If, like all of Hollywood, you took an extended August break, we’re right here that can assist you get again on the horse. Our fall checklist consists of deadlines for TV writing alternatives in addition to labs, fellowships, and monetary assist for docs and narratives in all levels of manufacturing.
Whereas the chaos of our present administration has sadly impacted grantmaking, notably at California Humanities and the Rogovy Basis, we have now scoured the panorama for the brand new alternatives which have emerged.
Alternatives are organized by deadline – from September by early December– and by class: documentaries, narratives, and screenwriting. An asterisk(*) signifies a possibility accessible in a number of classes.
As at all times, use your greatest judgment when deciding to use.
Documentary
‘Mayor’ directed by David Osit | Supported by the Catapult Movie Fund
Feminine Movie Membership*
The Feminine Movie Membership, a London-based group created to foster neighborhood in the course of the pandemic shutdown, is providing €10,000 in funding to brief documentary and narrative movies to filmmakers wherever on the earth.
The price range is allowed to be larger than the grant, however to make sure the movie will get made, the filmmaker must have all further funding in place by Sept eighth. This can be a fast-track alternative and requires a sensible plan in place to complete the movie by October 2026.
Utility charge is £50
Deadline: September 7
The Catapult Growth Grant
Catapult’s flagship program will supply fifteen (15) grants of as much as $25,000 USD to filmmakers worldwide who’re in growth with a documentary characteristic or brief.
This grant can be utilized for a wide range of growth wants and should outcome within the creation of a fundraising piece as the ultimate deliverable. We prioritize suave, transferring storytelling and will not be tied to any particular social difficulty agenda. Candidates might want to have a confirmed US-based 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor in an effort to obtain the funds.
Earlier grantees embody Rita Baghdadi, David Osit, and Elan and Jonathan Bogarín.
From Catapult:
“We search for suave, compelling tales with a choice for character-driven narratives. The venture must be motivated first by story. Some varieties of movies, reminiscent of survey, are much less prone to be a superb match for Catapult, however we’re at all times open to inventive approaches. We normally don’t fund initiatives that rely purely on interviews as the first narrative gadget, or historic and biographical movies, until there’s a distinctive angle or method that makes the subject material well timed and related.”
Deadline: September 8
Ladies and gender non-conforming movie professionals who’re California residents are eligible for this grant, made attainable by the Los Angeles County Division of Arts and Tradition.
Brief Type Grants –between $500-$3,000 cash– will assist completion of a brief documentary, with a accomplished runtime of not more than half-hour.
There isn’t any charge to submit, however you have to be a registered member of Ladies In Media at a fee of $60 for college students and $120 for business professionals.
Grantees may even obtain focused consultations, mentorships, and providers for movie ending. Consultants embody: Vickie Sampson – Publish manufacturing sound; Jennifer Smith – Music clearance; and Kimberley Browning – Movie competition technique.
Final 12 months’s grantees embody Catie Skipp, for her brief doc ‘Monster Slayer’ (premiered at Tribeca 2025).
Deadline: September 15
Funded by All Info, an organization began by two LA-based filmmakers in 2020, this grant will present direct, unrestricted growth funding to empower documentary filmmakers dwelling and dealing in Los Angeles County.
$10,000 – $30,000 per venture might be given to particular person documentary filmmakers (Director and/or Producer in a key inventive position) for feature-length documentaries meant for principal images primarily inside Los Angeles County. Tales ought to discover Los Angeles topics, points, cultures, peoples, or histories.
Funds are unrestricted however meant for growth actions reminiscent of analysis, writing, creating pitch supplies/sizzle reels, securing preliminary rights or location scouting/journey inside LA.
Deadline: September 15
This fund, administered by Movie Birmingham, is providing grants of as much as $10,000 in manufacturing funding to scripted documentary brief filmmakers worldwide. Awards might be given to initiatives that intend to be in manufacturing not more than six months after the deadline closes.
Filmmakers also can compete in a particular class to shoot their movie on real 16mm movie inventory. Winners of this class will obtain 10 x 400ft rolls of KODAK 16mm movie inventory, together with processing prices. Submission charge is £30
Common Deadline: September 30
This €10,000 grant is open to characteristic movie administrators –narrative or documentary– who expertise marginalization resulting from their gender or sexuality. The winner may even obtain market steering and manufacturing assist for his or her venture.
