Two films supported through our Production Assistance Program are premiering this week at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival (June 5-16), both featured in the Spotlight Documentary section.
JIMMY & THE DEMONS
Director: Cindy Meehl; Producer: Elizabeth Westrate)
World Premiere
The film follows acclaimed sculptor James Grashow, now 79, as he undertakes the most ambitious work of his six-decade career. Commissioned to carve a five-foot sculpture of Christ carrying a cathedral on his back, Grashow devotes four years to the project, confronting his own mortality and his unshakable relationship with art.
THE SHADOW SCHOLARS
Director/Producer: Eloïse King
North American Premiere
The film investigates the world of academic essay mills in Kenya, where thousands of highly educated but underemployed individuals ghostwrite academic papers for Western students. As generative AI encroaches on their livelihoods, the film follows Oxford Professor Patricia Kingori, the youngest Black woman to earn a professorship at Oxford, as she studies this multi-billion-dollar industry. With Australia among the largest markets and the first country to ban such services, THE SHADOW SCHOLARS raises questions about education’s true value when degrees and degrees can be bought and the labor behind them remains invisible.
Also featured at Tribeca this year are several films by alumni of our Production Assistance Program: MAINTENANCE ARTIST (dir. Toby Perl Freilich; prod. Toby Perl Freilich, Judith Mizrachy), AN EYE FOR AN EYE (dir. Tanaz Eshaghian, Farzad Jafari; prod. Christoph Jörg, Katayoun Arsanjani, Joey Marra), BACKSIDE (dir. Raúl O. Paz-Pastrana; prod. Gabriella García-Pardo, Patricia Alvarez Astacio), and I WAS BORN THIS WAY (dir. Daniel Junge, Sam Pollard; prod. Wellington Love, Jed Alan, Daniel Junge).
And don’t miss THE INQUISITOR, a new film by Angela Tucker, producer of the WMM release BELLY OF THE BEAT.
Congratulations to all of these remarkable filmmakers!
