For over a decade, Film Independent and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation together have encouraged filmmakers to create more realistic and accurate stories about science and technology to challenge existing stereotypes about scientists and engineers in the popular imagination.

Projects eligible for support through Film Independent’s Sloan Grants program feature scientific, mathematical or technological themes, or have a lead character that is a scientist, engineer or mathematician. Science fiction films and documentaries are not eligible.

Some well-known examples of films and TV series with stories inspired by science include Silicon Valley, Hidden Figures, The Theory of Everything, The Big Bang Theory and Scrubs.

Film Independent supports Sloan-eligible projects at various stages:
 

Development

A $20,000 Episodic Lab Grant is awarded to a Sloan-eligible project in the Episodic Lab. Past recipients of Film Independent’s Episodic Sloan grant include Cloak & Data, Mary Mallon and Liftoff.

A $30,000 Producing Lab Grant is awarded to a Sloan-eligible project in the Producing Lab. Past recipients of Film Independent’s Producing Sloan grant include Smoke Country, The Plutonians and Upstreamers.
 

Development/Pre-Production

A $20,000 Fast Track Grant is awarded to a Sloan-eligible project in the Fast Track finance market. Past recipients of Film Independent’s Fast Track Sloan grant include Science of the Slam Dunk, Moving Bangladesh and Asia A.
 

Post-Production

A $50,000 Sloan Distribution Grant is awarded to a Sloan-eligible project that is entering its distribution phase. Past recipients of Film Independent’s Sloan Distribution grant include After Yang and Radical.

 
Each of the Sloan grantees in an Artist Development program are paired with a Science Advisor who will review their project and advise the grantee on their project from a scientific perspective. All Sloan grantees are featured on the Sloan Science and Film website, an online publication presented by the Museum of the Moving Image.
 

About the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is a New York based, philanthropic, not-for-profit institution that makes grants in three areas: research in science, technology, and economics; quality and diversity of scientific institutions; and public engagement with science. Sloan’s program in Public Understanding of Science and Technology, directed by Doron Weber, supports books, radio, film, television, theater and new media to reach a wide, non-specialized audience and to bridge the two cultures of science and the humanities.

Sloan’s Film Program encourages filmmakers to create more realistic and compelling stories about science and technology and to challenge existing stereotypes about scientists and engineers in the popular imagination. Over the past two decades, Sloan has partnered with a dozen leading film schools and established annual awards in screenwriting and film production. The Foundation also supports screenplay development programs with the Sundance Institute, SFFILM, Film Independent, The Black List, the Athena Film Festival, and the Toronto International Film Festival. The Sloan Film Program has supported over 800 film projects and has helped develop over 30 feature films, including Tesla, Radium Girls, Adventures of a Mathematician, One Man Dies a Million Times, The Sound of Silence, To Dust, Operator, The Imitation Game, and The Man Who Knew Infinity. The Foundation has supported feature documentaries such as Vishniac, Join or Die, Werner Herzog’s Theater of Thought, David France’s How to Survive a Pandemic, Picture a Scientist, Coded Bias, In Silico, Oliver Sacks: His Own Life, The Bit Player, Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, Particle Fever, and Jacques Perrin’s Oceans. It has also given early award recognition to standout films such as The Pod Generation, BlackBerry, Don’t Look Up, After Yang, Linoleum, Son of Monarchs, Ammonite, The Aeronauts, Searching, The Martian, First Man, and Hidden Figures.

The Foundation’s book program includes early support for Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race, the best-selling book that became the highest grossing Oscar-nominated film of 2017, and Kai Bird & Martin Sherwin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning American Prometheus, adapted for the screen in Christopher Nolan’s hit film Oppenheimer.

For more information about the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, visit sloan.org or follow the Foundation on X, Instagram or Facebook.
 
If you have additional questions, please email us at artistdevelopment@filmindependent.org.