One of many finalists will obtain the SIMBELLE IMPACT AWARD –an further $10,000 unrestricted grant for the filmmaker– to be determined by Jury Member Lauren Melinda, founding father of Simbelle Productions.
Filmmakers making use of with documentary initiatives will need to have begun manufacturing and have to be in search of ending funds. Utility charge is $60
From BTTL:
“Candidates should display how the grant funding will help you advance in a important space of growth – be it casting, location scouting, hiring crew, or capturing a scene – there aren’t any limits, so long as the motion taken strikes the needle in your venture. That is about discovering movies with sturdy creative benefit and a daring authentic imaginative and prescient, prepared to enter manufacturing earlier than the top of 2026.”
Deadline: October 1 (Late Deadline)
BFI and Film4 Future Takes affords assist for higher-budget stay motion, short-form initiatives from groups of writers, administrators, and producers primarily based within the UK. They’ll assist as much as six brief movies, with funding of between £60,000 and £90,000 per movie.
Future Takes helps scripted stay motion work or hybrid documentary involving scripted or dramatised parts. Movies could be a most size of 25 minutes, and the applying have to be made by the lead producer with a longtime observe report in transferring picture work and be a UK resident. The producer can’t be the author or director of the venture.
The director will need to have a longtime inventive observe report in scripted transferring picture work and had no a couple of characteristic movie produced and commercially distributed within the UK.
From Future Takes:
“Because it turns into more durable to get debut options financed and in entrance of an viewers, there’s a appreciable hole within the assist accessible to filmmakers who might have began their careers however are lacking the piece of labor that can enable them to maneuver on to larger, bolder work.
Future Takes goals to assist the creation of progressive, bold short-form works that command a better price range and won’t be realisable with out assist. This might imply concepts, settings or filming strategies which are actually boundary pushing, both in type or content material.”
Deadline: October 20
Regardless of its unlucky acronym, the Filmmaker Help Program (FAP) could be a lifesaver for Canadian residents seeking to get their movie over the end line.
This program affords chosen Canadian filmmakers the chance to journey to Montreal to finish a portion of their post-production in-house at Balmoral Studios. Companies offered embody post-production providers and entry to post-production gear reminiscent of image and sound enhancing suites, on-line enhancing providers, title and credit design, sound results, voice recording, mixing, entry to the NFB archives, grasp copies, and authoring of an entire digital cinema package deal (DCP).
Filmmakers dwelling inside 150 km of Montreal should cowl 10% of the entire price of requested post-production providers. For filmmakers who stay greater than 150 km from Montreal however want to journey to Montreal to entry the providers, the NFB waives the ten%.
The movie have to be an impartial Canadian manufacturing. Eligible codecs and genres embody: Brief, medium-length, or feature-length documentaries, documentary collection for the online, animated brief, medium, or characteristic movie, brief fiction, and experimental movies.
Deadline: November 14
The IDFA Bertha Fund (IBF) is devoted to empowering the inventive documentary sector in Africa, Asia, Jap Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Oceania with growth grants of as much as €7,500 per venture and manufacturing grants of as much as €25,000.
Along with their funding schemes, the IBF affords a variety of actions to empower filmmakers all through the inventive and manufacturing processes, together with tailor-made consultancies, expertise growth alternatives, and entry to IDFA’s markets.
From the Bertha Fund:
“Documentary movies supported by the IBF categorical the creative imaginative and prescient of filmmakers, utilizing sturdy visible therapies to inform compelling tales that may attain a world viewers. We take dangers on unknown and seasoned filmmakers, supporting their breakthrough from marginalized positions to essentially the most revered platforms.”
Deadline: December 10
Launched in 2018, The DocProject is a program of the Media Freedom and Info Entry Clinic at Yale Legislation College. Below the steering of skilled media legal professionals, Yale legislation college students present filmmakers with professional bono authorized analysis and recommendation from the earliest levels of their initiatives by rough-cuts. Supported movies embody ‘Lacking In Brooks County’, ‘Pay or Die’ and ‘Unseen’.
