Mountainfilm Grant Initiative awards a total of $60,000
Mountainfilm is excited to announce the 2023 Commitment Grant recipients. From hundreds of applicants, 27 projects were chosen that embody Mountainfilm’s mission to inspire audiences to create a better world.
“Thanks to the continued generosity of Torri & Mark Savoff and Mountainfilm’s Filmmaker Fund, we are able to do what we do,” says Senior Programmer and Festival Manager Lucy Lerner. “the pool of applicants keeps growing and are filled with stories that need to be told — which meant the grants committee had a tough job. We’re proud to have selected a batch of terrific projects that are full of potential to inspire, educate and mobilize communities. We’re so excited to support them.”
“We are thrilled by the final slate of films that were selected for grant support this year,” says Festival Director Suzan Beraza. “The grantees are a testament to Mountainfilm’s tenet of ‘celebrating indomitable spirit,’ bringing stories to life that inspire and galvanize us in a movement to affect change. Look for these films in the coming years, as the grants initiative is a fantastic pipeline for festival programming in the future.”
The Commitment Grant initiative is part of Mountainfilm’s pledge to support projects that explore a range of socially, politically and culturally relevant topics that are rooted in the festival’s mission to inspire audiences to create a better world.
Many past grant recipients have not only premiered their films at Mountainfilm but have won numerous festival awards. Previous projects supported by the Commitment Grant include Skye Fitzgerald’s Oscar-nominated Hunger Ward and Lifeboat; Andrew Nadkarni’s Between Earth & Sky; Adam Nawrot and Sonia Szczesna's Godspeed, Los Polacos!; Zeppelin Zeerip’s Apayauq; Brad Allgood’s Patrol; and Meg Griffith’s and Scott Faris’sImpossible Town, to name just a few.
The 2023 Commitment Grant winners are:
A Capitol Case, Andrea Kalin
A Good Wolf, Ramey Newell
Burn Season, Max Maldonado & Jose Jesus Zaragoza
Carl Runs the Paper, Manish Khanal & Joey Horan
Cop City: A City in the Forest, Lev Omelchenko & Nolan Huber-Rhoades
Daddy, Hannah Myers
Dear You, Aurora Brachman
Dog Salmon Returns, Connor Ryan
Faith, Mo Scarpelli
Fenced, Gabrielle Garcia-Pardo
Heart of the Ocean, Trevor Wallace & Max Lowe
Labor of Love, Dana Romanoff
Modify, Vasu Sojitra & Jessica Jane Hart
Parachute Kids, Leo Chiang
Pat! Pat! Pat!, Ash Brandon
Shifted Landscapes, Jamie Meltzer
Sister Senators,Emily Harrold
Taking the Reins, Sally Rubin & Kristy Guevara-Flanagan
The Day After, Yuval Orr
The Kid, Alyssa Fedele & Zachary Fink
The Last Chinamperos, Megan Alldis
The Richest Hill on Earth, Michael T. Workman
The River, Caitlyn Greene
The Whitebark Witch, Morgan Heim
Tracker, Courtney Quinn
Tushurai, Robert Hope & Anna R Japaridze
Unless Something Goes Terribly Wrong, Kaitlyn Schwalje & Alex Wolf Lewis