This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), taking place from September 4 – 14. It also marks the third year of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s three-pronged partnership with the festival, which includes the Sloan Science and Technology Pitch. One of TIFF’s prestigious talent development programs, the Sloan Science and Technology Pitch affords four artists a platform to present a science- or technology-related project to a live audience, including a curated panel of influential members of the entertainment industry. This special opportunity grants participants not only the privilege of being spotlighted at the center of a major international film festival, but the chance to garner valuable creative feedback while forging new connections within the industry. Read more about this year’s participants and their projects below. Sloan Science & Film will be on the ground at TIFF 50 covering the festival, so stay tuned for further coverage of the exciting works being presented at this significant event.
INVERSES by Lizzi Oyebode
Logline: Mathematician Emmy Noether faces her toughest test when the Nazis seize power in Germany. Inspired by true events.
Oyebode previously received the 2024 Sundance Institute and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Commissioning Grant for this feature project.
MCNAIR by Nile Price
Logline: MCNAIR tells the largely unheralded true story of the African American astronaut Dr. Ronald McNair and his journey as a member of NASA’s most diverse class during the historic Space Shuttle Program.
Price previously earned a 2023 Sloan Screenwriting Grant at his alma mater, NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.
THE RINGS OF SATURN by Tanju Özdemir
Logline: A pregnant Greek-American astrophysicist, working on the first image of a black hole (M87), travels to northeastern Turkey to trace her late mother’s origins, only to be drawn into the unravelling memory of an aging woman with Alzheimer’s and a village still haunted by the Greek-Turkish population exchange, forcing her to reconcile cosmic discovery with personal and historical loss.
WHY WE LOVE by David Wilner
Logline: When a pioneering love scientist recruits four very different volunteers — a former nun, a restless husband in an open marriage, a heartbroken fiancé, and a guarded trans woman — to map the brain’s lust, love, and attachment centers, she discovers that proving love’s biology may force her to confront the riskiest experiment of all: her own heart. Based on the groundbreaking life and work of Dr. Helen Fisher.
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