Tribeca Film Institute Announces 14 Documentary and Scripted Filmmaking Teams As The 2020 Tribeca All Access Grantees

2020.03.20

New York, New York – March 20, 2020 – Tribeca Film Institute (TFI) has announced the 2020 grantees for its flagship program, Tribeca All Access. Fourteen teams, all working on scripted or documentary feature films in various stages (from development through post-production), will receive $10,000 grants to go towards key needs of their projects. Each team will attend Tribeca Film Institute’s TFI Network, the organization’s filmmaker/industry market. TFI Network usually occurs during the Tribeca Film Festival but has been postponed to ensure the safety of filmmakers and industry, who travel from around the world in order to make valuable connections during this event.  

This is the seventeenth year TFI has awarded the Tribeca All Access grant. Previous participants include Isabel Sandoval (2019), whose film LINGUA FRANCA premiered at Venice Days in 2019; Hannah Jayanti (2019), whose film TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES premiered at Rotterdam International Film Festival in 2020; and Ekwa Msangi (2018), whose film FAREWELL AMOR premiered at Sundance in 2020.  

“We’re thrilled to carry on the legacy of Tribeca All Access with this group of directors, producers, and writers,” said Amy Hobby, Executive Director at Tribeca Film Institute. “These creators are developing projects that are gripping, distinctive, and timely.” 

The directors of these projects are based in eight countries spanning three continents. Thirteen of the fourteen projects are directed by and/or produced by women.  

Here are the fourteen project teams that are receiving Tribeca All Access grants and attending TFI Network: 
 

Scripted Grantees 

BURNING WELL  
Screenwriter/Director: Mary Evangelista 
Producers: Cecilia Meija and Karishma Dev Dube 
Director based in US 
Will be filmed in US 
Logline: Fran’s life in New York City as a successful genderqueer model and influencer is upturned when their father gets into a serious car accident. Returning home for the first time in years, Fran must reckon with the people they left behind in order to be who they are now -- including an unrequited high school love.   

DESIRE 
Screenwriter/Director: Tyler Rabinowitz 
Producer: Jeremy Truong 
Director based in US 
Will be filmed in US 
Logline: Aaron, an aspiring musical theater performer, gets a survival job as an instructor at a high-end spin studio in Hell’s Kitchen. As his magnetic and demanding boss pulls him deep into the worlds of cult fitness and gay nightlife, he struggles with his own self-worth and loses sight of his Broadway dreams.  

DOS ESTACIONES 
Co-screenwriter/Director: Juan Pablo González 
Producers: Jamie Gonçalves and Makena Buchanan 
Director based in Mexico  
Will be filmed in Mexico 
Logline: In the bucolic hills of the Jalisco Highlands, iron-willed businesswoman María García fights the impending collapse of her family’s tequila factory. As she fights to keep her family’s legacy alive, her understanding of the world is shattered by forces out of her control. 

LA HIJA DE TODOS LOS RABIAS 
Screenwriter/Director: Laura Baumeister 
Producers: Rossana Baumeister and Bruna Haddad 
Director based in Nicaragua 
Will be filmed in Nicaragua 
Logline: Nine-year-old María is left at a recycling factory in Nicaragua by her struggling mother, joining a workforce of other children. Torn between anger and hope, María resorts to her vivid imagination in order to come to terms with her motherʼs absence and make sense of a chaotic world. 

MOTHERHOOD 
Screenwriter/Director: Meryam Joobeur 
Producers: Maria Gracia Turgoen, Sarra Ben Hassen and Nadim Cheikhrouha 
Director based in Canada 
Will be filmed in Tunisia 
Logline: Salha, a mother gifted with prophetic dreams and visions, lives in an isolated village in Tunisia. When her eldest son’s sudden return from Syria coincides with a series of strange disappearances in their community, Salha’s maternal love is tested and the family faces how guilt can haunt the human spirit.  

