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The Athena Film Festival has announced the winners of the 2024 Athena List, the festival’s Black List-inspired selection of unproduced screenplays focused on female leadership.
High-profile projects that were featured on past editions of the Athena List, part of the Barnard-based festival, include Ruth Bader Ginsburg biopic On the Basis of Sex, Chinonye Chukwu‘s Clemency, the 2024 Sundance film Out of My Mind by On the Basis of Sex writer Daniel Stiepleman and Patricia Clarkson-starrer Lilly about Lilly Ledbetter and her fight for fair pay.
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This year’s winners are A Bridge Between Us by Gina Hackett, I Don’t Dream in Spanish Anymore by Missy Hernandez and Keesha Goes to Camp by Rebecca Jordan Smith.
A Bridge Between Us, based on a true story, follows Emily Warren Roebling, the wife of the Brooklyn Bridge’s chief engineer who reluctantly steps into his role when he’s paralyzed during the bridge’s construction, becoming the world’s first female engineer.
I Don’t Dream in Spanish Anymore centers around a scientist who needs to return to her roots to escape an ancestral curse threatening her and her unborn child.
Keesha Goes to Camp follows a nerdy Black tween who is sent to an outdoor summer camp where the introverted booksmart girl is challenged by nature, rivals and the opposite sex.
As its 2024 edition kicks off on Thursday, the Athena Film Festival has also revealed the honorees for its festival awards.
Scarce writer Mrittika “Mou” Sarin, whose screenplay was featured on the 2023 Athena List, will receive the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Athena List Development Grant, a $20,000 award given to an Athena List finalist or winner that focuses on a woman in a STEM-themed project.
The writers of 2024 Athena List finalist SKRRT!, Gabriela Garcia Medina and Katherine Craft, will receive the Disney Athena List Development Grant, a $10,000 award in partnership with Walt Disney Studios to help them with the development of their script.
Until Branches Bend director Sophie Jarvis will receive the breakthrough award, in partnership with Netflix. The $25,000 award is given to a feature-length film directed by a first- or second-time filmmaker without a U.S. theatrical distribution deal.
And The Pepper writer Christine Garver will receive the Chinonye Chukwu Emerging Writer Award, in partnership with Christine A. Schantz, a $10,000 award given to a feature-length writer who previously participated in an Athena Film Festival writers lab, with the money designed to help them with the development of their feature-length script.
It was previously announced that the festival will honor Fancy Dance writer-director Erica Tremblay, whose directorial debut film stars Lily Gladstone, with the first Jaya Award, presented in partnership with the Ilumine Service Foundation. The $10,000 grant is dedicated to honoring an Indigenous filmmaker from North America whose film features a women-centric narrative with a compelling female lead.
Additionally, Asha Dahya’s Someone You Know, featuring three women who share their stories about receiving abortions later in their pregnancies, will have its world premiere before the Abortion Storytelling panel, featuring Dahya and other women working to dismantle stigma and promote acceptance of abortion storytelling. The festival has also named the first group of winners to its Abortion Pipeline Project lab initiative, a screenplay competition designed to increase the number of diverse, accurate and positive stories related to abortion in the Hollywood script pipeline. Each of the winners will participate in a lab, receive funds and be connected with reproductive justice leaders as mentors.
“We’re thrilled to celebrate this year’s stellar honorees and to share all of our 2024 programming with audiences at the festival this weekend,” Athena Film Festival artistic director Melissa Silverstein said in a statement. “Our year-round programs, encompassing grants, fellowships and lab initiatives, are designed to support writers and women-centered projects at various stages of development and ultimately to uphold and extend the mission and vision of the festival all year.”
Umbreen Bhatti, the Constance Hess Williams director of Barnard’s Athena Center for Leadership, which presents the festival with Women and Hollywood, added, “After many months of preparation and hard work, our teams at the festival and the Athena Center could not be more excited to share this year’s curated programming with audiences over the next few days. The festival continues to be the creative embodiment of the Athena Center’s mission, as a space where we can challenge tired and limiting narratives about women’s leadership and co-create a world that values collaboration, inclusion and our stories.”
The 14th Athena Film Festival runs from Thursday through Sunday at Barnard College in New York.
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