Los Angeles, CA – Sundance Institute, celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, has announced the selection of seven filmmakers as this year’s “class” of Annenberg Film Fellows. Through the Annenberg Film Fellowship Program, these emerging filmmakers receive an initial grant of $10,000 and extended creative and financial support over a two-year period to facilitate the continued development of their projects. Their screenplays touch on issues ranging from the struggles of young love in a post-9/11 New York to the challenges and small victories of immigrant life in today’s America; from one man’s quest to understand his faith to the universal search for connection and family, whether set in 1930’s Alabama or in contemporary China.

This year’s Annenberg Film Fellows are:

· Kit Hui (writer/director) / A BREATH AWAY

· Cruz Angeles (co-writer/director) & Maria Topete (co-writer) / DON’T LET ME DROWN

· Jake Mahaffy (writer/director) / FREE IN DEED

· Andrew Dosunmu (director) & Darci Picoult (writer) / MOTHER OF GEORGE

· Kirsten Johnson (writer/director) / MY HABIBI

· So Yong Kim (writer/director) / TREELESS MOUNTAIN

· Milford Thomas (co-writer/director) / UNCLOUDY DAY

The goal of the Annenberg Film Fellows Program is to identify and foster a new generation of leading film artists who have limited access to direct support for the development of new work. The program was created in April 2004 with a $5 million grant from the Annenberg Foundation at the recommendation of trustee Charles Annenberg Weingarten. The Annenberg Film Fellows Program is a five-year initiative designed to provide a combination of stipends and mini-grants, residencies and creative support for selected participants of Sundance Institute’s Feature Film Program.

"The support of the Annenberg Foundation has been crucial to the development of what has, in record time, become a collection of film projects distinguished by their freshness and originality,” said Ken Brecher, Executive Director, Sundance Institute. “The Annenberg film projects are moving to completion at record speed. If there is one theme that distinguishes all of the Annenberg Fellows it is their commitment to the highest level of storytelling."

As an Annenberg Film Fellow, each artist receives a continuum of support designed to serve their ongoing creative development. This support includes: a series of structured residencies on screenwriting, directing, film music, and film production; the guidance of mentors drawn from all creative and business areas of filmmaking; personal stipends for living expenses during intensive periods of creation; the possibility of pre-production grants for needed services (e.g. casting director, budgeting, etc.); and the possibility of completion grants to facilitate moving projects successfully through post-production.

“We're excited to provide a continuum of support for the filmmaker that recognizes financial support as critical to an artist's development,” said Michelle Satter, Director, Sundance Institute Feature Film Program. “The Institute's two-year commitment to the Annenberg fellows is key to giving each project the resources and creative support needed to bring timely, innovative stories to the screen. We are particularly excited by this new class of fellows who have all brought their authentic voice and humanity to their unique projects.”

Annenberg Film Fellowships have provided key support to several recent and upcoming films at crucial stages in their development. These films include Hilary Brougher’s STEPHANIE DALEY, which premiered in Dramatic Competition at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award; Alex Rivera’s ground-breaking futuristic immigrant story THE SLEEP DEALER, currently in post-production; David Kaplan’s innovative animated Cinderella-story set in Chinatown, YEAR OF THE FISH, currently in post-production; FOUR SHEETS TO THE WIND, the debut feature from Native American director Sterlin Harjo, currently in post-production; and Academy-Award nominee Taika Waititi’s feature debut EAGLE VS. SHARK, due to be released by Miramax in 2007.

The 2006 Annenberg Film Fellows and their projects are:

Kit Hui (writer/director) / A BREATH AWAY

Born and raised in Hong Kong, Kit Hui immigrated to the United States at age 16. She received her MFA from Columbia University’s Graduate Film Program. Her short film MISSING screened at the 2005 Tribeca Film Festival and the 2005 Cannes Film Festival, and she recently participated in the 2006 Hong Kong Asian Financing Film Forum (HAF) and the Cannes Résidence du Festival de Cannes with A BREATH AWAY. Kit Hui attended the 2006 January Screenwriters Lab and the 2006 June Directors and Screenwriters Lab.

A BREATH AWAY: As a typhoon approaches Hong Kong, the residents of a high-rise apartment explore their need for human connection, family, and cultural identity in their increasingly isolated worlds.

