SFFILM has announced today grants and awards totaling $115,000 for the Sloan Science in Cinema Initiative at the 69th San Francisco International Film Festival, which runs through May 4.

SFFILM will also present the Sloan Science on Screen Award and $5,000 to Ildikó Enyedi’s acclaimed 2025 Venice premiere “Silent Friend,” starring Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Léa Seydoux, and Luna Wedler as souls connected across a century through an ancient ginkgo tree. The film opens in theaters starting May 8 from 1-2 Special.

The award presentation and screening will take place on Sunday, April 26, at 7 p.m. at the Premier Theater at One Letterman. The program will be accompanied by an onstage conversation between award-winning director Ildikó Enyedi and Benjamin Blackman, an associate professor in the Departments of Plant & Microbial Biology and Integrative Biology at UC Berkeley, moderated by SFFILM’s Director of Programming Jessie Fairbanks.

SFFILM’s executive director, Anne Lai, added, “When we launched this initiative with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in 2015, the premise was simple and also ambitious: bringing science and cinema together would elevate and spotlight both mediums in a complementary way, helping audiences connect to and better understand the world we all share. Ten years later, with 40 supported artists and growing, that theory has proven to be true. This year’s fellows and grantees are at the very beginning of that journey—developing screenplays where real scientific discovery and processes shape the story from the ground up. And with the Sloan Science on Screen Award, we celebrate a film at a pivotal moment when it is given over to the audience. We see time and again that when audiences get to learn about the process behind a work like Ildikó Enyedi’s Silent Friend, with the filmmaker in conversation with actual scientists, people come away with something they never knew before. That is the impact filmmakers and scientists share.”

“We are thrilled to celebrate Ildikó Enyedi’s ‘Silent Friend’ as the 2026 Sloan Science on Screen Award winner as well as the five original screenwriters selected for the Sloan Science in Cinema Fellowship and Sloan Stories of Science Development Fund at SFFILM,” said Doron Weber, vice president and program director at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. “These award-winning filmmakers join a nationwide program that has supported over 850 science and film projects and has honored outstanding directors such as Guillermo del Toro, Christopher Nolan, and Lee Isaac Chung.”

Masashi Niwano, the director of artist development at SFFILM, added, “What excites me about the Sloan Science in Cinema Initiative is that we’re getting to support a filmmaker at the screenplay stage while the story is being shaped. They become part of a global ecosystem of SFFILM-supported filmmakers, which builds their network of filmmakers, industry professionals, and future collaborators. Our mission is to help support the representation of science and technology more accurately, but also to pave the way for creative discovery by the filmmaker. You can see it across this year’s projects, whether it is a sound ecologist exploring how we experience a politically inaccessible wilderness, a Black engineer confronting gentrification in her neighborhood, or the ethical and communications machinery of a NASA first-contact announcement becoming the emotional spine of a story. We are thrilled to welcome Destiny, Justin, Lane, Sid, and Aditya to this year’s Festival to celebrate this honor and inspire their work throughout the year.”

All this year’s honorees are below, with language courtesy of SFFILM.

2026 Sloan Science on Screen Award

“Silent Friend,” Director: Ildikó Enyedi, Producers: Reinhard Brundig, Monika Mécs, Nicolas Elghozi, Morgane Olivier, Meng Xie (Germany, Hungary, France 2025, 147 min) An ancient ginkgo tree enchants longing souls across more than a century in this spellbinding cinematic triptych starring Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Léa Seydoux.

2025 Sloan Science in Cinema Fellowship Recipients

The Sloan Science in Cinema Filmmaker Fellowship is presented in partnership with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation as part of their mission to champion films and projects that explore scientific or technological themes or characters. Awards are made to two projects once a year, at the screenwriting phase of development. Recipients of the Sloan Science in Cinema Filmmaker Fellowship will receive a $35,000 cash grant and access to the FilmHouse, SFFILM’s creative hub for local and visiting independent filmmakers.

“Talk Black,” Writer/Director: Destiny Macon

A timid engineer develops an audacious split personality to help her stand up to the boys’ club at work and prevent “urban renewal” in the historically black neighborhood where she grew up.

“The Green Corridor,” Writer/Director: Justin Kim WooSŏk

Joseph Yoon, a Korean-American anthropologist, returns to his homeland on a Fulbright grant, drawn by rumors of a tiger’s reappearance in the DMZ—a creature long thought extinct on the peninsula. As he partners with a sound ecologist working along the border’s edge, their pursuit transforms into a confrontation with colonial ghosts, personal grief, and the limitations of human perception.

2025 Sloan Stories of Science Development Fund Recipients

The SFFILM Sloan Stories of Science Development Fund is presented in partnership with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which champions films that explore scientific or technological themes. SFFILM will award up to $20,000 grants to filmmakers in the early stages of writing screenplays inspired by discoveries from the Stories of Science Sourcebook.

“Hello Neighbor,” Writer: Lane Unsworth

With humanity on the cusp of potentially finding life on Jupiter’s moon, Europa, a lonely and retired child science entertainer gets recruited to the NASA public relations team to help answer the question: if we do find life, how do we tell everyone?

“One Inch From Earth,” Writers: Sid Gopinath, Aditya Joshi

A group of plucky scientists must overcome NASA leadership, rival teams, the specter of Mars, and the US government to launch a mission that proves life exists on a distant moon of Jupiter.