Female-Focused Athena Film Festival Announces Grant Winners, Honorees

The Athena Film Festival has selected its 2022 grant winners and honorees, The Hollywood Reporter can reveal exclusively.

The Barnard College-based celebration of female leadership is awarding a total of $65,000 to help women and non-binary filmmakers further their projects.

Ida Rodriguez Joglar’s Kili Big is set to receive the third annual Athena Breakthrough Award, sponsored by Netflix, which is a $25,000 grant given to a feature-length film, directed by a first- or second-time female director, without U.S. distribution. All three of the Breakthrough Award winners have been women of color.

“We know that women of color are still extremely underrepresented behind the camera in the film industry,” Athena artistic director and co-founder Melissa Silverstein said in a statement. “The Breakthrough Award is one way we are contributing to bolstering the pipeline of diverse filmmakers working on women-centric stories.”

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Joglar added, “This being my first feature film, I don’t think I dared dream of receiving this sort of recognition. I have learned so much about breaking through the barriers of judgment, of stereotypes and self-doubt, from the women in this film. I am forever grateful and honored that they trusted me to tell their story. Thank you Athena Film Festival for this honor and for providing a platform that supports and lifts up women’s voices and their stories.”

The festival also revealed the winners of the Chinonye Chukwu Emerging Writer Award, named for the Clemency writer-director whose unproduced screenplay was previously on the Black List-inspired Athena List.

The two honorees, who participated in Athena’s Screenwriting Lab and will each receive a $10,000 grant, are Kelsie Mason Ramos’ Book of Genevieve and Nic Yulo’s Laylayon.

The festival has also announced the 2022 winners of its Black List-inspired Athena List of unproduced screenplays centered around women leaders, which previously included Clemency and the Ruth Bader Ginsburg film On the Basis of Sex.

This year’s Athena List winners are Sunflower: The Fannie Lou Hamer Story, by Aunjanue Ellis; The Gatekeeper, by Jennifer Vanderbes; and Ray of Life, by Kate Sheffield. Finalists include The Language of Wolves by Nan Schmid; PLAÇAGE by G. Michelle Robinson; Adult Bat Mitzvah by Rachel McKay Steele; and Tidal Disruption by Kiran Deol.

This year, the festival also launched a Women in Science Development Fund, sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, to support stories about women in STEM. This year’s winners, each receiving a grant of $10,000 are Jane Barr’s Vision and Michael Ann Dobbs’ The Inventrix: Margaret Knight Biopic.

And the festival has selected two projects from the Athena Film Festival writers lab, Bound by Ice, by Nancy Kates, and Scarce, by Mrittika “Mou” Sarin, to receive Alfred P. Sloan fellowships.

The 12th annual Athena Film Festival is set to run from March 11-13 in person and virtually from March 11-20.

More information about this year’s winners is available here.