From DocProject:
“The venture’s mission is twofold: to help documentary filmmakers who wouldn’t in any other case have entry to authorized assets, and to coach the following era of media legal professionals.”
Deadline: Rolling
‘Voices From The Caravan’ directed by Ilse Fernandez, screened this summer time at Works-In-Progress
Completed your characteristic doc and on the lookout for a take a look at viewers? Movie Impartial has your again. Their L.A.-based screening collection affords a spot for filmmakers to share their initiatives and obtain constructive suggestions. Audiences are invited to observe movies as they enter the ultimate levels of enhancing, providing suggestions through in-depth surveys and a moderated dialogue, serving to to prepared their initiatives for festivals and distribution.
This system is open to filmmakers positioned wherever, however the director and/or key members of the inventive workforce should be capable of attend the screening in individual. Filmmakers should present a full edit on the time of submission. There’s a $25 utility charge.
NOTE: Movie Impartial membership will not be required when making use of to Artist Growth applications. Nevertheless, all contributors accepted into applications are required to hitch Movie Impartial at the usual annual Common Membership fee of $105, along with the preliminary utility charge.
Deadline: Rolling
Should you’re an Australian-based filmmaker, you’re in all probability already conscious of Display Australia. Their documentary growth program awards grants of as much as $30,000 (Australian) to one-off and collection documentaries, in addition to VR. A full checklist of Display Australia’s funding alternatives could be discovered right here.
From Display Australia:
“Display Australia is dedicated to constructing fairness into its applications and its engagement with the neighborhood. Gender fairness, anti-racism, genuine story-telling, from and about under-represented teams, and inclusivity are priorities for Display Australia. We count on that the lived expertise portrayed by the narrative and characters are mirrored inside the important thing inventive workforce. It’s important the inventive workforce has the cultural authorship to inform the story in order that telling of the story is genuine. This might be taken under consideration when assessing functions.”
Deadline: Rolling
Free session to assist documentary filmmakers primarily based in Scotland, sponsored by the Scottish Documentary Institute.
From SDI:
“Our consultancies are delivered as one-on-one brief on-line assembly periods discussing your venture and giving recommendation that greatest helps you on the stage you might be at. This could come within the type of steering on pitching and suggesting funding alternatives; we could possibly facilitate introductions to business contacts who will help, or we might type a direct collaboration.”
Deadline: Rolling
Narrative
‘Chasers’ directed by Erin Brown Thomas | Supported by the WIM Brief Movie Ending Grant
Feminine Movie Membership*
The Feminine Movie Membership, a London-based group created to foster neighborhood in the course of the pandemic shutdown, is providing €10,000 in funding to brief documentary and narrative movies to filmmakers wherever on the earth.
The price range is allowed to be larger than the grant, however to make sure the movie will get made, the filmmaker must have all further funding in place by Sept eighth. This can be a fast-track alternative and requires a sensible plan in place to complete the movie by October 2026.
Utility charge is £50
Deadline: September 7
Ladies and gender non-conforming movie professionals who’re California residents are eligible for this grant, made attainable by the Los Angeles County Division of Arts and Tradition.
Brief Type Grants, between $500 – $3,000 money, will assist completion of a brief documentary, with a accomplished runtime of not more than half-hour.
There isn’t any charge to submit, however you have to be a registered member of Ladies In Media at a fee of $60 for college students and $120 for business professionals.
Grantees may even obtain focused consultations, mentorships, and providers for movie ending. Consultants embody: Vickie Sampson – Publish manufacturing sound; Jennifer Smith – Music clearance; and Kimberley Browning – Movie competition technique.
Final 12 months’s grantees embody Erin Brown Thomas, for her pilot ‘Chasers’ (premiered at Sundance 2025).
Deadline: September 15
An intensive, three-day on-line program designed for narrative filmmakers who want to make the transition into the episodic directing house. Filmmakers should present two samples of directing work, one in all which have to be a story brief or characteristic. Previous advisers embody Beth Schachter, Jen Arnold, and Maggie Kiley.
