EXCLUSIVE: Film Independent has announced the 15 projects and 34 filmmakers selected for its 23rd annual Fast Track Film Finance Market, returning in person November 19–21, 2025.
Designed as a catalyst for bold new voices working in both fiction and documentary, the three-day market connects participants with industry professionals who can propel their current projects forward.
“We’re thrilled to welcome this year’s Fast Track participants, whose bold mix of fiction and nonfiction projects push creative boundaries and reflect the diverse voices shaping contemporary cinema,” said Film Independent’s Associate Director of Fiction Programs, Dea Vazquez.
As part of its Film Finance Market, Film Independent is awarding a total of $80,000 across three grants: the Sloan Fast Track Grant, the Sloan Distribution Grant, and the MPAC Hollywood Bureau Fellowship. The Sloan grants recognize projects that explore science and technology themes or characters in engaging and innovative ways; the MPAC Fellowship is awarded to a filmmaker who identifies as American Muslim.
Writer-director Etzu Shaw and producer Galt Niederhoffer have been awarded the $20,000 Sloan Fast Track Grant for their project Killing Jar. The $50,000 Sloan Distribution Grant has been awarded to Humans in the Loop, written and directed by Aranya Sahay and produced by Mathivanan Rajendran. Meanwhile, the $10,000 MPAC Hollywood Bureau Fellowship has been awarded to Sahar Jahani for With Your Permission.
For the full list of 2025 Fast Track Film Finance Market participants, and more information on their projects, read on.
FICTION TRACK:
All in My Family
Writer/Director: Hao Wu
Producer: Lucia Liu
Logline: When a struggling Taiwanese American documentary filmmaker decides to have a baby with his boyfriend through surrogacy, the ensuing chaos forces him to navigate family acceptance, cultural expectations and relationship challenges.
Bangbang Teahouse
Writer/Director: Courtney Loo
Producers: Rachael Fung, David Karp, Mikey Schwartz-Wright
Logline: Mimi & Hayley, the two parts of famed Chinese American music duo Bangbang, find their professional and romantic relationship at a crossroads; everything they’ve built precariously teeters with their new album. Over the course of 48 frenetic hours in New York City, they’ll stop at nothing as they desperately convince their label to release it.
Best Man
Director: Tyler Rabinowitz
Producer: Nico Blanco
Logline: Years after being friend-dumped for being gay, a millennial groom-to-be’s picture-perfect Boston life unravels when his chaotic ex-best friend from high school reenters his life — newly out and annoyingly hot.
But We Slept Soundly
Writer/Director: Jake Kolton
Producer: Myriam Schroeter
Logline: A bourgeois Brooklynite’s comfortable reality unravels when he begins to suspect his husband is responsible for a hit and run.
Gone By Morning
Writer/Director: Diego Ongaro
Producer: Rob Cristiano
Logline: When Lucy, a free-spirited dancer, returns home to her family’s Montana horse ranch, she’s forced to reckon with the life she built on her own and the one she thought she left behind.
Killing Jar*
Writer/Director: Etzu Shaw
Producer: Galt Niederhoffer
Logline: Burdened by guilt after her mother’s abrupt death, an insect researcher decides to undertake her own forensic entomology investigation to uncover the truth.
*2025 Film Independent Alfred P. Sloan Fast Track Grant Recipient
Not My Name
Writer/Director: Juan Paulo Laserna
Producer: Valeria Contreras
Logline: In 1996 Colombia, a family travels under false identities to visit their dying patriarch. As fear and deceit consume them, ten-year-old Álvaro drifts toward the darkness they hoped to escape.
The Umbra
Writer/Director: Rider Strong
Producers: Alexandra Barreto, Taylor Feltner
Logline: Thirty-three-year-old Iranian-American, Azi Rahimi, is forced to confront a secret from her adolescence when she receives an update in a long-closed missing persons case.
When the River Split Open
Writer/Director: Jess X. Snow
Producer: Petrus van Staden
Logline: On an overdue visit to their ancestral land, an impulsive Chinese American escapes their over-protective maternal family to search for their estranged father—whose disappearance is entwined with the extinction of the Yangtze River dolphin.
With Your Permission*
Writer/Director: Sahar Jahani
Producer: Ashim Ahuja
Logline: With Your Permission is about three Iranian American Muslim sisters navigating their relationship to intimacy when they discover their sixty-year-old, widowed mother is getting remarried, forcing them to re- examine everything they thought they knew about love, family and forgiveness.
*2025 MPAC®️ Hollywood Bureau Fellowship Recipient
DOCUMENTARY TRACK:
Counted
Co-Director/Producer: Erica Tanamachi
Co-Director/Director of Photography/Producer: Joseph East
Producer: Evan Mascagni
Logline: Counted follows Southern activists as they turn the trauma of pregnancy in prison into a movement to end prison birth and transform a broken system.
*holds you tight*
Director/Producer: Jane M. Wagner
Producer: Joe Weil
Logline: A lonely night watchman develops a relationship with an AI chatbot, transforming his worldview and challenging his perception of identity and reality.
Love and Justice: The Arlene Carmen Story
Directors/Producers: Linda Goldstein Knowlton, Tessa Carmen DeRoy
Logline: Arlene Carmen was the Administrator of Judson Memorial Church from 1967 to 1994. In partnership with Reverend Howard Moody she ran the multi-denominational Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion which connected 500,000 women to safe abortion care, prior to Roe V. Wade; created a ministry for street walking prostitutes; and distributed experimental treatments to early AIDS patients from the church garden room. Much of their work was illegal.
Symphony of Silence
Director: Julianne Sato-Parker
Producer: Bridie Bischoff
Logline: Symphony of Silence is a character-driven feature documentary about two people brought together by the belief that listening has the power to change the world.
The Quiet Part
Director: Rachel Lauren Mueller
Producer: Ariel Tilson
Logline: When a pagan white supremacist group takes root in a quiet American farming town, it ignites an intense struggle over who has the right to belong.