By: Amadej Petan
The Catapult Film Fund awards documentary film grants of up to $20,000 to foster compelling, artistic storytelling on a wide range of themes and perspectives. Catapult development funds support documentary filmmakers who have gained access to their story and are ready to create a fundraising piece. Catapult's objective is to help filmmakers take their film projects to the next level at a time when funding is scarce.
CATAPULT FILM FUND was founded in November 2010 by Lisa Kleiner Chanoff and Bonni Cohen. Catapult has two financing cycles per year, one in the summer and one in the winter. Catapult awards scholarships ranging from $5,000 to $20,000 to around ten projects in each round. Grantees can receive informal mentoring from Bonni and Lisa in areas such as story concept, production process, fundraising, and distribution strategy.
The recipients of the funding for 2022 were just revealed by Catapult. This extraordinary list of projects tells a diverse range of tales, including a widespread mysterious illness linked to government wrongdoing in Canada, one woman's life-or-death attempts to flee Afghanistan, the only in-house cable TV station located inside a Florida county jail, and an environmental entanglement and the complexities of stewardship as seen in South Dakota's Badlands National Park. These drastically different productions are a reflection of Catapult's unwavering dedication to supporting unique nonfiction films from throughout the world.