Abigail Disney’s production company, Fork Films, has announced its latest round of grant recipients: $400,000 will be presented to 10 documentaries, nine of which are directed by women. The projects “highlight salient social topics like free speech, police brutality, Indigenous rights, and the refugee crisis, among others,” according to a press release, “embodying [Fork Films’] commitment to promoting human rights, social justice, and peacebuilding through film.”
Among the grantees is Débora Souza Silva’s “Black Mothers,” which spotlights “Mothers of the Movement,” a growing network of women whose children have been victims of racist violence. The doc has also received an (Egg)celerator Lab grant from Chicken & Egg Pictures.
Fork Films also bestowed grants to Pratibha Parmar’s “My Name Is Andrea,” a hybrid feature doc telling the story of radical feminist Andrea Dworkin, and Michelle Latimer’s untitled portrait of Indigenous activist Annie Mae Aquash. Julia Bacha’s untitled work about free speech, and those who must choose between it and their jobs, made the cut as well.
“Each of these films is provocative, inspiring, complex, nuanced, and artistically adept,” Disney said of the grantees, per The Hollywood Reporter. “I am so proud of every single one of them. I look forward to their emergence and engagement with the public, where I am sure they will have a great impact for the good.”
The grantees are below, courtesy of Fork Films. You can find out more about the projects by visiting Fork Films’ website.
BLACK MOTHERS
Director and Producer: Débora Souza Silva
Producer: David Felix Sutcliffe
BLACK MOTHERS is the first feature-length documentary to examine the “Mothers of the Movement,” a growing, nationwide network of mothers whose African-American children have been killed by racist violence. With unprecedented access, the film is a character-driven exploration of these black mothers efforts to heal through solidarity and sustained organizing. The film is also a journalistic investigation of systemic racism and the tactics employed by the mothers to confront racial inequities within our justice system. As the film’s protagonists battle to break through the shields protecting the police officers who have attacked and killed their children, the audience is presented not only with unmistakable patterns of injustice but inspiring examples of strategic resistance.
LOVE & STUFF
Director and Producer: Judith Helfand
Producer: Hilla Medalia, Julie Parker Benello
LOVE & STUFF is a multi-generational love story that starts with a good death, takes off with an unexpected birth, and commits to the ride of a lifetime. Told from both sides of the camera and a thirty-year archive of “home movies” documenting life cycle challenges and universal rights of passage, filmmaker Judith Helfand together with her mother Florence and long-awaited adopted daughter Theo, explores evolutionary life-changing love, grief, our complex attachment to “stuff” and what it is that we really want to leave our children.
MAYOR
Director and Producer: David Osit
MAYOR is a real-life political saga following Musa Hadid, the Christian mayor of Ramallah, during his second term in office. Made over two years, the film follows charismatic yet beleaguered Mayor Hadid as he tends to his hometown during one of the most tumultuous times in Palestine’s history. Combining the neorealism of a Rossellini film with the absurdism of “Veep”, MAYOR offers a portrait of dignity amidst the madness of endless occupation while posing a question: how do you run a city when you don’t have a country?
MY NAME IS ANDREA
Director: Pratibha Parmar
Producer: Shaheen Haq
MY NAME IS ANDREA is a hybrid feature documentary about one of the most radical and controversial writers’ of the 20th Century Andrea Dworkin, who offered a revolutionary analysis of male supremacy with a singular, apocalyptic urgency. Dworkin used her personal experiences of sexual assault to develop epic concepts around what it means to be a woman. Electrifying and rare archival footage of Dworkin is interwoven with visceral and expressionistic dramatizations performed by Amandla Stenberg, Soko, Andrea Riseborough, Ashley Judd and Patti LuPone. Reviled and savagely critiqued in her time, Dworkin’s powerful voice speaks vividly to our contemporary #MeToo moment.
THE BURNING
Director and Producer: Dr. Isabella Alexander-Nathani
Over the past decade, the European Union has been working in direct violation of our international human rights law to transform Libya, Algeria, and Morocco into brutal holding cells for the millions of men, women, and children fleeing war and extreme poverty in Africa every year. But the human cost of the EU’s illicit policies has been hidden from view. Now, for the first time, THE BURNING will bring the untold story of Africa’s migrant and refugee crisis to light through the journeys of three families that begin thousands of miles apart in Mali, Sierra Leone, and the DRC and intersect as they move closer to the promise of safety on European shores. Each story begins with a frightening act: in order to avoid being returned to their home countries on their long journeys across the continent, the families must burn their identities. The burning, like a sacrificial rite, is a desperate offering of their old lives in exchange for the chance at survival. It is the first step in a 9,000 mile odyssey fueled by hope, but filled with unimaginable cruelty, deprivation, and loss at every turn.
UNITED STATES VS REALITY WINNER
Director: Sonia Kennebeck
Producer: Ines Hofmann Kanna
A state of secrets and a ruthless hunt for whistleblowers – this is the story of 25-year-old NSA contractor Reality Winner who disclosed a document about Russian election interference to the media and became the number one leak target of the Trump administration.
UNTITLED ANNIE MAE AQUASH DOCUMENTARY
Director: Michelle Latimer
Producer: Amy Kaufman, Caroline Waterlow, Michelle Latimer
Exploring the unsolved murder of celebrated Indigenous activist Annie Mae Aquash, we uncover a mysterious and complicated web of deception spun over the course of several decades. Annie Mae is one of thousands who make up the staggering number of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. By reframing her story, the film hopes to shed light on this current epidemic.
UNTITLED FREE SPEECH DOCUMENTARY
Director: Julia Bacha
Producer: Suhad Babaa, Daniel J. Chalfen
When a news publisher in Arkansas, an attorney in Arizona, and a speech pathologist in Texas are told they must choose between their jobs and their political beliefs, they launch legal battles that expose an attack on freedom of speech across 28 states in America.
UNTITLED JAMIE BOYLE DOCUMENTARY
Director: Jamie Boyle
Producer: Marilyn Ness, Elizabeth Westrate, Jamie Boyle
Spanning over 30 years, the UNTITLED JAMIE BOYLE PROJECT interweaves the filmmaker’s personal story with one of the most pressing social issues of our time.
WOMEN OF THE MOUNTAIN
Director: Rebecca Byerly
A film on female ultramarathoners takes a haunting turn when director Rebecca Byerly turns the camera on herself – and the deadly family violence that caused her to start running 200-mile races. By turns, a meditation on endurance and a deep inquiry into the nature of family trauma, this film goes to the heart of what women will do to survive.