From FI:
“Six administrators, whose work embodies the variety, innovation, and uniqueness we nurture and champion at Movie Impartial, might be chosen…Excellent candidates are those that have honed their directorial abilities and creative imaginative and prescient by expertise, together with directing brief movies, characteristic movies, or business initiatives.”
Deadline: September 22
A project-based award for cis and trans girls and non-binary administrators, aged 39 or older, who’re engaged on their first narrative characteristic. This unrestricted, $25,000 award seeks to acknowledge filmmakers for his or her distinct visions, storytelling and singularity.
From Of A Sure Age:
“The Lynn Shelton “Of A Sure Age” Grant was created…to honor the legacy of beloved filmmaker Lynn Shelton…Shelton usually spoke of feeling impressed after seeing filmmaker Claire Denis converse at Northwest Movie Discussion board and studying that Denis didn’t make her first characteristic till age 40. Shelton went on to make her personal first characteristic movie (We Go Approach Again) on the age of 39. Within the years since, she constructed a prolific canon of characteristic and tv work and made an indelible mark on the panorama of American cinema.”
Deadline: September 27
This fund, administered by Movie Birmingham, is providing grants of as much as $10,000 in manufacturing funding to scripted documentary brief filmmakers worldwide. Awards might be given to initiatives that intend to be in manufacturing not more than six months after the deadline closes.
Filmmakers also can compete in a particular class to shoot their movie on real 16mm movie inventory. Winners of this class will obtain 10 x 400ft rolls of KODAK 16mm movie inventory, together with processing prices.
Submission charge is £30
Common Deadline: September 30
This €10,000 grant is open to characteristic movie administrators — narrative or documentary — who expertise marginalization resulting from their gender or sexuality. The winner may even obtain market steering and manufacturing assist for his or her venture.
One of many finalists will obtain the SIMBELLE IMPACT AWARD –an extra $10,000 unrestricted grant for the filmmaker – to be determined by Jury Member Lauren Melinda, founding father of Simbelle Productions.
From BTTL:
“Candidates should display how the grant funding will help you advance in a important space of growth – be it casting, location scouting, hiring crew, or capturing a scene – there aren’t any limits, so long as the motion taken strikes the needle in your venture. That is about discovering movies with sturdy creative benefit and a daring authentic imaginative and prescient, prepared to enter manufacturing earlier than the top of 2026.”
Deadline: October 1 (Late Deadline)
‘Leaving Ikorodu in 1999’, directed by Rashida Seriki | Supported by BFI Future Takes
BFI and Film4 Future Takes affords assist for higher-budget stay motion, short-form initiatives from groups of writers, administrators, and producers primarily based within the UK. They’ll assist as much as six brief movies, with funding of between £60,000 and £90,000 per movie.
Future Takes helps scripted stay motion work or hybrid documentary involving scripted or dramatised parts. Movies could be a most size of 25 minutes, and the applying have to be made by the lead producer with a longtime observe report in transferring picture work and be a UK resident. The producer can’t be the author or director of the venture.
The director will need to have a longtime inventive observe report in scripted transferring picture work and had no a couple of characteristic movie produced and commercially distributed within the UK.
From Future Takes:
“Because it turns into more durable to get debut options financed and in entrance of an viewers, there’s a appreciable hole within the assist accessible to filmmakers who might have began their careers however are lacking the piece of labor that can enable them to maneuver on to larger, bolder work.
Future Takes goals to assist the creation of progressive, bold short-form works that command a better price range and won’t be realisable with out assist. This might imply concepts, settings or filming strategies which are actually boundary pushing, both in type or content material.”
Deadline: October 20
Shore Scripts is providing a $15,000 manufacturing grant for a profitable brief movie script, plus $4,000 in ending funds to a separate winner.
From Shore:
“As a lot as we like to learn scripts, too many glorious shorts by no means progress past the written phrase, which is why we established the Brief Movie Fund to assist take these compelling tales off the web page and onto the display screen.
Earlier winners have gone on to achieve illustration, bought screenplays, and been staffed on Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, & BBC exhibits as a direct results of profitable and producing their shorts with us.”
Late Deadline: October 31
Regardless of its unlucky acronym, the Filmmaker Help Program (FAP) could be a lifesaver for Canadian residents seeking to get their movie over the end line.
