Film grant programs that every actor, screenwriter, director, and producer should apply for.
Have you ever wanted to join the film industry but, you didn’t have the connections, the money, or even know where to get started? Well here are 44 film grant programs you should apply for to get your filmmaking career off the ground.
Nickelodeon Writing Program
Consider the facts: alum have gone on to create their own Nickelodeon shows and write for all sorts of TV series and films. While in the Program, writers meet our series creators, work in writers’ rooms, attend storyboard pitches, show tapings and more.
Deadline: 2 January
NEH Media Production Grants
Production Grants support film, television, and radio projects for general audiences that encourage active engagement with humanities ideas in creative and appealing ways.
Deadline: 4 January
Panavision’s New Filmmaker Program
Panavision® believes in helping students and beginning filmmakers achieve their dreams.
Deadline: 9 January
Creative District
A networking platform specifically for filmmakers, they are giving away $5k each month to selected features or shorts. Our mission is to help film and media makers create more work. We’re giving away up to $5,000 in grants each month. Projects can be at any stage.
Deadline: 10 January
Pacific Pioneer Fund
To support emerging documentary filmmakers committed to the craft of making documentaries, who has demonstrated that commitment by several years, but no more than ten of practical film or video experience.
Applicants must live and work in California, Oregon, or Washington.
Deadline: 11 January
NEH Media Development Grants
Development Grants support film, television, and radio projects for general audiences that encourage active engagement with humanities ideas in creative and appealing ways.
Deadline: 12 January
Moving Image Grant Funds LEF Foundation
LEF invests in documentary film and video projects that demonstrate excellence in technique, originality of vision and voice, and creativity in form.
Deadline: 15 January
Creative Capital
Creative Capital is one of the only national nonprofit organizations that awards grants to individual artists through an open application process.
We are a premier provider of risk capital in the arts, taking chances to support ideas that are bold, innovative and genre-stretching.
Deadline: 6 February
LINCS
Open Call provides completion funds for single nonfiction public television programs on any subject, and from any viewpoint. Projects must have begun production as evidenced by a work-in-progress video.
Deadline: 8 February
Sundance/Sloan Commissioning Grant & Fellowship
The Sundance Institute Feature Film Program has supported and championed many of the leading independent filmmakers of the past 30 years whose distinctive, singular films have engaged audiences worldwide.
Deadline: 11 February
Visions Sud Est Fund
The Swiss fund visions sud est supports film productions from Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe and guarantees their distribution in Switzerland.
Deadline: 28 February
Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hosts an international screenwriting competition established to identify new talent in screenwriting. Fellowship recipients are expected to complete at least one original feature film screenplay during the Fellowship year.
Deadline: 1 March
The Fledgling Fund
Fledgling sees storytelling as a lever to improve the lives of the most vulnerable. We know that a strong filmmaking vision and a beautifully crafted film are essential.
Deadline: 2 March
Sundance Documentary Fund
The Sundance Documentary Film Program supports non-fiction filmmakers worldwide in the production of cinematic documentaries on contemporary themes.
Deadline: 3 March
The Bertha BRITDOC Documentary Journalism Fund
The Bertha BRITDOC Journalism Fund is an international film fund dedicated to supporting long form feature documentaries of a journalistic nature. This is a rolling application fund. We aim to respond to applicants within 8 weeks.
Deadline: 4 March
The David Ross Fetzer Foundation for Emerging Artists
The film award consists of a grant of $5,000 to a U.S filmmaker 35 or under at the time of application for the production of a short film that will be shown as a private screening with the filmmaker in attendance at the annual foundation event in Salt Lake City the year the grant is awarded.
Deadline: 15 March
Vision Maker Media – Public Media Content Fund
Each year, Vision Maker Media awards over $500,000 in production contracts to independent producers and public television stations to produce programming by and about Native Americans for use by PBS stations. Funding can be for production, completion, or research & development.
Deadline: 18 March
Independent Lens
Independent Lens seeks submissions of films in advanced rough cut or fine cut stage or completed films to broadcast during the October – June season.
Deadline: 25 March
Pare Lorentz Documentary Fund
The Pare Lorentz Documentary Fund will provide production grants totaling $195,000 to be used in the creation of original, independent documentary films that illuminate pressing issues in the United States.
Deadline: 31 March
Ford Foundation: JustFilms
As the foundation works to reduce inequality in all its forms, we support artist-driven film and new media projects, and other forms of creative visual storytelling, that explore the rich diversity of the human experience.
Deadline: 7 April
The Bertha Britdoc Connect Fund
The fund is looking to support smart, strategic outreach campaigns for ambitious independent documentary feature films with a social issue at their core; films which have the ability to achieve real change on a local, regional or global level.
Deadline: 14 April
Warner Brothers Television Directors’ Workshop
Every year, the Workshop selects up to 10 participants out of almost 2,000 submissions and exposes them to Warner Bros. Television’s top writers and executives, all with the ultimate goal of earning them a staff position on a Warner Bros. produced television show.
