Film Independent Selects 10 Projects and 21 Filmmakers for 2015 Fast Track Program; Awards $70k in Alfred P. Sloan Grants

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Category: Entertainment News

Published on Tuesday, 16 June 2015 20:58

2015 Fast Track Projects and Fellows

Title: A Paso de Mangles

Producer: Joseph La Morte

Co-Writer/Producer: Gloria La Morte

Co-Writer/Director: Paola Mendoza

Logline: A Paso de Mangles is the story of three women whose lives are caught in the crosshairs of the raging drug war in Colombia. Inspired by true events, these women’s interlocking stories celebrate the resiliency of the human spirit in the face of insurmountable odds.

Title: Dark Forest

Writer/Director: Elena Greenlee

Producer: Márcia Nunes

Logline: A hipster-millennial, equally versed in neuroscience and party drugs, steps out of her depth into the complex and psychedelic world of Amazonian shamanism. 

Title: Ethel

Producer: Anil Baral

Logline: Based on the true story of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and the “crime of the century”, a family is torn apart when a young couple is accused of stealing the secret to the atomic bomb. 

Title: First Match

Producer: Chanelle Elaine

Producer: Veronica Nickel

Logline: Hardened by years in foster care, a teenage girl from Brooklyn’s Brownsville neighborhood, decides that joining the all-boys high school wrestling team is the only way back to her estranged father. 

Title: Give Me Liberty

Writer/Producer: Alice Austen

Writer/Producer/Director: Kirill Mikhanovsky

Logline: In this raw dark comedy set in Milwaukee, a naïve immigrant teams up with a Russian thug, breaks the law to save his Alzheimer's stricken Grandpa, forms deep bonds with a diverse group of iconic under-class characters, and finds love in the unlikeliest of places.

Title: Last Call (documentary)

Director/Producer: Lana Wilson

Logline: A remarkable Japanese Buddhist priest uses a range of unorthodox methods to help desperate men and women re-discover the will to live. But when a health crisis puts him at serious risk, can he live by the same advice he gives out?

Title: Millie to the Moon

Producer: Alexandra Johnes

Director: Jen McGowan

Logline: Millie To The Moon is a comedy about a sarcastic young woman named Millie who, while being displaced from her role as caregiver to her autistic brother and ailing mother, pursues new interests: outer space tourism and her male co-worker.

Title: Shot in the Dark (documentary)

Producer: Daniel Patrick Dewes

Producer: Derek Doneen

Director: Dustin Nakao Haider

Logline: For the players on Orr Academy’s basketball team, the court is a haven. Outside, it’s the Westside - a neighborhood racked with gangs, gun trafficking, and violence. Within those walls, each player has his own struggle. But they’ll need to fight together if they ever want to break out.

Title: The Bad Kids (documentary)

Director/Producer: Keith Fulton

Producer: Molly O’Brien

Director: Lou Pepe

Logline: At a remote Mojave Desert high school, extraordinary educators believe that empathy and life skills, more than academics, give at-risk students command of their own futures.  This coming-of-age story watches education combat the crippling effects of poverty in the lives of these so-called "bad kids."

Title: Wild Nights

Producer: Megan Gilbride

Director: Kyle Henry

Logline: In Wild Nights, a young Emily Dickinson falls dangerously in love, only to discover her beloved older brother, Austin, has fallen for the same mysterious woman.  As her youthful ideals collide with reality, she learns the meaning of love, loss, independence, and compromise.

Current industry participants include: Alchemy, Amasia Entertainment, Amazon Studios, And So It Begins Entertainment, Apex Entertainment, Black Label, Bloom Project, Broad Green, CAA, Canana, CBS Films, Chicken & Egg/Gamechanger, Cinedigm, CNN Films, Cold Iron Pictures, Dreambridge Capital, Electric City Entertainment, Electric Entertainment, Endgame Entertainment, Europacorp., Film Finances, Inc., Fluency Studios, Fortitude Int'l/BiFrost, Fox Digital, Fox International Channels, Fox Searchlight, Haven, Heidi Levitt Casting, ICM, Indian Paintbrush, Joanna Colbert Casting, Junto Box Films, Loeb & Loeb, Los Angeles Film Festival, Los Angeles Media Fund, Mosaic, Participant Media, Playback Motion Pictures.

Preferred Content, Radiant Films, Rhino Films, River Road, Roadside Attractions, San Francisco Film Society Filmmaker360, Sandbar Pictures, Shoreline Entertainment, Slated, Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions, Straight Up Films, Sundance Documentary Fund, Sundance Institute, Super Crispy Films, The Film Collaborative, Treehouse Pictures, UTA, Vega Baby, Voltage Pictures, WME, and XYZ Films.

Previous Fast Track projects that have been completed and released include Chloe Zhao’s Songs My Brothers Taught Me, which premiered in U.S. Competition at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival and screened at the Director’s Fortnight at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival.

Out in the Night directed by blair dorosh-walther and The Life and Mind of Mark DeFriest directed by Gabriel London which both premiered at the 2014 Los Angeles Film Festival; Kyle Patrick Alvarez and Cookie Carosella’s C.O.G., which premiered in U.S. Dramatic Competition at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and was released theatrically; Robbie Pickering’s Spirit Award-nominated Natural Selection; Tom Putnam and Brenna Sanchez’s BURN, which premiered at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival.

Katherine Fairfax Wright and Malika Zouhali-Worrall’s Call Me Kuchu, which premiered at the 2012 Berlin International Film Festival; Cherien Dabis’ Amreeka, which was nominated for three Film Independent Spirit Awards in 2010; Courtney Hunt’s Academy Award and Spirit Award-nominated Frozen River; Jennifer Westfeldt’s Ira and Abby; Jessica Sanders’ award-winning documentary After Innocence; Scott Prendergast’s Kabluey, starring Lisa Kudrow and Teri Garr; and many more.