantic Ocean under suspicious circumstances, a shrewd engineer must evade authorities to unravel a conspiracy that threatens her family’s life on the Red Planet.
THE INVENTRIX: MARGARET KNIGHT BIOPIC by Michael Ann Dobbs (screenplay)
THE INVENTRIX is based on the true story of Margret Knight’s successful 1870 patent interference trial. In flashbacks we learn of her impoverished childhood as a mill worker and her invention of automatic flat-bottomed paper bag making machine.
RARE EARTH by Nadine Pequeneza (screenplay)
An American biology professor and a Maya land defender form an unlikely alliance to topple a giant mining corporation after a lawsuit for rape and murder fails to deliver justice.
FILMMAKERS
PARTNERS
TOPICS
SHARE