Cruz Angeles (co-writer/director) & Maria Topete (co-writer) / DON’T LET ME DROWN

Born in Mexico City and raised in Los Angeles, Cruz Angeles is an award-winning student filmmaker from the graduate film program at NYU. A Bay Area native, Maria Topete began her film career while studying at U.C. Berkeley, and has collaborated as co-writer and producer on several award-winning short films. Their project DON’T LET ME DROWN was the 2006 American winner of the Sundance/ NHK International Filmmakers Award. Both Cruz Angeles and Maria Topete attended the 2005 January Screenwriters Lab and the 2005 June Directors and Screenwriters Lab.

DON’T LET ME DROWN portrays a post-September 11th world overflowing with fear and hate, where two Latino teens discover that the only thing that can keep them from drowning is each other.

Jake Mahaffy (writer/director) / FREE IN DEED

Born and raised in Ohio, Jake Mahaffy has made a handful of short films and the feature-length WAR , which screened in the Frontier section of the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. Mahaffy studied filmmaking in Russia and co-founded the Handcranked Film collaborative in Boston in 2001. Mahaffy has received a grant from Creative Capital, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Sundance Institute’s inaugural Lynn Auerbach Screenwriting Fellowship for FREE IN DEED. Jake Mahaffy attended the 2005 June Screenwriters Lab and the 2006 June Directors and Screenwriters Lab.

Andrew Dosunmu (director) and Darci Picoult (writer) / MOTHER OF GEORGE

Originally from Nigeria, Andrew Dosunmu has worked as a fashion creative director and photographer for international editorial magazines, having photographed the artists Outkast, Eryka Badu, and Mos Def, among others. His documentary HOT IRONS won Best Documentary at FESPACO in Ouagaudougou and a Reel Award at the Toronto Film Festival, and he also directed several episodes of the highly-acclaimed South African television series Yizo Yizo 3. Darci Picoult’s one woman show, MY VIRGINIA, was presented in theatres and solo festivals both nationally and internationally. Her play ANCIENT LIGHTS was workshopped at New York Theatre Workshop and read at Lincoln Center, and her newest play, JAYSON WITH A Y, recently premiered at The New Group (naked) and has been optioned by commercial producers. Both Dosunmu and Picoult attended the 2005 January Screenwriters Lab and the 2005 June Directors and Screenwriters Lab.

In MOTHER OF GEORGE, a woman torn between her African culture and her new life in America struggles to please her husband and give him the son that will carry on his family’s legacy.

Kirsten Johnson (writer/director) / MY HABIBI

Kirsten Johnson’s most recent film, DEADLINE, (co-directed with Katy Chevigny), premiered at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, was broadcast on NBC, and is the winner of a Thurgood Marshall Award. Her cinematography is featured in FARENHEIT 9/11, the Academy Award-nominated ASYLUM, and the Sundance Film Festival documentaries AMERICAN STANDOFF, TWO TOWNS OF JASPER, and DERRIDA. Johnson attended the 2006 January Screenwriters Lab and the 2006 June Directors and Screenwriters Lab.

MY HABIBI: In post-9/11 New York, a Moroccan immigrant finds his reckless past catching up with him just as he is falling in love with an American photographer, forcing each of them to choose whom they must betray

So Yong Kim (writer/director) / TREELESS MOUNTAIN

So Yong Kim was born and raised in Pusan, Korea, then immigrated to the United States when she was 12. She studied painting, performance, and video art at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she earned her MFA. Her directorial debut IN BETWEEN DAYS premiered in the Dramatic Competition at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won a Special Jury Prize for independent vision, and screened at the Berlin Film Festival's International Forum in 2006, where the film won the FIPRESCI Prize. So Yong Kim attended the 2006 January Screenwriters Lab and the 2006 June Directors and Screenwriters Lab.

TREELESS MOUNTAIN: Left by her mother in the care of their unsympathetic aunt, five-year-old Ling must take care of her younger sister as they adjust to a harsher life in the rural countryside of South Korea.

Milford Thomas (co-writer/director) / UNCLOUDY DAY

Milford Thomas was raised in the North Alabama foothills of the Appalachians and worked as a production coordinator for Japanese television in Atlanta and Japan. His award-winning first film, CLAIRE, is a silent featurette shot entirely on an antique 35 mm hand-crank camera which has opened several major international festivals. Milford Thomas attended the 2006 January Screenwriters Lab and the 2006 June Directors and Screenwriters Lab.

In UNCLOUDY DAY, a black and white “early talkie” fantasy, a dangerous animal spirit returns home to 1930’s North Alabama, wreaking havoc on a rural community before she finds redemption and final peace through a handicapped girl’s magical vocal talent.