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About the Fund

With generous funding from philanthropist Jessica Sarowitz, the IDA Sarowitz Project Completion Fund supports feature-length documentary films in their final strides across the finish line. This year, the fund is focused on Latinx/Latine filmmakers. Funds granted through the program can be used toward post-production, impact, and distribution expenses, including the expenses of hiring creative consultancies, paying for time towards mentorship or legal guidance, marketing campaigns, festival fees submission, and compensating core team members who have deferred payment.

The inaugural grantees were selected from a pool of IDA’s Documentary Funds applicants and partner organization referrals. The films will receive a total of $180,000 in funds. In addition, grantees will receive additional resources and expertise through IDA and its partners, and will participate in IDA’s Getting Real Conference, which runs September 27-29, 2022. The IDA Sarowitz Project Completion Fund stands out for its flexibility and filmmaker focus.


2022 Sarowitz Project Completion Fund Grantees
 

A young Jasmin Mara López held by her mother, Sandra, in the yard of their home in Baja California, Mexico.

Silent Beauty 

Director/Producer: Jasmin Mara López

A lyrical and sensitive autobiographical exploration of the filmmaker’s family history with child sexual abuse and a culture of silence.


Five Black and brown men (from left to right: Vince, Jay, Tito, Pete and Var) sit in wheelchairs outside, all lined up in a straight horizontal line facing the camera. They wear T-shirts and sneakers and some wear baseball caps. They all look into the camera with serious expressions.

Fire Through Dry Grass

Director: Alexis Neophytides, Andres "Jay" Molina
Producer: Alexis Neophytides, Jennilie Brewster

On a tiny island in NYC, a group of Black and brown disabled artists fight Covid and the city to protect the lives of 500 vulnerable nursing home residents.
 


An elderly man in a white sombrero and blue checked shirt stands in a cemetery and directs his gaze downward. Behind him are graves decorated with flowers and balloons.

What We Leave Behind

Director: Iliana Sosa
Producer: Iliana Sosa, Emma D. Miller

After a lifetime of bus rides to the US to visit his children, Julián quietly starts building a house in rural Mexico. In filming his work, his granddaughter crafts a personal and poetic love letter to him and his homeland.


Ruby Duncan holding hands with two children in front of an old station wagon on the historically Black West Side of Las Vegas, c. 1972

Storming Caesars Palace

Director: Hazel Gurland-Pooler
Producer: Hazel Gurland-Pooler, Nazenet Habtezghi

Storming Caesars Palace uplifts the story of Las Vegas activist Ruby Duncan and a band of ordinary mothers who launched one of the most extraordinary Black feminist anti-poverty movements in U.S. history, offering a blueprint today for an equitable future.


 (l. to r.) Débora Andrade Maraveles (Mother), Miguel Andrade (Baby Sansón) and Ramón Gómez Mejía (Father), as seen in Sansón and Me, directed by Rodrigo Reyes. Photo credit: Alejandro Mejía. Courtesy of Grumpy Squared LLC.

Sansón and Me 

Director: Rodrigo Reyes
Producer: Su Kim

Two Mexican migrants, a young man serving a life sentence in prison and a filmmaker who was his court interpreter, become intertwined through life and cinema.