EXCLUSIVE: Wavelength has revealed the 2025 recipients of its WAVE Grant. Pratima Mani, Shanice Brette, Ana Chavez, Erika Yang, and Lauryn Darden & Ragan Henderson every will obtain $5,000 to create their first brief movie alongside manufacturing mentorship from Wavelength’s government staff. Learn a bio for every recipient beneath.
The WAVE Grant, which stands for “Ladies on the Very Edge,” goals to assist a feminine or non-binary first-time filmmaker of coloration with the manufacturing of their first brief movie. Along with the grant, Wavelength — the manufacturing firm behind such movies as Thank You Very A lot and Athlete A — offers mentorship within the producing, growth and post-production of the filmmaker’s story in addition to fundraising and distribution technique.
“We’ve constructed a grant program that doesn’t simply assist first-time filmmakers however actively launches them into careers in movie and tv,” stated Jenifer Westphal, Wavelength’s founder, CEO and government producer. “It’s all about entry, alternative and long-term impression. Each single WAVE Grant recipient continues to be working on this trade at this time, and that’s not a coincidence — it’s proof that our funding in these voices is working.”
Since its inception, the WAVE Grant has distributed almost $100,000 in funding, supporting 19 brief movies with greater than 10 competition premieres. All of its grantees are actively working within the trade at this time.
Listed below are the bios for the 2025 WAVE Grant class:
Pratima Mani is a three-time Emmy- and two-time WGA-nominated author and performer based mostly in NYC, at present writing for The Late Present with Stephen Colbert. With roots in dwell comedy, she has written for Upright Residents Brigade Theater’s Maude Evening and Reductress and is an alum of Spotify’s Sound Up podcast bootcamp for ladies of coloration. Her brief movie, Stitched, screened at festivals together with HollyShorts and CAAM Fest, profitable Greatest Quick at IFFSA. Her newest brief, Bug, follows a lady at her long-awaited inexperienced card interview, solely to find an sudden closing step.
Shanice Brette is a author and director from Castries, Saint Lucia, now based mostly in NYC. Rising up in Brooklyn’s Little Caribbean, she discovered her voice telling layered tales of Afro-Caribbean immigrant ladies. She works as an artwork director, collaborating with filmmakers to form their worlds, and is at present growing Mumma, a brief movie a few St. Lucian immigrant navigating impending motherhood, household traditions and a deep craving for her roots.
Ana Chavez is a Los Angeles-based filmmaker and video artist exploring identification, sexuality and reminiscence by way of a hybrid filmmaking strategy. A graduate of UC Santa Barbara’s Movie program, her brief script Her and I gained Greatest Screenplay on the Santa Barbara Movie Competition’s 10-10-10 Program. Impressed by L.A.’s underground rave scene, Chavez sees her work as a diary of fleeting moments. Her brief movie, Blush, follows the lives of teenybopper ladies rising up in Singapore.
Erika Yang is a Brooklyn-based filmmaker and software program engineer from Knoxville, TN. She tells tales in regards to the small moments that form on a regular basis life, drawing from her background in pc science and movie research at MIT. In her free time, she enjoys thrifting, lyra and no matter aspect quests she stumbles upon. Her brief movie, Pit Stops, is informed by way of the eyes of the youngest little one as a household of 4 shares up for a transferring highway journey.
Lauryn Darden & Ragan Henderson are NYU Tisch graduates and filmmakers devoted to crafting tales that create protected areas and amplify missed views. Darden’s work focuses on the voices of older Black people, along with her award-winning function screenplay The Later Years incomes recognition on the Nationwide Black Movie Competition. Henderson, a director and picture maker, seeks to humanize these marginalized by society, along with her work featured on the MET Museum and in Vogue and Rolling Stone. Their brief movie, When They’re Gone, follows two aged males who type an sudden bond over grief and love after an opportunity encounter at a graveyard.
