Congratulations to our 2023 Honorable Mentions!
Reel Sisters encourages you to support our eight Reel Sisters Micro Budget Fellowship Finalists who made it incredibly difficult for our Fellowship Jurors. Please help us spread the word and donate to their projects — join us in bringing more films by women of color from script-to-screen!
Please welcome and congratulate our 2023 Reel Sisters Micro Budget Fellows!
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Laundromat
A chronically depressed nurse and her emotionally challenged Haitian American family stumble to rebuild an outdated laundromat in the vibrant borough of Queens.
Melissa Almonor
Melissa Almonor is a Haitian American writer raised just steps away from the first permanent potato patches in southern New Hampshire. She is proudly a member of the state’s 2% black population. Her writing focuses on Black female-driven narratives that follow the fear of vulnerability within immigrant families. She has worked for writers’ rooms in web series such as the Emmy Nominated Tough Love and Rhonda Mitchell MD. She has assisted in short films throughout NYC as a Production Coordinator and a Set Designer. Her coming-of-age drama, Ti Marie, was a quarter-finalist in WeScreenplay’s Diverse Voices Lab.
Dozen
My inspiration for “Dozen” is a culmination of my high school experiences, my close friends, and the true events that have occurred right here in Brooklyn. My vision for "dozen" will heavily rely on humor as a vehicle, as humor is the fabric of my expression, it is the thing that united me and friends at the lunch table and three generations of my family at the dinner table. Not all Black stories end with death or incarceration, sometimes we experience an average weekday afternoon with some gut busting laughter.
Kearah-Armonie (aka Kearmonie)
Kearah-Armonie (aka Kearmonie) is a Non-binary Afro-Caribbean Multidisciplinary Artist from Brooklyn, NY. Having completed their MFA Post-Production at Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema in 2021, Kearmonie primarily works as a Freelance Editor and Assistant Editor, with a focus on both narrative and non-fiction short films, limited series’, and short form digital content. A number of shorts edited, directed, and/or produced by Kearah-Armonie have been selected by festivals such as Toronto Women’s Film Festival, Outfest Fusion: QTBIPOC Film Festival, and Women of African Descent Film Festival. Kearmonie is a current Create Change Fellow with The Laundromat Project, implementing their own creativity along with cultural organizing in the work they do to support the needs of Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. Other endeavors include curating creative projects, event planning, and community organizing as Kearmonie is currently launching the organization “It's Time We Get Back Home”; a safe haven for fellowship, education, and love in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. See their work and learn more at kearmonie.com/
Victorine
On the one-year anniversary of her mother’s death, a Haitian-American dancer claims her place in a long line of powerful women.
Lunise Cerin
Lunise Cerin is a queer, Haitian-American filmmaker, born in Philadelphia, PA and raised between Haiti and the US. She loves to tell stories of Black people’s pursuit of self-expression, liberation, and love. After receiving her BS in sociology, with a minor in photography from Saint Joseph’s University, Cerin married her love of people and images by pivoting to film. In 2012, Cerin moved to Los Angeles, where she began her career as a content producer at the SVOD platform Black & Sexy TV. She worked as a series writer, producer, director, and self- taught editor for six years. Cerin is currently in post-production for her third short film, VICTORINE, which she wrote and directed. Her previous short 25 Frames premiered last September at the Trinidad and Tobago Film festival and has screened in three different countries. Cerin has worked as story producer and editor for two feature length documentary projects with Haitian Director and Producer Etant Dupain, Madan Sara: The Power of Haitian Women, which has played screened in over twenty countries and her second collaboration with Dupain, The Fight For Haiti a documentary chronicling the anti-corruption movement in Haiti over the last ten years is set to release in August 2023. Cerin is an MFA candidate in Columbia University's Screenwriting MFA program, where she was admitted with the Bridges Larson Foundation Fellowship. She is currently developing and writing her thesis script, Pitit Deyò.
Cassette Tape
A determined woman obsesses about fixing her old broken walkman, so she can listen to a long lost cassette tape containing her grandmother's last words to her.
