Tribeca Institute Announces Winners

The Tribeca Film Institute (TFI) (www.tribecafilminstitute.org) today announced the films that will receive financial and creative support from the TFI Sloan Filmmaker Fund, provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.  This year, of 128 applicants, six projects will be awarded a total of $140,000 to help filmmakers both create and distribute their films.  In addition, grant recipients will also receive year-round mentorship from science experts and members of the film industry.  The TFI Sloan Filmmaker Fund awards grants to narrative film projects that dramatize science and technology themes in film or that portray scientists, engineers, or mathematicians in prominent character roles.

The films selected tell a broad range of stories including a journalist uncovering the truth about great white sharks, a young girl’s emotional connection to global warming, the partnership between an astronomer and an eccentric enthusiast, a librarian’s chronicling of obsolete things in a changing world, and the complications, both moral and marital, faced by the scientists who developed chemical warfare and the atomic bomb.

“We are thrilled to join Tribeca for the 9th consecutive year in supporting screenwriters and directors who tackle science and technology themes and characters in innovative ways,” stated Doron Weber, Sloan Vice President.  “The impressive body of work by this year’s winners shows us how entertaining and unexpected the world can look when seen through a lens enlivened by scientific insight and understanding. “  

 Selected projects for funding:

The Devil’s Teeth – On a forbidding island off the coast of San Francisco, a journalist finds purpose when she joins two scientists in their struggle to protect the world's most misunderstood predator: the great white shark.  Based on a true story.

Director: Paul Atkins

Screenwriter: Brett Wagner

Producers: Grace Atkins, Nicolas Gonda

Executive Producer: Terrence Malick

Future Weather – When she's abandoned by her eccentric single mom, a 13-yr-old loner grows fixated on environmental disaster, forcing her and her grandmother to confront each other and the things they can't control.

Director/Screenwriter: Jenny Deller

Producer: Kristin Fairweather

Executive Producers: Jennifer Dubin and Cora Olson

Cast Includes: Perla Haney-Jardine and Lili Taylor

Haber – The true story of how the father of modern agriculture became the father of chemical warfare.

Director/Screenwriter: Daniel Ragussis

Producer: Bogdan Tomassini-Büchner

Cast Includes:  Christian Berkel and Juliane Köhler

Map of the Universe – An astronomer is poised to make scientific history in his quest to find an outer solar planet – until his findings are disputed by a prodigiously talented, but eccentric, teenaged star spotter.

Screenwriters: Tim Firth and Dan Futterman

Producers: Nick Barton and Suzanne Mackie

Midnight Sun – The story of Los Alamos and the creation and testing of the atom bomb, as seen through the eyes of two young scientists drafted into service, and their wives.

Director: Christopher Eigeman

Produced by Dana Brunetti with his and Kevin Spacey's company, Trigger Street Productions.

Cast Includes: Jesse Eisenberg and Kate Bosworth

Obselidia – On his quest to create an encyclopedia of obsolete things, a librarian joins forces with a silent film projectionist, and together they journey to Death Valley to interview a maverick scientist who is predicting the end of the world.

Director/Screenwriter: Diane Bell

Producers: Chris Byrne and Matthew Medlin

Cast Includes: Michael Piccirilli, Gaynor Howe and Frank Hoyt Taylor

Sandy Mandelberger, Festival Dailies Editor