Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and Sundance Institute Announce Recipients of Science-In-Film Initiative’s Feature Film Prize and Three Artist Grants Juried Feature Film Prize Awarded to Love Me; Directors Sam and Andy Zuchero, Plus Four Grantees, Honored at Reception at 2024 Sundance Film Festival

PARK CITY, UTAH, January 22, 2024 — Today at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, the nonprofit Sundance Institute and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s joint Science-In-Film Initiative honored Love Me, from filmmaker duo Sam and Andy Zuchero, with this year’s juried Feature Film Prize. Also announced today were the recipients of three artist grants aimed at supporting projects currently in development: Emily Everhard received the Sloan Episodic Fellowship for Tektite, Sara Crow and Daniel Rafailedes received the Sloan Development Fellowship for Satoshi,and Lizzi Oyebodereceived theSloan Commissioning Grant for Inverses. The filmmakers received a total of $84,000 in cash awards and were celebrated today at a reception hosted by the Foundation in Park City. Prior to the reception, the Feature Film Prize winners participated in a Sloan Foundation–sponsored Beyond Film event, The Big Conversation: Screen of Consciousness,where they discussed cinema’s portrayal of artificial intelligence.

“The connection between art and science, while indelible, is also ever-changing. Each year, thanks to our long-standing partnership with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, we are able to imagine with greater nuance how science can bolster art, and vice versa,” said Sundance Institute CEO Joana Vicente. “Through the Science-In-Film Initiative’s Feature Film Prize and the artist grants, we are honored to recognize the artists pioneering how this relationship is explored and uplifted in media. We are thrilled to celebrate this year’s recipients and to have created a space to further discourse on this compelling topic at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.”

“We are delighted to honor Sam and Andy Zuchero’s Love Me, an original and wildly imaginative film about the nature of human identity and our connection to each other in a post-human world mediated through artificial intelligence,” said Doron Weber, Vice President and Program Director at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. “In a year when Chris Nolan’s great-man-of-science biopic, Oppenheimer, based on the Sloan book American Prometheus, broke box office records and garnered acclaim, we are especially pleased to award three screenwriting fellowships to four outstanding writers who dramatize the unique obstacles and underappreciated contributions of exceptional women in science and technology. This year’s winners are wonderful additions to the nationwide Sloan film program and further proof of the vitality of our pioneering, two-decade partnership with Sundance.”

Love Me has been awarded the 2024 Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize and received a $25,000 cash award from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation at today’s reception. The Prize is selected by a jury of film and science professionals and presented to an outstanding feature film focusing on science or technology as a theme, or depicting a scientist, engineer, or mathematician as a major character. The 2024 jury for the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize included Dr. Mandë Holford, Dr. Nia Imara, Matt Johnson, Theresa Park, and Courtney Stephens. 

The jury shared that the Zucheros’ Love Me was selected “for its ambitious and formally inventive portrayal of a post-human Earth in which two machine-learning ‘life forms’ search for the cure to loneliness in the digital rubble of civilization, and for its original direction and engaging performances.” 

Love Me / U.S.A. (Directors and Screenwriters: Sam Zuchero, Andy Zuchero, Producers: Kevin Rowe, Luca Borghese, Ben Howe, Shivani Rawat, Julie Goldstein) — Long after humanity’s extinction, a buoy and a satellite meet online and fall in love. Cast: Kristen Stewart, Steven Yeun. Sam and Andy Zuchero are a filmmaking team from Topanga, California. They have been making art together since their teens, and Love Me is their feature debut.

Emily Everhard (writer) will receive a $17,000 cash award from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for Tektite through the Sundance Institute / Sloan Episodic Fellowship. Previous recipients of the Sundance Institute / Sloan Episodic Fellowship include: The Professor and the Spy, Our Dark Lady, The Harvard Computers, and Higher.

Emily Everhard is an actress, writer, and director. After studying History at Dartmouth College, Everhard worked on documentaries for Netflix, AMC/Sundance TV, and PBS. Emily’s narrative projects are inspired by true stories told through a queer, female perspective. She is completing her MFA in Screenwriting at Columbia University.

Tektite / U.S.A. In 1970, five elite female scientists arrive in the U.S. Virgin Islands to join NASA’s aquatic mission, “Tektite.” While NASA secretly psychologically surveils the aquanauts, the women must unite to survive life-threatening obstacles in the depths of the ocean.