Eno Enefiok
Eno Enefiok is a London-based filmmaker and all around creative human with more than nine years industry experience. After years of working as a 1st AD, learning from and helping acclaimed directors, producers and other creative talent on scripted and commercial productions, she picked up a camera and is starting to build a name for herself as a filmmaker and storyteller in her own right. She is currently in production of her short motion drama short Hope is Lost (Formerly Asylum). The script won Best Live Script Reading at the BAFTA qualifying British Urban Film Festival. She is also in post-production on her short documentary ‘Na Wa Oh’ about a group of London-based, West African immigrants who meet over the weekend, kids in tow, to make Nollywood films. They are the Laughing Boy Production’ led by larger than life Ella Pat T who writes, shoots and directs most of their films.
Siren
When Raven, a young Asian woman, fails to reignite the lost flame with her husband while on an island vacation, she seeks out a mysterious stranger whose haunting presence fires up her unspeakable desires.
Raina Yang
Raina Yang (she/her) is a Chinese writer and director based in New York City. She has made four short films highlighting Asian stories, voices, and perspectives. Her short film Sink was supported by the Panavision New Filmmaker Program and the 2023 NYC Women’s Fund. Raina regularly conducts research and interviews in different communities. As a filmmaker she seeks to explore the fluidity of social definitions and to make an impact on the real world through her creative works. Raina is currently completing her MFA degree in Film Directing at Columbia University. She is working on the post-production of her latest short film Siren as well as feature scripts. Social media: - instagram: @rainayanglw - website: rainayang.com
Earbuds
A bickering South Asian couple finds the answer to their relationship problems during an unexpected blackout.
Archana Shinde
Archana Shinde is a graduate of UCLA’s Professional Program in Screenwriting and the feature screenplay she wrote for that program in 2022 was a Quarterfinalist in CineStory Feature Contest 2022. In 2022, she won the ‘Woman Writer of Color’ scholarship to attend Hedgebrook’s Screenwriting Masterclass with Meg LeFauve (Academy Award nominated screenwriter of ‘Inside Out’, ‘Captain Marvel’) at Whidbey Island, WA. Her original TV pilot was a Quarterfinalist in CineStory TV Contest 2023. Her thesis film Green Bangles for the Directing program at UCLAX was chosen as India’s entry to the International Women in Film & TV (WIFT) showcase and screened in 44 cities in 15 countries. In the same program, she also won the Laurel Hummel Scholarship twice. In 2018, Archana executive-produced and edited Wake, a feature which won numerous awards at film festivals across the US (Heartland, Hawai’i, Sedona, Riverside, Alexandria). ‘Bollywood BTS’, a web series that Archana shot in four days in Mumbai was selected for the Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festival, NY in 2021. She lives in LA with her filmmaker husband and works in the Marketing department of ViacomCBS.
Hooky
Two Miami high school girls in 1995 are on a mission to not get caught skipping school.
Princess Usanga
Princess Usanga is a Miami-based director and screenwriter born in New York to Haitian and Nigerian parents. Her intersectional identity as an African and Caribbean Black woman with an invisible disability has made Usanga passionate about sharing unique perspectives and highlighting the nuances of the human experience. She studied Television and Film Production at St. John’s University, and went on to direct her first short, God’s Atheist. In March 2022, Usanga was a commissioned speaker for Norton Museum of Art’s Women’s Walk Weekend to speak about her experiences as a female filmmaker. Usanga is currently in pre-production for her dramedy, coming-of-age 90’s short film Hooky, which was selected for Oolite Arts' Local Lover Letters in addition to Miami Film Lab’s Development Series, and is also writing a pilot for her series, Missed Connections.
There Will Be Blanche
A theater director with deep self-doubt and a theater janitor whose work is never respected collide over sanitary standards during a failing production. Will they turn impending defeat into glorious victory?
Shuyin Zheng
Shuyin Zheng is a Chinese Writer/Director/Actor from Kunming in southwestern China, currently based in New York City. Columbia University's MFA program, combined with her four-year playwriting experience, has given Shuyin diverse perspectives on storytelling. Her short film, Yo Yo, won the best short at the 2023 LGBTQ+ Los Angeles Film Festival. Her short screenplay, Dad's Lover, was selected in the 74th Venice Film Festival ``Focus on China '' section finalist. Shuyin firmly believes that artworks full of keen observation and criticism of reality are always artists' best contribution to breaking stereotypes and making social progress. Social Medias Instagram: shuyinnn00