Introducing the 2020 Sloan Filmmaker Fund Grantees
We're excited to team up the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation again to announce the 2020 TFI Sloan Filmmaker Fund grantees. These filmmakers will be awarded grants totaling $150,000 and formalized mentorship. The TFI Sloan Filmmaker Fund supports fiction films and series with compelling and realistic themes of science, math, and technology.
Get to know this year's grantees:
MABEL
Director: Nicholas Ma
Screenwriters: Joy Goodwin, Nicholas Ma
Producers: Luca Borghese, Helen Estabrook
Logline: No one at her new school gets Callie, an awkward kid whose one friend, Mabel, is a potted plant – except Ms. Garrett, the charismatic science teacher who introduces her to the controversial world of “plant intelligence.” Desperate to impress her teacher, Callie starts building a secret greenhouse laboratory in her backyard, but Callie’s obsession threatens her first real connection with another kid.
THE MUSHROOMERS
Director/Screenwriter: Erica Liu
Producer: Yu-Hao (David) Su
Logline: Persie, a recently widowed mycologist, attempts to heal a contaminated old-growth forest in Washington State using only super fungi – but the mechanics of Mother Nature and her own mourning prove far fickler than anticipated.
NEON TILAPIA
Director/Screenwriter: Tony Koros
Producer: Elizabeth Charles
Logline: When a dangerous water-weed threatens to take over his lake and livelihood, a fisherman in rural Kenya enlists the help of his granddaughter to fight back using glowing, genetically modified fish. As strange lights appear in the lake, chaos erupts in the village.
TADPOLE
Director/Screenwriter: Ryan Craver
Logline: When a closeted, trans high school student’s experiments on sex-swapping tadpoles ignite an Evangelical backlash in the local news, he becomes the reluctant face of America’s battle between religious and science education.
MABEL, THE MUSHROOMERS, and NEON TILAPIA will participate in the 2020 TFI Network filmmaker/industry market. TADPOLE will participate in the 2021 TFI Network.
