2014 Gucci Tribeca Documentary Fund Grantees Announced

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Pills The Tribeca Film Institute has unveiled this year’s grantees of the Gucci Tribeca Documentary FundNine projects have been selected from 560 submissions from more than 50 countries to receive a total of $150,000 in grants.

The Fund provides production and finishing finances, along with year-round support and guidance to feature-length documentary films that highlight and humanize critical domestic and international social issues.

Also, for the fourth year, the Kering Foundation has partnered with the Gucci Tribeca Documentary Fund to present the Spotlighting Women Documentary Award. The award provides grants to three film projects that the jury believes illuminate the extraordinary strength of character and contributions of women from around the world.

As usual, the jury was comprised from a diverse spectrum of the arts, and they were Claire Aguilar (executive content advisor for Independent Television Service – ITVS); actor and producer Alec Baldwin; producer & director Ross Kauffman (E-TEAM, Born Into Brothels); multiple Grammy winning singer/songwriter and partner in Get Lifted Film Co. John Legend and Alyse Nelson (president and CEO of Vital Voices).

Now in its seventh year, the Fund has supported 54 films and provided more than $910,000 in grants. Recent alumni of the grant have received high praise on the festival circuit including 2014 Tribeca Film Festival Best Documentary winner Point and Shoot, 2014 Sundance U.S. Documentary Best Directing winner The Case Against 8, and 2014 SXSW Best Doc winner The Great Invisible.

The projects that will collectively receive $100,000 total in funding for the 2014 Gucci Tribeca Documentary Fund are:

3 ½ MINUTES, Directed and Produced by Marc Silver (2013 TFI New Media Fund Grantee for Who Is Dayani Cristal). 3 ½ Minutes dissects the shooting death of 17-year-old Jordan Davis, the aftermath of this systemic tragedy and contradictions within the American criminal justice system.

A FLICKERING TRUTH, Written, Produced and Directed by Pietra Brettkelly. A Flickering Truth unwraps the world of three dreamers living amongst the dust of Afghanistan’s 100 years of war as they struggle to protect and restore 8,000 hours of fragile film. What truths will emerge from the cloak of time?

AFGHAN JUSTICE, Directed by Nicole N. Horanyi; Produced by Helle Faber. 38-year-old Kimberley Motley left her husband and three kids in the US in order to work as a defense lawyer in Kabul, Afghanistan. She is the only foreign lawyer, not to mention the only woman, who has a license to work in Afghan courts. Together with her Afghan assistant, Kimberley defends Western and Afghan clients accused of criminal actions.

COLD RUSH, Directed by May Abdalla; Produced by Elhum Shakerifar. Cold Rush is set at the front line of the fast changing Arctic. As the UN decides how to divide up state sovereignty into the High North we travel into the lives of American entrepreneurs, Danish scientists and Russian priests who are investing in the thawing ice and the young island man who is trying to stop them. A timely documentary about the race for the last frontier.

FREEDOM FIGHTERS, Directed by Jamie Meltzer; Produced by Kate McLean (2012 TFI New Media Fund Grantee for Immigrant Nation). There’s a new detective agency in Dallas, Texas, started by a group of exonerated men, with decades in prison served between them. They call themselves the Freedom Fighters, and they are looking to free innocent people still behind bars. Freedom Fighters explores their stories of wrongful imprisonment, their struggles to start their lives over again as free men, and their quest to help others who may be innocent.

OUT OF MIND, Produced and Directed by Kristi Jacobson; Out of Mind investigates an invisible part of the American justice system: the use of isolation and segregation in US prisons, commonly known as solitary confinement. With unprecedented access inside a prison tackling the issue head on, the film explores this divisive issue through the experiences of those on both sides of the bars.

The projects that will collectively receive $50,000 total in funding for the 2014 Spotlighting Women Documentary Award are:

AWAKENING, Directed by Gini Reticker; Produced by Beth Levison. Against the backdrop of the Arab uprisings, Awakening – a multimedia initiative anchored by a documentary film – tells the stories of five fearless women from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region who risk everything in their fight for human rights for all, despite flagrant efforts to silence them.

INDIA’S DAUGHTER, Directed and Produced by Leslee Udwin. This documentary pays tribute to the remarkable and inspiring short life of Jyoti Singh and documents the brutality of her gang-rape and murder in Delhi in 2012. It also examines the mindset of the perpetrators, and it sets these specifics against a wider in-depth exploration of why rape happens.

THE STORM MAKERS, Written and Directed by Guillaume Suon; Produced by Rithy Panh and Julien Roumy. Filmmaker Guillaume Suon turns his cinematic lens on globalization and contemporary Cambodia.