The LEF Foundation has awarded 16 Moving Image Fund grants totaling $310,000 in support of feature-length documentary works by New England-based filmmakers.
The LEF Moving Image Fund invests in feature-length documentary films that demonstrate excellence in technique, strong storytelling ability, and originality of artistic vision and voice. The most recent round of awards includes nine grants of $15,000 to projects at the Production stage and seven grants of $25,000 to projects at the Post-production stage.
This round of Moving Image Fund grantees captures a wide array of cinematic nonfiction storytelling approaches that bring unique inquiry, depth, and attention to a host of topics. Whether led by captivating participants, unresolved circumstances, or bold experiments, each film considers a particular aspect of humanity to reveal how we can live alongside one another, encountering an abundance of histories and possibilities.
PRODUCTION
BLOWW
Directed and Produced by Emily Yue
A queer feminist wrestling league fights to smash the patriarchy, build community, and sell out enough shows to stay afloat in Boston. A bastion of hope in increasingly dark times, the league turns the wrestling ring into a platform for queer catharsis, artistic expression, and political protest.
FENCED
Directed by Gabriella García-Pardo
Produced by Gabriella García-Pardo, Wenjing Xu, Kellen Quinn
With dark humor, empathy, and an eye for the absurd, FENCED explores how the lines we draw on our landscapes mirror the ones we create between each other. As filmmaker Gabriella García-Pardo journeys through a spectrum of dividing lines – from landslides and barbed wire enthusiasts to a trainhopping YouTuber – a profound change in her own life pushes her to reimagine what boundaries are for.
Feu de Lune (working title)
Directed by Dominic Yarabe
Produced by Eliza Soros
Bobia, a rural village in Côte d’Ivoire, keeps a buried secret. The war has one memory, and it is three generations long. In a place where history is carried through stories, the memory of this largely erased civil war survives through children’s dreams, adult silences, and a mother’s nightly bedtime stories.
Intersection
Directed by Laura Kerivan, Brendan Little
Produced by Feliciano Tavares, Brendan Little, Laura Kerivan
Intersection is a story of neighbors, told by neighbors. At the crossing of Boston’s “Mass & Cass”—where poverty, addiction, and privilege intermix daily— we see housed and unhoused neighbors engage with police, outreach workers, and city councilors as they seek solutions to some of society’s most prevalent challenges. Beyond offering a record of the area’s strife, this film also tracks a truth and reconciliation process in which ambassadors from each faction work to unify the entire community.
Patrimony
Directed by Musa Syeed
Dr. Syeed is a retired leader of the Muslim community, a diehard optimist, and, at 80, he fears losing his memory and his voice. He’s desperate to find someone to document his eventful life, from serving time as a political prisoner in Kashmir to his pioneering interfaith work in America. But the best he can find is a reluctant, cynical filmmaker who happens to be his youngest son–me.
SILVER & earth
Directed by Kathryn Ramey
Produced by Kathryn Ramey, Jonna McKone
Focusing on silver-based images, shifting between human and geological time and emerging from the filmmaker’s familial connections to place, SILVER & earth is an experimental documentary that tells the story of silver from the perspective of the flora and fauna it has been used to represent in dialogue with outdoor enthusiasts, environment activists, ecologists, archivists and artists examining the relationship between human creation and environmental destruction.
The Eye of Eternity
Directed by Matteo Moretti
Produced by Matteo Moretti, Morgan Hulquist
In a small Maine village, the last three Shakers refuse to let their way of life disappear. Dismissed by the world as relics, this documentary offers a rare, present-tense portrait of their belief, the passage of time, and the strength it takes to carry a fragile tradition into an uncertain future.
Untitled EJ Lee Documentary
Directed by Jason Rhee
Produced by Jason Rhee, Zoe Sua Cho, Lily Qi
EJ Lee, a Louisiana legend nicknamed the “Korean Magic Johnson of NCAA women’s basketball,” has been overlooked her entire career. But finally, at the age of 60, EJ receives her first opportunity to become a college head coach and lead an underdog team of young women in West Texas.
Untitled Women on the Road Documentary
Directed by Vanessa Carr
Produced by Vanessa Carr, Josh Gleason
Jo Lynn, 60, breaks free from a toxic marriage by joining a van-dwelling sisterhood of single older women living off-grid—most claiming a bold third act after motherhood, divorce, or loss. As Jo Lynn confronts the lifestyle’s rugged realities, her mentor Phyllis—a seasoned traveler leading a “nomads helping nomads” mutual aid network—confronts her own aging and the limits of preparing others for radical self-reliance. A complex portrait of older women and aging in America.
POST-PRODUCTION
Burlington, This is You!
Directed by Myles David Jewell, Lauren-Glenn Davitian
Produced by Meghan O’Rourke, Jordan Mitchell
Burlington, This Is You! draws on CCTV’s 40-year community media archive to show how Burlington, VT has documented itself through decades of social and economic justice activism, open media, and free speech. By revisiting this pioneering local work—including the city’s rise onto the national political stage—the film connects Burlington’s past with today’s community media and change makers, inspiring the next generation of media activists to continue the fight for justice and open expression.
Caretakers
Directed by Ambrus Hernadi
Produced by Rita Balogh
Two Hungarian women work abroad as live-in caregivers. Being away from family means an escape for Zsuzsa in Freiburg or adventure for Beata in Brooklyn. Anti-migrant politics forces them to question where, if anywhere, they truly belong.
