With federal arts funding devastated, and public media under attack, funds like the AFS Grant for Feature Films are more essential than ever. Austin Film Society has just announced the latest round of recipients who will keep independent filmmaking alive and vibrant in Texas.
Established in 1996 as the Texas Filmmakers’ Production Fund, the program has awarded more than $2.6 million to Texas filmmakers, giving an early boost to industry mainstays such as Greg Kwedar and Clint Bentley (Sing Sing), David Lowery (The Green Knight, Pete’s Dragon), Kat Candler (13 Reasons Why, Hellion), Channing Godfrey Peoples (Miss Juneteenth), Annie Silverstein (Bull), and Keith Maitland (Tower). This year’s grants will go to 13 projects from 14 directors: In a sign of the society’s continued commitment to diversity, eight of the recipients identify at female and one as non-binary, three as members of the LGBTQIA+ community, two have a disability, and nine identify with a community of color.
Holly Herrick, AFS Head of Film and Creative Media, explained, “AFS raises more than $200,000 annually to give away as cash grants to emerging filmmakers in Texas. Over the course of nearly 30 years, the AFS Grant has provided a major lift to the state’s creative sector with this important and sustained funding platform for filmmakers. We know that artists are key to our unique culture in Texas. When we support Texas films, we ensure the cultural heritage of our state; the grant remains absolutely pivotal to the development of Texas as a film hub.”
Several prior grant winners make an appear in this latest roster of recipients, such as Iliana Sosa (What We Leave Behind), who has been chosen for her new documentary, Sueños que se te cumplen (Dreams That Come True), and PJ Raval (Who We Become), who receives support to develop his new queer drama, Love Visa.
However, the list also features newcomers like Austin comedian Meghan Ross (“If You Ever Hurt My Daughter, I Swear to God I’ll Let Her Navigate Her Own Emotional Growth“), who makes her feature debut with the pregnancy-centric The Decision.
Find out more about the feature grant program as well as the shorts initiative at austinfilm.org.
Production Funding Grants
Crowned
Documentary feature in production
Twiggy Pucci Garçon (Houston, TX)
This pageant ain’t no Miss America. Crowned is a visually rich feature documentary that, for the first time, unveils the little-known world of underground LGBTQ+ pageants and celebrates the Black and Brown queer and nonbinary people breaking barriers, creating family, and making history.
Gone Without a Past (Working Title)
Narrative feature in production
Julia Gorden (Austin, TX)
Special Award: Stuck On On DCP Award
A withdrawn young woman tasked with locating her grandfather’s debtors stumbles upon an enigmatic Super 8 film by a woman who vanished decades earlier, propelling her into a search through the past where loneliness, lost love, and celluloid reveal the connection between the two missing lives — and her own.
Airport Blvd
Narrative feature in production
Alejandro Hendricks (Austin, TX)
Special Award: New Texas Voices Award
In jazz-filled Austin, a young Black man seeks identity and purpose after a chance encounter, navigating love, loss, and the isolation that comes with change.
An Unquiet Mind
Documentary feature in production
Rachel Immaraj (Austin, TX)
Producer: Kovid Gupta
Special Award: Stuck On On DCP Award
An Unquiet Mind is a portrait documentary that delves into the stories of two individuals who grapple with the dark realities of obsessive-compulsive disorder, which are often kept secret.
Falopia
Narrative feature in production
Tania Cattebeke Laconich (Austin, TX)
When Ale decides not to have children, her choice for a tubal ligation exposes the limits placed on women’s autonomy in Paraguay.
Narrative feature in production Diffan Sina Norman (Marshall, TX)
Special Award: North Texas Pioneer Award, in partnership with Ley Line Entertainment, David Lowery and the Oak Cliff Film Festival
A young doctor arrives in a Malay village to establish its first health clinic, jeopardizing the community’s allegiance to a racketeering shaman and his unlikely accomplice: an elusive half-man, half-tiger.
Let Your Hands Go
Documentary feature in production
Kenny Rigsby (Tyler, TX)
Special Award: North Texas Pioneer Award, in partnership with Ley Line Entertainment, David Lowery and the Oak Cliff Film Festival
Set in a small East Texas town, Let Your Hands Go is a vérité portrait of two best friends and their coach, bound together by boxing yet reckoning with pasts that shadow their futures. In chasing what’s ahead, they confront the truth that their toughest opponent may be themselves.
The Decision
Narrative feature in production
Meghan Ross (Austin, TX)
Special Award: MPS Camera and Lighting Award
A messy, 30-something, single woman feels like she’s being left behind when her last childless best friend reveals she’s pregnant.
Cohetes
Narrative feature in production
Drew Saplin (Austin, TX)
A rookie pyrotechnician assembles a ragtag team of townies to help her transport a truckload of highly volatile (and very illegal) fireworks down the Texas coast on the 4th of July. As tensions rise and sparks literally fly, one wrong move could get them caught … or killed.
Mother of Buffalo
Documentary feature in production
Luis Arturo Tapia (Dallas, TX)
Special Award: North Texas Pioneer Award, in partnership with Ley Line Entertainment, David Lowery and the Oak Cliff Film Festival
As unchecked development encroaches on their once-protected home, a unique herd of wild buffalo in Hong Kong faces an uncertain future. One woman fights to secure it.
Recipients Receiving Development Funding
Reflejo
Documentary feature in development
Maisie Crow, co-directed by Abbie Perrault (Austin, TX)
Three accused domestic violence offenders on the brink of conviction plead into a first-of-its-kind treatment court in San Antonio, Texas. Through an intensive year-long journey, Reflejo Court and its pioneering judge unearth the traumas and broken coping mechanisms that led these first-time offenders to commit domestic violence, challenging participants to confront their escalating violent tendencies and reflect — Reflejo — with the hope of breaking violent cycles for good.
Love Visa
Narrative feature in development
PJ Raval (Austin, TX)
When starry-eyed Jon Jon arrives in Texas from the Philippines to marry Harvey, his Black closeted online lover, their relationship is put to the test by familial obligations and the social stigmas of a transactional marriage, all while attempting to fit into the American dream.
Sueños que se te cumplen (Dreams That Come True)
Documentary feature in development
Iliana Sosa (Austin, TX)
Producer/editor: Isidore Bethel
A first-generation Latina in Texas grapples with political and social forces shaping contemporary reproductive rights.