Tribeca Film Institute^® (TFI) and Gucci today announced the 2014 grant recipients for the Gucci Tribeca Documentary Fund. The Fund provides production and finishing finances, along with year-round support and guidance to feature-length documentary films that highlight and humanize critical domestic and international social issues.

Nine projects have been selected from 560 submissions from more than 50 countries to receive a total of $150,000 in grants, to be administered by Tribeca Film Institute. Now in its seventh year, the Fund has supported 54 films and provided more than $910,000 in grants.

For the fourth year, the Kering Foundation has partnered with the Gucci Tribeca Documentary Fund to present the Spotlighting Women Documentary Award. The award provides grants to three exemplary film projects that the jury believes illuminate the courage, compassion, extraordinary strength of character, and contributions of women from around the world.

The grantees were selected by a jury comprised of: Claire Aguilar (Executive Content Advisor for Independent Television Service - ITVS); Actor and Producer Alec Baldwin; Producer & Director Ross Kauffman (E-TEAM, BORN INTO BROTHELS);Multiple Grammy^® winning singer/songwriter and Partner in Get Lifted Film Co. John Legend and Alyse Nelson (President and CEO of Vital Voices).  In addition to funding, grantees will each receive year-round support from TFI, including one-on-one guidance and consultations to help each film to reach completion, enter the marketplace, and find broader audiences.

“Gucci and the Kering Foundation have continued year after year to support outstanding films that spark global conversation and inspire change, and this year is no different as we expand to support filmmakers in new geographic areas from Cambodia to New Zealand,” said Ryan Harrington, Vice President, Artist Programs at Tribeca Film Institute. “As a team, we are thrilled about the works selected this year and are confident they will have the same success that so many of the past film grantees have achieved. These films encourage viewers to re-examine relevant social issues that are happening both around the world and here in the United States. We are also very pleased to be supporting so many strong female filmmakers as part of this slate.”

“It was an honor for me to join the jury of the Gucci Tribeca Documentary Fund and see the wonderful, inventive work of these talented filmmakers,” said John Legend, 2014 Jury Member. “I'm glad we could help bring their amazing stories to the world."

2014 Recipients of the Gucci Tribeca Film Fund

Films funded through the Gucci Tribeca Documentary Fund explore social issues across the globe through compelling and personal stories, including: a deep look at the horrible gang-rape and murder in Delhi in 2012; a race against the clock to restore precious hours of old film in Afghanistan; an inside look at solitary confinement and other powerful stories. The projects that will collectively receive $100,000 total in funding for the 2014 Gucci Tribeca Documentary Fund are:

• 3 ½ MINUTES, Directed and Produced by Marc Silver (2013 TFI New Media Fund Grantee for Who Is Dayani Cristal. 3 ½ Minutes dissects the shooting death of 17-year-old Jordan Davis, the aftermath of this systemic tragedy and contradictions within the American criminal justice system.

• A FLICKERING TRUTH, Written, Produced and Directed by Pietra Brettkelly. A Flickering Truth unwraps the world of three dreamers living amongst the dust of Afghanistan's 100 years of war as they struggle to protect and restore 8,000 hours of fragile film.  What truths will emerge from the cloak of time?

• AFGHAN JUSTICE, Directed by Nicole N. Horanyi; Produced by Helle Faber. 38-year-old Kimberley Motley 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, not to mention the only woman, 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, Directed by May Abdalla; Produced by Elhum Shakerifar. Cold Rush is set at the front line of the fast changing Arctic. As the UN decides how to divide up state sovereignty into the High North we travel 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. A timely documentary about the race for the last frontier.

• FREEDOM FIGHTERS, Directed by Jamie Meltzer; Produced by Kate McLean (2012 TFI New Media Fund Grantee for Immigrant Nation). There’s a new detective agency in Dallas, Texas, started by a group of exonerated men, with decades in prison served between them. They call themselves the Freedom Fighters, and they are looking to free innocent people still behind bars. Freedom Fighters 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 be innocent.

• OUT OF MIND, Produced and Directed by Kristi Jacobson; Out of Mind investigates an invisible part of the American justice system: the use of isolation and segregation in US prisons, commonly known as solitary confinement. With unprecedented access inside a prison tackling the issue head on, the film explores this divisive issue through the experiences of those on both sides of the bars. 

2014 Recipients of the Spotlighting Women Documentary Award

The Spotlighting Women Documentary Award highlights the courage and strength of character of  women from around the world, including: six women in the middle east who are fighting for basic human rights and the story of Jyoti Singh and the documentation of the brutality of her gang-rape and murder in Delhi in 2012. The projects that will collectively receive $50,000 total in funding for the 2014 Spotlighting Women Documentary Award are:  

• AWAKENING, Directed by Gini Reticker; Produced by Beth Levinson, Aida ElKashef, Razan Ghalayini and Mohamed Siam Against the backdrop of the Arab uprisings, Awakening – a multimedia initiative anchored by a documentary film – tells the stories of five fearless women from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region who risk everything in their fight for human rights for all, despite flagrant efforts to silence them.

• INDIA’S DAUGHTER, Directed and Produced by Leslee Udwin.  This documentary pays tribute to the remarkable and inspiring short life of Jyoti Singh and documents the brutality of her gang-rape and murder 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, Written and Directed by Guillaume Suon; Produced by Rithy Panh and Julien Roumy. Filmmaker Guillaume Suon turns his cinematic lens on globalization and contemporary Cambodia.