Ten Latino directors will receive $20,000 grants from LALIFF and Netflix

Our friends at The Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival (LALIFF) announced today the call for submissions for its second annual LALIFF Inclusion Fellowship which aims to champion underrepresented filmmakers within the Latinx community.

With support from Netflix, LALIFF is doubling the number of fellows for the program’s second year: this year the Fellowship will be awarded to five visionary directors that identify as Indigenous Latino and five visionary directors that identify as Afro Latino.

“Last summer, LALIFF and Netflix united to uplift the Afro Latino voices within our filmmaking community with the goal of moving Latino representation forward. As we move on to the second year of this crucial work, we are proud to continue our Afro Latino-focused fellowship, while at the same time adding a brand new cohort to our work – Indigenous Latinos,” says Academy Award®-nominated actor, founder of the Latino Film Institute (LFI) and co-founder of LALIFF, Edward James Olmos.

The Fellows from last year’s program – Lorena Durán, Justin Floyd, Kase Peña, Monica Suriyage and Tamara Shogaolu – all premiered their short films at LALIFF 2021 and several of these films are now being accepted into other film festivals.

“We are blown away by the talent and films from the first year of the program. LALIFF does amazing work to support artists who have been historically underrepresented, and we are thrilled to partner with them on expanding the Fellowship to support Indigenous Latino filmmakers,” says Pete Corona, Director of Drama Series at Netflix.

This program expansion is part of the recently announced Netflix Fund for Creative Equity, where Netflix will invest USD $100 million dollars over the next five years in a combination of external organizations with a strong track record of setting underrepresented communities up for success in the TV and film industries, as well as bespoke programs that will help the company to identify, train and provide job placement for up-and-coming talent globally.

As part of the LALIFF Inclusion Fellowship, each filmmaker will receive individualized mentorship from industry leaders from production to distribution and various networking opportunities. The completed films will premiere as part of a special program during LALIFF 2022, where the fellows will also have the opportunity to participate in the festival’s Industry Days, to further develop their careers and gain industry access needed to succeed as working artists. Netflix will also offer support to the selected group of fellows throughout the development of their films.

The LALIFF’s Inclusion Fellowship will award a $20,000 grant to each of the ten selected fellows for the production of a short. For the full requirements, please visit: here.

The call for submissions is now open and the deadline is October 14, 2021.

Read the full article here.