The Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival (LALIFF) is open for submissions for its second annual LALIFF Inclusion Fellowship. The fellowship, which awards a $20,000 grant to produce a short, individualized mentorship from industry leaders, and development support from Netflix, aims to champion underrepresented filmmakers within the Latine communities.
In its second year, and with support from Netflix, LAIFF will award five directors that identify as Indigenous Latines and five directors who identify as Afro Latines. This program expansion is part of the recently announced Netflix Fund for Creative Equity, where Netflix will invest USD $100 million dollars over the next five years in a combination of external organizations with a strong track record of setting underrepresented communities up for success in the TV and film industries.
“Last summer, LALIFF and Netflix united to uplift the Afro Latino voices within our filmmaking community with the goal of moving Latino representation forward. As we move on to the second year of this crucial work, we are proud to continue our Afro Latino-focused fellowship, while at the same time adding a brand-new cohort to our work – Indigenous Latinos,” said Academy Award-nominated actor, founder of the Latino Film Institute (LFI) and co-founder of LALIFF, Edward James Olmos.
The 2020 fellows, Lorena Durán, Justin Floyd, Kase Peña, Monica Suriyage, and Tamara Shogaolu premiered their short films at LALIFF 2021.
“We are blown away by the talent and films from the first year of the program. LALIFF does amazing work to support artists who have been historically underrepresented, and we are thrilled to partner with them on expanding the Fellowship to support Indigenous Latino filmmakers,” said Pete Corona, Director of Drama Series at Netflix.
The deadline for submissions is October 14th, 2021.
