Fiscal Update: Fiscally Sponsored ‘Shakti’ Now on Amazon & More
Welcome to Fiscal Spotlight, a special monthly round up of projects—at all stages of production—working their way through Film Independent’s Fiscal Sponsorship pipeline. Enjoy!
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Film Independent’s Fiscal Sponsorship program has the power to get projects made. Today we’re sharing three great examples of that, including one you can watch right now.
Fiscal sponsorship (where artists can use Film Independent’s non-profit status to receive grants and tax-deductible donations) supports all sorts of projects: shorts and features, narrative and nonfiction; even the odd new media projects, special events or advocacy initiative. Each month’s Fiscal Spotlight column highlights three new projects taking part in the program.
This month we have updates from three films, including a mind-bending animated feature that’s being painted frame-by-frame, a queer love story on the US/Mexican border that’s about to start it’s festival run, and an award winning Nepalese family drama that’s now available to stream worldwide.
Shakti
Project type: Fiction feature
Project status: Released
Producers: Nani Sahra Walker, Candi Guterres, Ida Sonni, and Jered Everson
Writer/Director: Nani Sahra Walker
About the project:
When her mischievous daughter falls mysteriously ill, a single mother is drawn into Kathmandu’s supernatural underworld of shamans and secrets, where resilience may be their only path to redemption.
Filmmaker Update: After several years of development, production, and post-production, SHAKTI has completed its festival run and is now available through Buffalo 8 on Amazon Prime Video in the US and UK, Tubi in the US and Canada, and Plex and Fawesome worldwide. The film won multiple awards, including Best Narrative Premiere and the Richard D. Propes Narrative Social Impact Award at the Heartland International Film Festival, with additional screenings at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, CAAMFest, the Hawaii International Film Festival, and the International Film Festival of India in Goa. Inspired in part by Nepal’s former 35-day statute of limitations on reporting sexual violence, SHAKTI explores resilience, healing, and justice through the relationship between a mother and daughter. Writer-director Nani Sahra Walker was also named Best New Filmmaker at the 2026 Best of NewFilmmakers Los Angeles Awards.
Watch the film:
Amazon Prime Video
Calexico
Project type: Fiction Short
Project status: Post Production
Writer/Director/Producer: Jingwen Felix Qiang
Executive Producer: Jennie Lew Tugend
About the project: 28 years old Chinese-American girl Ash, a rebellious artist wannabe, flees her family’s expectation of taking a stable job to Calexico, a border town in California. She has bonded with Lo, a Mexican transborder college senior who crosses regularly to school and helps to deliver flowers to her uncle’s shop in the US as both are stuck in limbo.
Filmmaker Update: Calexico is crossing the finish line in final post-production – graphics and final DCP, and we’re thrilled to share that it will have its world premiere in the Short Film Competition at the Warsaw Film Festival this fall. We are now preparing final festival materials while raising funds for publicity, festival submissions and travel, audience outreach, and distribution. At its heart, Calexico is a story about avoidance, unspoken love, and the painful distance between two people standing side by side. Set against the rhythms of the U.S.–Mexico border, it asks what remains when a relationship ends without the words or farewell either person needs.
Alongside the short film’s launch, we are developing a feature-length version of Calexico, expanding its exploration of queer love, cultural displacement, and the choices people make when they do not know how to let each other go. We’re grateful to Film Independent for helping us reach this next chapter.
The Month Between April and May
Project type: Animated Feature
Project status: Post-Production
Director/Animator/Writer: Kai Tattersall
Producer/Composer: Myles Ortiz-Green
About the Project: The film follows May, a traveling nurse who takes a job aboard the impossibly large hospital train, “Dreamcatcher Express.” Those aboard receive treatment through a surreal form of dream therapy. One evening she meets an old acquaintance, Thomas. They happily reunite and reminisce about their past… but the next day, he jumps off the train.
Filmmaker update: The Month Between April and May has officially locked its final pre-animation cut. After two years of development and a multi-camera shoot with actors in full costume, our feature-length rotoscope animation now enters its most intensive phase: every frame is being painted over by hand (roughly seven minutes of finished animation per month). No generative AI is used. Every frame is 100% human-made.
We’re now raising the final $50,000 in finishing funds through Film Independent’s fiscal sponsorship to complete post-production, our 32-speaker immersive spatial audio mix, and the festival run ahead of a Spring 2027 premiere. Every donation is tax-deductible, and gifts of $100 or more receive a special thanks credit in the film.
As a duo, we’ve been wearing multiple hats to work on this project, and we are so excited to be nearing the finish line, and to be able to share our last two years with you and our communities.
Learn more about Fiscal Sponsorship, including its benefits and eligibility requirements by visiting our website. See which projects are currently being supported via our Sponsored Projects page.
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