Clockwise from top: Jess X. Snow, Mark Ingber, Ramzi Bashour
From Water to Soil, Production Award, from MFA Candidate Jess X. Snow and Kit Yan: After her immigrant mother's herbal medicine store in NYC Chinatown gets vandalized, Kai, a botany student and heir to her mother’s ancestral practice, has a nervous breakdown and decides to close up shop for good. Following the incident, Kai's ex helps organize a rally to help the neighborhood recover from the attacks, forcing Kai to choose between her own mental health and her family.
A community-driven drama about plants, bird migration and how the diasporic plants that are considered "invasive species" can actually bring us profound healing.
Terroir, First Feature Award, from MFA Candidate Mark Ingber: When Marianne, a rebellious college student, finds herself trapped back at her family vineyard to care for her ailing father, she escalates a contentious relationship with her conservative mother into a war between generations when she hatches a plot to humiliate her family by winning the regional wine championship with a lab-made artificial wine.
Yes Chef and The Mushroom King, Screenwriting Grant, from alum Ramzi Bashour: A young cook (who happens to grow psychoactive mushrooms in his Queens apartment) and a mysterious mushroom hunter from Upstate New York cross paths in the woods. A dubious friendship blossoms as the two mycophiles ambitiously set out to revive a long ago extinct fungal species of which the mushroom hunter claims to possess the last remaining spores. Magic, mushrooms, and mother nature ensues. An episodic comedy about the wonder of fungi.
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