This program affords chosen Canadian filmmakers the chance to journey to Montreal to finish a portion of their post-production in-house at Balmoral Studios. Companies offered embody post-production providers and entry to post-production gear reminiscent of image and sound enhancing suites, on-line enhancing providers, title and credit design, sound results, voice recording, mixing, entry to the NFB archives, grasp copies, and authoring of an entire digital cinema package deal (DCP).
Filmmakers dwelling inside 150 km of Montreal should cowl 10% of the entire price of requested post-production providers. For filmmakers who stay greater than 150 km from Montreal however want to journey to Montreal to entry the providers, the NFB waives the ten%.
The movie have to be an impartial Canadian manufacturing. Eligible codecs and genres embody: Brief, medium-length, or feature-length documentaries, documentary collection for the online, animated brief, medium, or characteristic movie, brief fiction, and experimental movies.
Deadline: November 14
For the second 12 months in a row, Japan-based Manga writer Kodansha is looking for brief movie pitches from all over the world, funding budgets as much as ¥10,000,000 (about $68,000). They welcome functions from administrators, producers, animators, CG creators, and manufacturing corporations.
From Kodansha:
“We’re calling for submissions from a variety of creators, together with not solely filmmakers but in addition artists with concepts and in addition screenwriters…Kodansha’s function is to “Encourage Inconceivable Tales.” We’re on the lookout for submissions from visible creators who wish to work with us to create not possible tales that transcend creativeness, that can encourage the world and the hearts of others!”
Deadline: November 30
In case you are a U.S. or Canada-based scholar or low-budget indie filmmaker, Panavision could provide you with a free digicam package deal.
Deadline: Rolling
In case you have an almost accomplished (or completed) narrative movie with a number one character who’s a scientist, engineer, or mathematician, this grant may very well be for you.
From Movie Impartial:
“The Sloan Distribution Grant is a $50,000 grant awarded by Movie Impartial to a movie that’s coming into its distribution part. Eligible movies should depict themes, tales and characters grounded in actual science, expertise or economics.”
Deadline: Rolling
Screenwriting
‘Flora Borealis’ written and directed by Casey Friedman, MacDowell alum
Movie Impartial Screenwriting Lab
The Screenwriting Lab is a two-week workshop held in Los Angeles, designed to offer individualized story and profession growth for rising screenwriters with a fiction characteristic screenplay.
Every Screenwriting Fellow is paired with a inventive advisor, with whom they’ll work one-on-one and in group periods. Quite a lot of visitor audio system are invited to display screen and talk about their very own movies and supply profession insights, and a ultimate pitch occasion affords additional alternative for individualized suggestions and interplay with business executives.
Previous Screenwriting Lab initiatives embody Chloé Zhao’s ‘Songs My Brothers Taught Me’ and Robbie Pickering’s SXSW winner ‘Pure Choice’. Previous advisors embody Eliza Hittman, Phil Hay & Matt Manfredi, and Ti West. There’s a $65 utility charge.
Prolonged Deadline: September 8
MacDowell’s prestigious residency program has supported lots of of artists since its founding in 1907. Artists are supplied with a non-public studio, chef-prepared meals, and dwelling lodging on their 450-acre property in Peterborough, New Hampshire. Residencies final from 4-6 weeks.
Previous screenwriting residents embody Julia Solomonoff, Shaka King, and Josh Locy.
From MacDowell:
“About 300 artists in seven disciplines are awarded Fellowships annually, and the only criterion for acceptance is creative excellence. There aren’t any residency charges, and need-based stipends and journey reimbursement grants can be found to open the residency to the broadest attainable neighborhood of artists.”
Deadline: September 10
The competitors related to the Cinequest Movie Competition affords $5,000 for the profitable characteristic script, and $1,000 for a brief/teleplay in addition to recognition in the course of the Writers Celebration on the fest.
From Cinequest:
“…the Cinequest Screenwriting Competitors empowers inventive and progressive writers with the chance to work together with producers and business professionals from all over the world. Finalists might be honored in the course of the Cinequest Writers Celebration, a day crammed with a dynamic assortment of Author Meet Producer occasions, Enterprise of Writing boards, Pitch Coaching, VIP Writers Lunch, and an awards ceremony asserting the winners of the competitors.”
