Mariano Dongo, Roxy Moskowitz, and Owain Astles
Grad Film MFA candidates Owain Astles and Roxy Moskowitz and alum Mariano Dongo have received the 2025 Marcie Bloom Fellowship in Film. The thriving fellowship has nurtured over 70 filmmakers from more than 20 countries who’ve presented their first features at leading international festivals including Sundance, Berlin and Cannes; as well as worked on acclaimed TV series, and even ventured into Broadway.
Owain Astles is a film director and producer based between New York, Bristol and London. He previously worked at Inside Job Productions where he co-directed films with men in London prisons. He’s currently studying on the Grad Film programme at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and is developing his first feature film, an ensemble coming-of-age film about young people experiencing homelessness in Bristol, co-created with the young people themselves.
Mariano Dongo is a Peruvian writer, director and producer whose films have screened at several festivals, including Palm Springs. His 2023 short “Mucho Mucho Amor” was recently commissioned by MASS MoCA for a live score presentation. Named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film,” Dongo holds an MFA from NYU’s Graduate Film Program. He’s now developing, with his producing partner and co-writer Cary Mason, “The Moment of Truth,” an urban horror film set in a Queens apartment complex that follows a clash between the building’s Super and a group of young housing activists.
Roxy Moskowitz is a writer-director from Brooklyn who was raised in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish household. An MFA candidate at NYU’s Graduate Film program, she presented her 2022 short film “Sunday with Monica” at Indie Memphis and at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. She is currently developing her first feature about an internet addict who escapes to Thailand to train Muay Thai. She’s also in post-production on a new short film about the daughter of a man who believes he’s the messiah.
Past fellows include Grad Film alum Raven Jackson whose film All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt opened Sundance Festival in 2023 as well as alum Hasan Hadi whose film The President's Cake receieved the Camera d'Or for best first film at Cannes 2025, Directors Fortnight’s Audience Award, and was recently announced as Iraq’s official submission to the 2026 Academy Awards.
Read more at Variety.