Tribeca Film Institute® Selects Independent Projects to Participate in Meetings at TFI Network

Each year Tribeca Film Institute® (TFI) selects several exceptional independent projects from like-minded partnering film organizations as well as the TFI grantee applicant pool to participate in meetings at TFI Network – our filmmaker/industry market during the Tribeca Film Festival.®

These meetings provide an opportunity for filmmakers to meet and make valuable connections with industry executives, financiers, producers, marketers, and other key parties who can potentially help their projects.

This year TFI is proud to announce that we will host ten documentary projects and three scripted projects, which have not been fiscally supported by TFI. These thirteen films, in varying stages of production, feature unique storytelling approaches from some of the most exciting filmmakers working today, including TFI alum Angela Tucker (Black Folk Don’t, Tribeca All Access® Alumni grant 2014).

Subjects range from becoming a controversial shaman, to the trans rights movement, to a Pakistani woman finding herself through wrestling. The filmmakers will take meetings with members of industry during TFI Network on Tuesday, April 19 and Wednesday, April 20.

The films participating this year are:

Scripted

Almost Adults: Directed and Executive Produced by Sarah Rotella; Written and Executive Produced by Adrianna Dilonardo. A platonic love story about two life long best friends struggling to keep their friendship together as their lives head in different directions.

Goodbye Casey Trade: Directed and Written by Amanda Brennan; Produced by Rob Cristiano. In order to torment the people in her life who have neglected her, teen oddball Casey Trade enlists an outcast’s help to fake her own suicide. She soon finds out that the devoted attention of her cohort presents a new set of problems.

Paper Chase: Directed, Written and Produced by Angela Tucker; Written and Produced by Lauren Domino. A comedy about a young African-American woman who is forced to turn to her eccentric community to raise the money to get to college.

Signature Move: Co-written, Starring and Produced by Fawzia Mirza; Co-Written by Lisa Donato; Directed by Jennifer Reeder; Produced by Eugene Park and Brian Hieggelke. A thirtysomething Pakistani woman from Chicago takes care of her TV-obsessed mother, while seeking strength in love and wrestling.

Documentary

All the Queens Horses: Directed by Kelly Richmond Pope, Ph.D., CPA; Produced by Kelly Richmond Pope, Ph.D., Raymond Lambert, and Kristyn Avalos. Rita Crundwell, former city comptroller of Dixon, IL (pop. 15, 838) committed the largest municipal fraud in American history when she stole $53 million and remained undetected for 20 years. All the Queen’s Horses follows her crime, her lavish lifestyle and the small town she left in her wake. In Partnership With Kartemquin Films - Diverse Voices in Documentary

Canary in a Coal Mine: Directed by Jennifer Brea; Produced by Jennifer Brea, Patricia Gillespie, and Lindsey Dryden. Four families and one bedridden filmmaker fight to live in spite of the most devastating, prevalent, and invisible disease your doctor has never (really) heard of.

El Compromiso de las Sombras: Directed by Sandra Luz López Barroso; Produced by Maricarmen Merino Mora. In a small town in the Costa Chica of Guerrero lives Lizbeth, a transsexual woman who guides the souls of the deceased in their transit towards death. In Collaboration With DocuLab.8 Guadalajara (FICG – Guadalajara International Film Festival)

Gringo Shamans: Directed by Micaela Saxer and Quentin Andre; Produced by Micaela Saxer and Izabella Tzenkova. Ron’s life takes a turn when he moves to Peru to become a shaman. After years of training in the jungle, the Ayahuasca boom propels him from monk to superstar, possibly threatening the integrity of an ancient tradition.

Queen of the People (Reinas Y Cenicientas): Directed by Mónica Taboada; Produced by David Herrera, Fahrenheit and Guerrero. A beauty pageant in the slums of Colombia has turned into a nest of racial tensions. Three young women want to become the Queens of the people, but as days pass, they will realize that this beauty contest is not the fairy tale of their dreams. In Collaboration With the Cartagena Film Festival (FICCI)

The Family I Had (working title): Directed by Katie Green and Carlye Rubin; Produced by Katie Green, Carlye Rubin, Tina Grapenthin, and Marc Abrams. What appears at first to be an isolated incident of a 13-year-old boy killing his sister slowly dissolves into an illuminating anatomy of a family fraught with mental illness, intra-family violence, addiction, love and fear.

The Mask That Grins & Lies: Directed by Martine Granby; Produced by Clancy Calkins. The Mask that Grins and Lies follows the lives of three black women who are coping with mental illness while traversing stigmas that prohibits women of color from seeking treatment. These barricades challenge the stereotypes that haunt black communities in America. In Partnership With Kartemquin Films - Diverse Voices in Documentary

Sylvia & Marsha: Directed by David France; Produced by Kimberly Reed and L.A. Teodosio; Executive Produced by Joy Tomchin. The origin story for the trans movement comes to light as the mysterious case of Marsha P. Johnson, moribund for decades, gains traction with the NYPD. Will bringing closure for the founder of the trans rights movement help stop a record-breaking crime wave against transwomen of color?

Will She Win The War?: Directed and Produced by Mina Keshavarz. Roghieh, a woman in Southern Iran, is trying to secure jobs for over 800 women in her community through a Bazaar she established and runs, but she continues to receive threats from the mayor. He wants to destroy the Bazaar and build a big shopping mall. In Partnership With Greenhouse Forum

Weight Throwers: Directed by Hind Bensari; Produced by Vibeke Vogel. Weight Throwers follows the struggle of a young, jobless and disabled generation who strive to conquer the Rio Paralympic Games in order to have a shot at ordinary life at home in Morocco. Becoming a star athlete is their pursuit of love and acceptance in a country uninterested in the fate of those who are different. In Partnership With Greenhouse Forum