Deadline: September 12
The Writers Guild Basis, in partnership with TV writers and producers Tanya Saracho (Vida), Mike Royce (One Day at a Time), and Liz Hsiao Lan Alper (Day of the Useless), created this 12-week course to offer writers who’re BIPOC, LGBTQ+, disabled, and over the age of fifty, with the instruments and schooling to develop into a writers’ assistant and script coordinator, leading to significant employment alternatives.
Graduates of this system are added to an ongoing checklist of skilled writers’ assistants and script coordinators (WA/SCs) that’s made accessible to studios, networks, and showrunners in an effort to improve the pool of eligible hires.
The 12-week course incorporates a wide range of classes tailor-made to the positions of a writers’ assistant or script coordinator. By the top of the semester, contributors can have a working information to combine right into a writers’ room and essential connections to entry these alternatives.
The course will happen between January and Could of subsequent 12 months. Candidates have to be accessible for courses, hosted on-line through Zoom, on Thursday evenings from 7-10 pm PT.
Optionally available in-person meetups and networking occasions are held completely in Los Angeles.
Deadline: September 16
NALIP and NFMLA are collaborating with STARZ for the fourth season of the STARZ #TakeTheLead Writers’ Intensive — an empowering program geared toward nurturing new voices in tv.
4 writers might be chosen to attach with 15 business professionals from a various vary of TV backgrounds whereas crafting a spec episode therapy. Every author will then be paired with a mentor to jot down a full spec episode script primarily based on an current STARZ collection.
From STARZ:
“#TakeTheLead is STARZ’s dedication to amplifying narratives by, about and for girls and underrepresented audiences. We hope that by taking the lead and remaining fiercely devoted to inclusion on and off display screen, and all through the corporate, in addition to our dedication to daring, unapologetic tales and characters, it’ll encourage others throughout the business.”
Deadline: September 18
Sponsored by Channel 4, this course affords 12 UK or Eire-based writers new to tv drama an perception into how the business works and to offer a “dry-run” of what it may be like to jot down below a tv drama fee, particularly for one-hour collection and serial drama, and to work with them as they write an authentic drama script.
Writers might be anticipated to jot down an authentic one-hour drama or serial pilot episode and a 2 to 3-page collection define between January and June 2026. Every author might be assigned a script editor who’s at present working within the business to information them by this course of.
Candidates have to be accessible for 2 separate weekend intensives in London: seventeenth & 18th January 2026 and sixth & seventh June 2026.
Writers might be paid a charge for taking part within the course and for finishing two drafts of a one-hour script. All writers might be required to grant Shelley Productions a primary choice for Channel 4 to amass all rights of their script and might be instructed inside six months of supply whether or not Channel 4 needs to train this selection.
Solely writers who should not have a broadcast credit score as a tv author or a theatrical launch as a characteristic movie author might apply.
Deadline: October 6
‘Istikhara, New York’, written and directed by Yasir Masood, Blacklist/NDRC Local weather Fellow
The Black Checklist and WiF will co-sponsor 6 aspiring tv writers of an underrepresented gender to a four-week episodic lab. The lab will encompass script growth, peer workshopping periods, and grasp courses with established writers and business executives. All contributors of the 2024 Episodic Lab may even be 2024 WiF Fellows. The Episodic Lab will happen in LA all year long, and journey is not going to be offered for any occasions; due to this fact, non-California residents who can not finance their very own journey are discouraged from making use of.
Deadline: December 15
This Fellowship will grant $20,000 every to a few candidates to assist the revision of a characteristic screenplay or pilot that engages with local weather change in a compelling approach. Grantees will obtain continued mentorship all through the revision course of, in addition to entry to related specialists and consultants. Earlier mentors embody Brit Marling, Daniel Scheinert, and Mike Schur.
Writers should add a venture onto the blacklist web site in an effort to be thought-about; certified screenplays or pilots will obtain one free month of Blacklist internet hosting and one free analysis.
Deadline: November 28
Helpful Hyperlinks
Keep watch over our Grants, Contests & Awards part, the place we might be sharing new alternatives that come up all through the season.
