Princess Grace Foundation
Congratulations to the Grad Film recipients of the 2023 Princess Grace Awards!
The Princess Grace Foundation-USA is dedicated to upholding the legacy of Princess Grace of Monaco, Grace Kelly, and elevating extraordinary emerging artists in theater, dance and film through career-advancing grants.
This year, the Princess Grace Foundation recognized 18 Princess Grace Award winners and 11 Honoraria recipients. Click here for the full list.
Yuan Yuan '22 (MFA, Kanbar Institute, Grad Film)
2023 Princess Grace Award
Cary Grant Film Honor
Yuan Yuan is a Chinese born writer-director, based in New York. Her previous short film, Heading South, won several awards including the Jury Prize at Hong Kong International Film Festival, and Best Student Film at DGA Student Film Award, Palm Springs and Aspen ShortFest. Yuan is currently developing her first feature project, Late Spring, which has been selected by Sundance Screenwriters & Directors Labs 2022. Yuan is a recipient of SFFILM Rainin Grant, Spike Lee Film Production Fund, Ang Lee Scholarship, Maja Kristin Directing Fellowship. Yuan Yuan graduated from NYU Tisch Grad Film program in 2022.
Lorena Durán '20 (MFA, Kanbar Institute, Grad Film)
2023 Princess Grace Award
John H. Johnson Film Honor
Lorena Durán is a Dominican-American director and cinematographer. Her films have been official selections for International Rotterdam Film Festival, Palm Springs ShortFest, Atlanta Film Festival, and New Orleans Film Festival. She has been selected for the Academy’s inaugural Film Accelerator Program, LALIFF x Netflix Inclusion Fellowship and Film Independent Project Involve Fellowship. Lorena received an MFA in Film at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, with a concentration in cinematography. Her collaborations have been awarded at Sundance and screened at Tribeca, Miami, and Edinburgh Film Festivals. She is the recipient of the 2019 ARRI Volker Bahnemann Award for Outstanding Cinematography. Prior to moving to the United States, she worked in different roles within the production department in the Dominican Republic while shooting and directing short documentaries.
Abbesi Akhamie '17 (MFA, Kanbar Institute, Grad Film)
2023 Princess Grace Award
Cary Grant Film Honor
Additional Grants:
2023 Special Project
Born in Heidelberg, Germany, Abbesi Akhamie is a Nigerian-American writer-director and producer working between Lagos and Washington D.C. She is an MFA Film graduate of New York University with her work focusing on Africa and its diaspora as well as the politics of culture and identity. Her debut short film, Still Water Runs Deep, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, and her short film, The Couple Next Door, premiered at Aspen ShortsFest and is currently streaming on the Criterion Collection. She is also developing her debut feature film, In My Father’s House, which has graciously been supported by Athena Writer’s Lab, TIFF Writer’s Studio, and the SFFILM. As an artist, Abbesi was selected as a resident at Black Rock Senegal, founded by renowned American artist and Obama presidential portraitist, Kehinde Wiley.
Macdaleine St.Remy (MFA Candidate, Kanbar Institute, Grad Film)
2023 Princess Grace Honoraria
Macdaleine St.Remy is a first-generation, Miami-born, Haitian-American writer and director based in Brooklyn. She writes stories with characters who have yet to experience the spotlight of screen attention, displaying their glorious, messy, and complex lives as lovingly as possible. Macdaleine received the 2022 Black Family Film Prize, the 2022 Sara Driver Production Award, and 2020 Tisch Initiative for Creative Research HEAR US grant. Her film, dis•chord, which explores questions of class, gender and citizenship, has played at the Middlebury New Filmmaker’s Festival, Toronto Black Film Festival. Using her natural curiosity born from her engineering background as a guide, Macdaleine investigates untold, nuanced stories that show the common humanity all around us.