(Still from Leslee Udwin’s “India’s Daughter,” courtesy of The Tribeca Film Institute)
The Tribeca Film Institute and its partner Gucci have selected nine documentaries to receive funding from the Gucci Tribeca Documentary Fund. The GTDF supports documentary films as an artistic medium that carries with them the ability to bring to light the relevant and often difficult issues the world faces today. The fund provides monetary support to feature-length documentaries that focus on critical issues of social importance from around the world.
This year, the nine films that were selected were chosen from over 560 submissions gathered from over 50 countries and together they will receive a total of $150,000 in grants. Now in its seventh year, the Fund has given its support to 54 films and provided more than $910,000 in grants.
The jury included Claire Aguilar, actor Alec Baldwin, filmmaker Ross Kauffman, singer John Legend, and Vital Voices president and CEO Alyse Nelson.
Additionally, three of the documentaries were selected for the Spotlighting Women Documentary Award, which is sponsored by The Kering Foundation and provides additional funding to projects that illuminate the courage, compassion, extraordinary strength of character and contributions of women from all around the world. These three films will receive $50,000 in total grant money.
The 2014 Winners
3 1/2 MINUTES
Director: Marc Silver
Producer: Marc Silver
Focuses the November, 2012, shooting of Jordan Davis, a black teenager, by Michael Dunn, a white man, in Florida. The killing, which took place several months after Trayvon Martin’s death, once again highlighted the long, violent history of race and guns in America.
A FLICKERING TRUTH
Writer: Pietra Brettkelly
Director: Pietra Brettkelly
Producer: Pietra Brettkelly
Profiles three film preservationists working in Afghanistan to protect and restore 8,000 hours of film.
AFGHAN JUSTICE
Director: Nicole H. Horanyi
Producer: Helle Faber
Revolves around 38-year-old Kimberley Motley, who 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 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
Director: May Abdalla
Producer: Elhum Shakerifar
Set at the front line of the fast changing Arctic. As the UN decides how to divide up state sovereignty into the High North, the documentary delves 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.
FREEDOM FIGHTERS
Director: Jamie Meltzer
Producer: Kate McLean
“Freedom Fighters” is a detective agency in Dallas, Texas, started by a group of exonerated men, who seek to free innocent people still behind bars. The film 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 actually be innocent.
OUT OF MIND
Director: Kristi Jacobson
Producer: Kristi Jacobson
Investigates the use of isolation and segregation in US prisons, which is commonly known as solitary confinement. The filmmakers gained unprecedented access inside a prison in order to tackle this divisive issue head on.
2014 Spotlighting Women Documentary Award Recipients
AWAKENING
Director: Gini Reticker
Producer: Beth Levison
Set against the backdrop of the Arab uprisings, this multimedia project, which is anchored by a documentary film, tells the stories of five women from the Middle East and North Africa who risk everything in their fight for human rights for all, despite all efforts to silence them.
INDIA’S DAUGHTER
Director: Leslee Udwin
Producer: Leslee Udwin
Examines the remarkable and inspiring short life of Jyoti Singh, who was brutally gang-raped and murdered 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
Writer: Guillaume Suon
Director: Guillaume Suon
Producer: Rithy Panh, Julien Roumy
Explores the globalization of contemporary Cambodia.