Deadline: 1 May
The Scottish Documentary Institute Consultancies
At Scottish Documentary Institute we are dedicated to supporting fellow filmmakers and supporting your projects.
Deadline: 5 May
Points North Fellowship
The Points North Fellowship is a unique opportunity for six documentary filmmakers (or filmmaking teams) to develop their feature-length works-in-progress through a combination of focused industry mentorship, workshops, meetings and a public pitch session at the Camden International Film Festival
Deadline: 11 June
Loreen Arbus Disability Awareness Grant
Through the generosity of Loreen Arbus, New York Women in Film and Television has established the Loreen Arbus Disability Awareness Grant. The film completion grant for $7,500 will be awarded to a woman filmmaker for a film on physical or developmental disability issues.
Deadline: 15 June
POV: Call for Entries
For both US and International filmmakers, POV is known as the best of American public television’s showcase of independent documentaries, offering a highly competitive sum for broadcast distribution of films each season.
Deadline: 15 June
Mediterranean Documentary Market
If you’re a documentary filmmaker based in either one of the 12 Mediterranean or one of the 28 EU countries, consider this documentary market where between 20 and 30 selected films pitch to TV executives and professionals.
Deadline: 15 June
Women In Film / Netflix Finishing Fund
The Women In Film Foundation’s Film Finishing Fund (WIFF FFF) supports films by, for or about women by providing cash grants of up to $15,000 and in-kind services.
Deadline: 16 June
Screen Australia’s Feature Film Production Program
Screen Australia offers funds for the development, production and marketing of Australian screen content, as well as for the development of Australian talent and screen production businesses.
Deadline: 19 June
The Roy Dean Grant/From the Heart Productions Grant
The Roy Dean Summer Grant includes over $30k of in-kind services and products is open for shorts, docs, and features films with a budget under $500,000. We fund compelling stories about little known subjects, historical films, and films that touch hearts.
Deadline: 30 June
MountainFilm Commitment Grant
We are committed to help creative individuals tell stories that represent the spirit of Mountainfilm. Every year, we award five grants for $5,000 each to filmmakers, photographers, artists and adventurers whose projects are intended to move audiences to action on issues that matter.
Deadline: 3 July
The Alter-Ciné Foundation
The Alter-Ciné Foundation offers $10,000 to filmmakers born and living in Africa, Asia or Latin America with a documentary project in your native language that fits in with the aims of the Foundation.
Deadline: 15 August
Catapult Film Fund
Catapult Film Fund provides development funding to documentary filmmakers who have a compelling story to tell, have secured access to their story and are ready to shoot and edit a piece for production fundraising purposes.
Deadline: 21 August
Film London Production Finance Market
Production Finance Market (PFM) is a two-day film financing event which takes place every October in association with the BFI London Film Festival. It helps to build new film financing relationships between producers and financiers, and is the only event of its kind in the UK.
Deadline: 28 August
MacArthur Foundation Documentary Open Call
MacArthur’s goal in media grantmaking is to provide the public with high-quality, professionally-produced documentary films, deep and analytical journalism, and well-produced news and public affairs programming.
Deadline: 1 September
Documentaries International Program
The International Documentary Program supports Australian projects that have international finance as well as a domestic broadcast licence fee.
Deadline: 5 September
Good Pitch
Good Pitch brings together documentary filmmakers with foundations, NGOs, campaigners, philanthropists, policy makers, brands and media around leading social and environmental issues – to forge coalitions and campaigns that are good for all these partners, good for the films and good for society.
Deadline: 6 September
3D Content Financing Market
The 3D Content Financing Market (3DFM) is an international co-production and financing market fully dedicated to projects for stereoscopic-3D (S-3D) contents.
Deadline: 28 September
Panavision’s New Filmmaker Program
Panavision® believes in helping students and beginning filmmakers achieve their dreams.
Deadline: 9 January
Southern Documentary Fund In-the-Works Program
The Southern Documentary Fund supports documentary films made in or about North Carolina through our annual filmmaking grants. These grants are made possible thanks to generous support from The Mary Duke Biddle Foundation.
Deadline: 15 October
The Independent Filmmaker Project
IFP’s Fiscal Sponsorship program focuses exclusively on documentary films and other works of nonfiction, short films and low-budget fiction/narrative features (50 minutes+).
Deadline: 1 December
Hot Docs: Blue Ice Group Documentary Fund
The $1-million Hot Docs-Blue Ice Group Documentary Fund helps enable more African documentary filmmakers to tell their own stories and contribute to a new generation of the African documentary community.
Deadline: 2 December
National Film Board of Canada Filmmaker Assistance Program
The National Film Board’s mandate is to reflect Canadian values and perspectives through the production and distribution of innovative Canadian audiovisual works accessible in relevant media of today.
Deadline: 4 December
San Francisco Film Society Filmmaking Grant
The SFFS / KRF Filmmaking Grant supports feature narrative films that through plot, character, theme or setting explore human and civil rights, antidiscrimination, gender and sexual identity and other social issues of our time. This is NOT a documentary grant.
Deadline: 7 December
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