The 2026 San Francisco International Film Festival (SFFILM), currently underway through May 4, has recently announced the 2025 Sloan Science in Cinema Fellows and latest recipients of the Sloan Stories of Science Development Fund. These projects represent the latest works to earn support from the Alfred P. Sloan foundation as part of their ongoing Sloan Science in Cinema Initiative in partnership with SFFILM. They join the previously announced winner of the 2026 Sloan Science on Screen Award, Ildikó Enyedi’s SILENT FRIEND – which will celebrate its New York Premiere at Museum of the Moving Image’s First Look festival on May 2, 2026. Read more about these exciting new works below.
Winners of the 2025 Sloan Science in Cinema Fellowship:
TALK BLACK
Writer/Director: Destiny Macon
A timid engineer develops an audacious split personality to help her stand up to the boys' club at work and prevent "urban renewal" in the historically black neighborhood where she grew up.
This marks the second Sloan grant for Destiny Macon’s TALK BLACK, which previously earned a 2023 Sloan Screenwriting Fellowship at Athena Film Festival.
THE GREEN CORRIDOR
Writer/Director: Justin Kim WooSŏk
Joseph Yoon, a Korean-American anthropologist, returns to his homeland on a Fulbright grant, drawn by rumors of a tiger’s reappearance in the DMZ—a creature long thought extinct on the peninsula. As he partners with a sound ecologist working along the border’s edge, their pursuit transforms into a confrontation with colonial ghosts, personal grief, and the limitations of human perception.
Awarded to two projects at the screenwriting phase of development, the Sloan Science in Cinema Filmmaker Fellowship celebrates projects that explore scientific or technological themes or characters by awarding their creators a $35,000 cash grant and access to the FilmHouse, SFFILM's creative hub independent filmmakers. Previous winners include filmmakers Sara Crow, David Rafailedes, and Lara Palmqvist.
Winners of the 2025 Sloan Stories of Science Development Fund:
HELLO NEIGHBOR
Writer: Lane Unsworth
With humanity on the cusp of potentially finding life on Jupiter’s moon, Europa, a lonely and retired child science entertainer gets recruited to the NASA public relations team to help answer the question: if we do find life, how do we tell everyone?
ONE INCH FROM EARTH
Writers: Sid Gopinath, Aditya Joshi
A group of plucky scientists must overcome NASA leadership, rival teams, the specter of Mars, and the US government to launch a mission that proves life exists on a distant moon of Jupiter.
The SFFILM Sloan Stories of Science Development Fund awards up to $20,000 grants to filmmakers whose nascent scripts draw inspiration from the Stories of Science Sourcebook. Composed of significant discoveries in STEM made in recent years, the sourcebook offers a wellspring of inspiration to filmmakers interested in crafting compelling narratives which dramatize the scientific breakthroughs and discoveries of our time.
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