Award Central News

Juried award will be presented at the independent filmmaker awards ceremony during IFP’s Independent Film Week next September. The filmmakers in this year’s narrative lab are working in genres ranging from drama to true crime to experimental, in languages as diverse as Tagalog and Kashmiri.

Lab supports independent projects still at the rough-cut production stage and connects tyro filmmakers with mentors who offer advice on technical, creative and post-production issues. Female lab alums are also eligible for the $10,000 Adrienne Shelly director grant, launched last year with funding from the Adrienne Shelly Foundation and Artists Public Domain.

Lab and workshop leaders include producer Gretchen McGowan (“Coffee and Cigarettes”); producer Scott Macaulay (“Raising Victor Vargas”); composer David Mansfield (“Transamerica”); and editors Lee Percy (“Boys Don’t Cry”), Chris Tellefsen (“Capote”), Sabine Hofmann (“The Ballad of Jack and Rose”) and Kate Williams (“Frozen River”). Post-lab, pic excerpts will screen at IFP’s indie film week.

“IFP is first and foremost about nurturing works in development,” said IFP exec director Michelle Byrd.

Among the projects selected for this year’s lab are Ricky Shane Reid’s “At the Foot of the Tree,” about a boy who seeks revenge for the beating of his father; Patrick Epino’s “Mr. Sadman,” about a Saddam Hussein body double who moves to L.A. after losing his job; and “We Are the Mods,” about two girls who take on Britain’s drug-addled ’60s Mod culture in contempo California.