PEACHES 
Director: Jenny Suen 
Producers: Jonah Greenberg, Coco Francini and Leonard Tee 
Director based in Hong Kong 
Will be filmed in Hong Kong  
Logline: Fanfan scams “sugar daddies” for a living while her best friend Bingbing holds out for true love. Together, they’re forced to confront their differences and existential plights as their “boyfriends” and crimes catch up with them. 

STAMPEDE 
Screenwriter/Director: Sontenish Myers 
Producer: Camille Gatin  
Director based in US 
Will be filmed in US 
Logline: On a southern plantation in the 1800s, Lena is an eleven-year-old slave with telekinetic abilities she cannot control. Lena must keep her powers under wraps when she is separated from her mother to be a house girl, in close quarters with the volatile Master's wife: Elizabeth.  

Documentary Grantees 

ANHELL69  
Director: Theo Montoya 
Producers: Juan Pablo Castrillón, Bianca Oana 
Director based in Colombia 
Filmed in Colombia 
Logline: After members of the queer scene in Medellin Colombia are cast for a vampire movie, the film’s protagonist - Camilo Najar - dies of a heroin overdose at age 21. As the youth in Colombia grapple with a disarmingly high rate of suicide and drug overdoses, the neo-noir documentary ANHELL69 uses a punk rock aesthetic to explore this generation’s “no future” mindset. 

EN UNA ESQUINA DE MEXICO 
Director: Leonor Maldonado 
Producer: Tatiana Graullera 
Director based in Mexico 
Filmed in Mexico 
Logline: Every Friday night, Rigo leaves his family in Brownsville, Texas and crosses the US-Mexico border to return to his hometown of Matamoros where he teaches forty men a choreographed routine. In an environment heavily impacted by drug trafficking, The Dance of the Ejido 20 of Matamoros is a platform where the performers can mourn and release their fears through sweat and physical pain. 

CUSP 
Directors: Parker Hill and Isabel Bethencourt 
Producer: Zachary Luke Kisletvitz 
Directors based in US 
Filmed in US 
Logline: In a small Texas town, four wild-spirited teenage girls search for freedom and navigate early adulthood as they each break away from their past traumas. This raw vérité portrait dives down the rarely-seen rabbit hole of modern girlhood, where adolescence clashes with personal agency.  

DRIVER 
Director/Producer: Nesa Azimi 
Producer: Kellen Quinn 
Director based in US 
Filmed in US 
Logline: DRIVER follows a dynamic community of women long-haul truck drivers. Threatened by routine sexual violence and bound by a system in which multibillion-dollar megacarriers conspire to make individual drivers anonymous and disposable, one woman brings together an unlikely group of drivers to find strength, solidarity, and self-determination on the road. 

INSPIRARE 
Director/Producer: Yuqi Kang 
Producers: Dana Kalmey, Cao Xi 
Director based in Canada 
Filmed in China and Hawaii 
Logline: INSPIRARE is an intimate and unyielding journey exploring female freediving champion Jessea Lu, as she faces her biggest fear: attempting to dive beyond 90 meters deep in one single breath. 

ON THE MOVE 
Director/Producer: Milton Guillén 
Producer: Natalia Hernández 
Screenwriter: Noelia Espinoza 
Director based in US 
Filmed in Denmark, Turkey, Nicaragua and US  
Logline: ON THE MOVE follows three visual artists in exile from Syria, Sudan and Nicaragua as they strive to remain emotionally connected to their turbulent home countries. As the film progresses, a kaleidoscopic view of displacement emerges, drawing similarities and contrasts in the emotional burdens of these artists through the eyes of the movement itself.   

Q 
Director/Producer: Jude Chehab 
Producer: Rita Baghdadi 
Director based in Lebanon and US 
Filmed in Lebanon  
Logline: Born from Syria’s Islamic revivalist movement, the Qubaysiat is a regime-loving Sufi community turned cult fifty years in the making. Q dives deep into the hidden world of the largest Muslim women’s organization through filmmaker Jude Chehab, her mother, and her grandmother’s connections to the mysterious group.