The USC School of Cinematic Arts has announced the winners of the 2025 Sloan Screenwriting and Production Grants. Each new grantee has received support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to advance the development or production of a science-themed project helmed by a filmmaker from the university’s distinguished graduate program. Read more about these exciting new works below – including USC’s finalist currently in the running for the 2025 Sloan Student Grand Jury Prize, SEVEN MILES DOWN. As the Grand Jury Prize has gone to USC finalists two years in a row – Brittany Wang’s THIN ICE in 2024 and Justine Beed’s LA FORZA in 2023 – Jesse Werkman’s nominated pilot is also the university’s chance to boast a ‘hat trick’ if it wins.
Winners of the 2025 USC Sloan Screenwriting Grants:
THE GAME by Rita Pereyra
Mariana cleans a games studio every night. She and her precocious young daughter live in a cramped apartment, takes care of her disabled father, and has no future prospects. She does have a unique skill: performing complex mathematical computations in her head which is observed by a game designer who encourages her to learn computer science at the local community college and then apply for a junior level position at his company. Initially reluctant, suspicious and faced with family crises, Mariana ultimately succeeds.
SEVEN MILES DOWN by Jesse Werkman
In the wreckage of postwar Europe, a disillusioned economics professor is drawn back into his father’s quest to build the first submersible capable of diving to the bottom of the sea, where he must rediscover the power of progress and exploration in a fractured world.
Winners of the 2025 USC Sloan Production Grants:
BREAKTHROUGH by Jacob Piller
Based on true events of Charles Banting, a physician who after WWI worked on a new serum to treat diabetes and his personal journey and ambition that drove him to the edge of moral collapse. Throughout his research, Banting refused help until his boss assigned another scientist to work with him who successfully purified the new insulin extract to use on a boy dying from acute diabetes. Banting and the co-scientist received the Nobel Prize for Medicine.
DEFIANT ONES by Candace Williamson
After seeing WWII injured soldiers in hospitals trying to regain their independence, Bessie Blount, a Black physiotherapist invents a device to allow seriously wounded and amputees to eat food without physical assistance. The hospital dismisses her efforts even after she creates a working prototype, and she goes on a local tv show to try to get funding. The story ends abruptly before she does become successful as a forensic handwriting expert assisting police and later as the Chief Medical Examiner for the Virginia police department.
FILMMAKERS
PARTNERS
TOPICS
SHARE