Catapult Film Fund announces the launch of Project Accelerator: Technology & Society, a new funding initiative debuting to celebrate the organization’s 15th anniversary and its first round of grantees. The program expands Catapult’s commitment to early-stage documentary filmmaking by offering enhanced support for projects examining how technology is reshaping civic life. This new accelerator was created in response to increasing pressures on the nonfiction field and the need for early investment in films addressing evolving technological systems.
In total, Catapult will distribute more than $550,000 in early funding to 18 documentary projects, selected from a record-high pool of approximately 2,000 submissions. 14 projects will receive $25,000 development grants through Catapult’s Core Development program, representing filmmakers working across regions including Brazil, India, Mauritius, and Morocco. Four additional projects were selected for the inaugural Technology & Society Project Accelerator, an expansion made possible by Luminate’s support. Selected projects in each category reflect a wide range of cinematic approaches, from investigative features to formally experimental works. Each Accelerator team will receive up to $50,000 in funding, along with customized creative and strategic advising tailored to their projects’ needs.
Founded in 2010, Catapult remains one of the few U.S.-based funders dedicated exclusively to early-stage support for artful nonfiction films. Megan Gelstein, Catapult’s co-director and chief program officer, had this to say about her hopes for the project:
Our new Project Accelerator: Technology and Society initiative builds on that legacy by creating space for filmmakers grappling with how technology is reshaping our lives, institutions, and democracies—stories that demand early support, flexibility, and long-term partnership. At a moment when independent nonfiction filmmakers are reshaping what cinema can be—formally, politically, and emotionally—this new Catapult slate brings together bold work from filmmakers deeply engaged with the world as it is, pushing form and perspective with real curiosity and care for audiences. Even amid profound industry and cultural change, these projects inspire genuine optimism, reminding us that personal, independent storytelling still has the power to connect people, spark conversation, and endure.
Alexandra Buccianti, head of global ecosystems strategy at Luminate, added:
Stories help us imagine a world where technology advances rights and justice for everyone. That’s why Luminate is thrilled to support Catapult’s Project Accelerator, a bold initiative showcasing films that examine tech’s promise and perils. We’re delighted to partner with Catapult to give nonfiction filmmakers the early-stage funding and mentorship they need to bring these vital stories to life, and help move societies towards a brighter and fairer tech future.
Notable projects among the selected Project Accelerator grantees include Non-Playable Character, a genre-blending feature from Pinny Grylls and Same Crane. The film continues the duo’s exploration of the virtual world that began with their highly regarded first feature, Grand Theft Hamlet (2024). A new untitled project co-directed by Jeff Zimbalist (Skywalkers, 2024) and Ian Inaba has also been awarded. Additionally, Alejandra Vasquez and Sam Osborn, following their acclaimed feature Going Varsity in Mariachi (2023), have received a Core Development grant for their film Crystal City (working title), which examines a 1969 student walkout that helped spark youth-led political organizing in South Texas.
The slate also includes Survival Floating, a new documentary from Tracy Heather Strain (Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming a Space) which draws on personal history to explore Black relationships to swimming and water, and an ambitious untitled hybrid project from two-time IDA Award–winner Petra Costa, produced by Rémi Grellety (I Am Not Your Negro, Soundtrack to a Coup D’Etat), that blends personal narrative with an inquiry into land, power, and climate in Brazil. Additional highlights include Wolf Moon, directed by Robin Petré and produced by Monica Hellström (Flee), as well as The Young Lords, a new feature from Carla Gutiérrez following Frida, chronicling Puerto Rican youth activism in late-1960s New York City.
This year’s full slate of projects, along with their filmmakers, is listed below, sourced from Catapult. More projects selected for the Development grant are to be announced.
Selected Project Accelerator Grantees
The Last Humans
Director: Kate Stonehill
Director/Producer: Marc Silver
Producer: Brami Jegan
Following frontline activists in the Bay Area, The Last Humans is a rare window into the inception of a movement resisting the development of Artificial ‘Superintelligence’ and raising profound questions about the future of humanity.
Non-Playable Character
Co-Director/Editor: Pinny Grylls
Co-Director: Sam Crane
Producer: Rebecca Wolff
Consulting Producer: Beth Levison
In a world where we feel more and more like cogs in a machine, a genre-bending documentary follows two filmmakers who become the next generation of video game characters, only to find the virtual NPCs they create may have more autonomy than they do.
S.E.C.T.O.R. B
Director/Producer: Enrique Pedraza-Botero
Producer: Sarafina Difelice
A project that observes how autonomous surveillance systems and the expanding economy of military futurism transform local neighborhoods into spaces marked by invisible pressure and suspicion, altering how people move, gather, and disappear.
Untitled Tech Project
Directors: Ian Inaba, Jeff Zimbalist
Project currently in stealth mode.
Selected Development Grantees
Black Star Rising
Director: Matt Kay
Producer: Andy Carver
Executive Producer: Geoff Martz, Roger Ross Williams
Black Star Rising is an epic quest to reclaim history and justice as a team of divers search for Marcus Garvey’s lost Black Star Line fleet, while his son leads a lifelong legal battle to clear his father’s name.
Crystal City (working title)
Directors: Alejandra Vasquez, Sam Osborn
Producer: Bennett Elliott
In 1969, a Chicana cheerleader is barred from her high school team in a segregated South Texas town, igniting a student walkout. Led by teenagers, a youth-powered Chicano Civil Rights Movement transforms a migrant farmworker community, wins sweeping reforms, and sparks La Raza Unida’s rise as a political force across the Southwest.
Not So Far Away Places
Directors: Renato Borrayo Serrano, Yulia Vishnevets
Producer: Milana Christich
Co-Producers: Albin Bourgeois, Vlad Ketkovich
In-depth immersion into the Russian prison repressive machinery shot from the inside subjective perspective of a human rights activist, working to confront the totalitarian system from within.
Penny & Koko
Director: Tasha Van Zandt
Producers: Tasha Van Zandt, Sebastian Zeck, Anna Barnes, Chai Vasarhelyi
Told through Koko the gorilla’s eyes and a lifetime of unseen archival footage, Penny & Koko reveals the extraordinary nearly 47-year bond between Koko and pioneering scientist Dr. Penny Patterson.
Survival Floating
Director/Producer: Tracy Heather Strain
Producers: Robin Hessman, Randall MacLowry
Consulting Producer: Yvonne Welbon
Sparked by the memories of a near-drowning at a northern Black swimming pool during the 1960s-70s-era segregation, an African American swimmer/filmmaker dives into an existential exploration of Black resilience examining Black peoples’ complex, joyous and fraught relationship to swimming and water.
Untitled Petra Costa Project
Director/Producer: Petra Costa
Producer: Rémi Grellety
Editor: Tina Baz
Blurring fiction and documentary, Petra Costa draws from personal history to explore the Western genre and reveal how historical inequalities fuel climate collapse and endanger millions of Brazil’s poorest today.
Wolf Moon
Director: Robin Petré
Producer: Monica Hellström
Wildlife around the world is turning increasingly nocturnal out of fear of humans. Wolf Moon takes us deep into the landscapes of the night in search of the wild animals we’re losing, while the film explores human-animal relations in the emerging Anthropocene Era.
The Young Lords
Director/Editor: Carla Gutiérrez
Director/Producer: Kristofer Ríos
Producer: Katia Maguire
The Young Lords is a feature-length documentary about Puerto Rican youth in late 1960s New York City who, determined to build a better world, launch a series of bold community-driven campaigns to protest the discriminatory lack of services in their immigrant communities.