Eurydice in the Underworld
Directed by Felicity E. Palma
Diagnosed with breast cancer at 28, the filmmaker traces the Red Devil, one of the disease’s most notorious chemotherapies, to the red soil of her father’s homeland. Filmed on 16mm in Southern Italy and woven with video gathered across fourteen years of medical appointments, the film takes up the writings of Kathy Acker, who died of the same disease, and the myths of the underworld she appropriated, moving through ancient sites of descent now in ecological collapse. Through text, performance, layered sound work, and burning light leaks, the film gives form to the social isolation, psychosexual crisis, and interior reckoning of the disease.
Finding Armenia
Directed by Nubar Alexanian
Produced by Sabrina Zanella-Foresi, Laura Wiessen, Abby Alexanian
An Armenian-American photojournalist’s reckoning with the powerful legacy of genocide. When your family’s brutal past is denied, how do you make sense of who you are?
Memories of Lightning
Directed by Riccardo Giacconi
Produced by Fabrizio Polpettini
Sibilla S., a young radio journalist, visits a small village in central Italy for the first time. She is working on an audio-documentary about her aunt Gianna. In 1982, ten years before Sibilla’s birth, Gianna was killed by a group of local young men, following an act of seemingly inexplicable violence and omerta. Through voices and sounds, Sibilla evokes the ghosts of a past event, recording the last echoes of its auditory memory.
Nine
Directed by Rachael DeCruz, Jeremy Levine
Produced by Rachael DeCruz, Jeremy Levine, Rajal Pitroda
After being sent to prison for life at 18, Gerald—also known as “Nine”—met Henry, who raised him into the man he is today. Using the lessons Henry taught him, Gerald organized his way out of prison. Now, Gerald is on a mission to bring his 83-year-old “Pops” home while there’s still time. Illuminating how love can serve as an act of resistance, Nine is a necessary portrait of Black life in the American Northwest and a poetic exploration of family, community, and masculinity.
The Teachers Project (working title)
Directed by Luke Meyer
Produced by Luke Meyer, Raoul Meyer, Tom Davis, and Jenna Sauers
THE TEACHERS PROJECT is a compelling, character-driven journey into the lives of American educators as they navigate the intensifying culture war that has enveloped the nation’s schools since 2020. As political battles over sanctioned ideas, books, and lesson plans rage from national headlines to local school boards, the film reveals the devastating consequences of this chaos and conflict for teachers, students, communities, and the future of American education.
Over the past 26 years, LEF New England has remained committed to the Moving Image Fund as our core grant program, and we’ve witnessed the many ripple effects that it has created for filmmakers’ projects and creative trajectories over time,” said Lyda Kuth, LEF Executive Director. “At a time of great uncertainty for arts and culture funding at both the national and local levels, we continue to believe in the role that regional grant-makers like LEF can play in offering consistent project support and deepening creative growth and community-building opportunities for individual artists.”
On receiving this support, one filmmaker shared, “After six years of working on this film, LEF’s support feels incredibly meaningful. This is the first grant we’ve received for the film, and it comes at a moment when that encouragement and momentum matter more than ever—not just for this project, but for filmmakers working to keep meaningful nonfiction storytelling alive as opportunities across the industry continue to shrink.”
The formal grant review process began in early winter when LEF received 96 eligible letters of inquiry at its January 2026 deadline for Production and Post-production. These proposals were evaluated by a group of three New England-based filmmakers serving as peer readers, in addition to LEF staff.
Of these initial inquiries, 24 projects were invited by LEF staff to submit a full application. All 24 full applications were then evaluated by a peer review panel made up of filmmakers and professionals from across the U.S. who represent a diversity of perspectives on documentary. Peer reviewers remain anonymous and change at every round.
“At LEF, we offer every filmmaker who applied to the Moving Image Fund the opportunity to hear feedback from the peer review process if they would find it supportive,” said LEF Program Director Genevieve Carmel. “We’re deeply grateful to our peer reviewers, whose thoughtful engagement with each proposal is what makes the feedback process most meaningful for applicants, informing and contributing to the development of their film projects over time.”
On what LEF Moving Image Fund support has meant for them, one grantee reflected, “LEF’s sustained and holistic support has been instrumental to my project and my broader development as a filmmaker.” Another said “We couldn’t have made our film without LEF’s help over the 14 years it took to finish.”
In addition to this group of grantees, LEF also awarded $52,500 to 13 projects in Early Development and Pre-production earlier in the fiscal year. In total, LEF will be distributing $362,500 in funding to documentary productions over the course of its 2025–26 fiscal year. In more than 25 years since its inception, the Moving Image Fund has awarded over 500 grants totaling more than $5.5 million in filmmaker support.
On receiving LEF support over time, one grantee in this round shared, “LEF has supported my work for 20 years. Often they are the first money in on a project enabling me to pursue additional funding. They have also provided me with exceptional opportunities for professional growth such as the LEF/CIFF Fellowship and the FSC-LEF fellowship. I truly would not be the filmmaker I am today without their support.”
The next Moving Image Fund grant deadline is Friday, August 21 for New England-based directors and producers seeking Pre-production and Early Development support for feature-length documentaries. Prior grantees who are still eligible can apply for Post-production at the same deadline.
You can find more details regarding LEF Moving Image Fund guidelines and eligibility on our website.
You can subscribe to LEF’s mailing list to receive a monthly newsletter and the latest updates about grantee news, filmmaker opportunities, and calls for Moving Image Fund submissions. For more information on the Foundation or its funded projects, please contact Program Officer Matthew LaPaglia at matthew@lef-foundation.org.
