The Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival Partners With Netflix To Expand Latinx Inclusion Fellowship

EXCLUSIVE: The Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival announced a 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 and co-founder of LALIFF, Edward James Olmos.

This program expansion is part of the recently announced Netflix Fund for Creative Equity, where Netflix will invest $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.

“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.

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 https://laliff.org/fellowship. The call for submissions is now open and the deadline is October 14, 2021.

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