Sara Crow and Daniel Rafailedes (co-writers and co-directors) will receive a $17,000 cash award from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for Satoshi through the Sundance Institute / Sloan Development Fellowship. Previous recipients of the Sundance Institute / Sloan Development Fellowship include: Light Mass Energy, Moving Bangladesh, Chariot, and Tidal Disruption.

Sara Crow is a Brooklyn-based writer-director and an MFA candidate at NYU’s Graduate Film Program, where she is a Martin Scorsese Scholar. David Rafailedes is a New York City–based writer-director from Canton, Ohio. He is currently in NYU’s Graduate Film Program pursuing an MFA/MBA. Rafailedes is the co-playwright of Cellino v. Barnes. 

Satoshi / U.S.A.The potentially true story of a teenage anime-obsessed hacktivist who, after losing her scholarship to Stanford, returns home to Arizona to become the mysterious inventor of a new digital currency called Bitcoin. 

Lizzi Oyebode (writer-director) will receive a $25,000 cash award from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for Inversesthrough the Sundance Institute / Sloan Commissioning Grant. Previous winners of the Sundance Institute / Sloan Commissioning Grant include: Incompleteness, The Futurist, Pharmacopeia, The Plutonians, and Challenger.

Lizzi Oyebode is a filmmaker and writer from Washington, D.C. Her debut film project, Tween the Ropes, was awarded an Academy Nicholl Fellowship. Her historical work has been honored by the Writers Guild of America West, Fox, SFFILM Rainin, and The Black List. Her prior career was in STEM.

Inverses / U.S.A. The story of the Nazi takeover of the world’s leading university math department and the lone Jewish woman professor central to the resistance: Emmy Noether.

Ahead of the Feature Film Prize reception, guests attended a Beyond Film talk, The Big Conversation: Screen of Consciousness, hosted by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, that centered on the themes explored in Love Me, this year’s Feature Film Prize winner. Moderated by neuroscientist and clinical psychologist Dr. Heather Berlin and featuring Love Me directors Sam and Andy Zuchero, delved into cinema’s portrayals of artificial intelligence, including the emotional connection humans build with it, and the complexities of sentience and consciousness.

For over 20 years, the Science-in-Film initiative has supported emerging filmmakers whose work heightens public awareness of science in our culture, portrays the full range of humanity engaged in scientific and technological pursuit, illustrates the vital and unique role of scientists and their work in our society, and highlights the special possibilities of communicating through independent film. In addition to the prize, the Sloan-funded initiative underwrites the development of projects with science and technology themes through the Sloan Commissioning Grant, the Sloan Episodic Fellowship in the Sundance Institute Episodic Program, and the Sloan Development Fellowship in the Sundance Institute Feature Film Program. Fifty scripts have been developed or are currently in development through this program, with numerous feature films produced and released theatrically. The initiative also expands public discourse about science and cinema through a dedicated panel at the Sundance Film Festival. Panelists and jurors over the past 21 years have included Alan Alda, Paula Apsell, Darren Aronofsky, Kerry Bishé, Mike Cahill, Sean Carroll, Antonio Damasio, Ann Druyan, Jim Gaffigan, Brian Greene, Clark Gregg, Tenoch Huerta, Clifford V. Johnson, Margaret Leone, Flora Lichtman, Brit Marling, Marvin Minsky, Jonathan Nolan, Sev Ohanian, Alex Rivera, Octavia Spencer, Shawn Snyder, and John Underkoffler.

Previous recipients of the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize include Sophie Barthes’ The Pod Generation (2023), Kogonada’s After Yang (2022), Alexis Gambis’ Son of Monarchs (2021), Michael Almereyda’s Tesla (2020), Chiwetel Ejiofor’s The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (2019), Aneesh Chaganty and Sev Ohanian’s Searching (2018), Michael Almereyda’s Marjorie Prime (2017), Ciro Guerra’s Embrace of the Serpent (2016), Kyle Patrick Alvarez and Tim Talbott’s The Stanford Prison Experiment (2015), Mike Cahill’s I Origins (2014), Andrew Bujalski’s Computer Chess (2013), Jake Schreier and Christopher D. Ford’s Robot & Frank (2012), Musa Syeed’s Valley of Saints (2012), Mike Cahill’s Another Earth (2011), Diane Bell’s Obselidia (2010), Max Mayer’s Adam (2009), Alex Rivera’s Sleep Dealer (2008), Chen Shi-Zheng’s Dark Matter (2007); Andrucha Waddington’s The House of Sand (2006), Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man (2005), Shane Carruth’s Primer (2004), and Mark Decena’s Dopamine (2003).