SAN FRANCISCO, CA
The Redford Center today named the 10 film projects selected to each receive a $40,000 grant as part of the 2026-27 Redford Center Fellowship for Environmental Film, the new name for the organization’s decade-old Redford Center Grants program.
Urgent environmental challenges are reshaping daily life and livelihoods. These 10 films, selected from more than 550 submissions for their compelling characters, strong story arcs, emotional resonance, and above all, their potential for real-world impact, follow the everyday people meeting that change head-on: adapting, resisting, improvising, and finding ways to thrive.
Balancing urgency with humor and a spirit of hardiness, the films take audiences from the banks of the Mississippi River to the hospitals of Delhi and the forests of Brazil.
The storylines include the decades-long bond between a gorilla and a scientist, an Indigenous radio station confronting a proposed gold mine in Alaska, and a natural winemaker adapting to a changing climate in France, to name just a few.
“At a time when independent filmmakers face an increasingly difficult funding environment, we’re deepening our investment and pulling all the levers we have,” said Jill Tidman, executive director of The Redford Center.
“By increasing our grants to $40,000 and expanding the fellowship’s creative and professional support, we’re giving filmmakers critical resources to move their projects forward. We believe these stories will create meaningful change, and our investment reflects that belief.”
About the Redford Center
Fellowship for Environmental Film
The Redford Center Fellowship for Environmental Film is a cohort-based program supporting feature-length documentaries that explore urgent, intersectional environmental stories.
An evolution of The Redford Center Grants, which was established in 2016, the program provides fellows with funding, mentorship, professional development, community and opportunities to strengthen both their films and the films’ potential for driving environmental progress.
This year’s funding marks a 60-percent increase in grant amount per project, up from $25,000 in the 2024-25 grant cycle. During the fellowship’s first year, participants take part in virtual learning sessions and a three-day in-person summit designed to support project development, deepen professional relationships, and foster creative exchange. Filmmakers may also apply for additional funding in the program’s second year.
For more information about the new film projects and the fellowship, please go to redfordcenter.org/fellowship.
Meet the 2026-27 Redford Center Fellowship
for Environmental Film Inaugural Cohort
The Delicate
Shaunak Sen, Director
Aman Mann, Producer
Shane Boris, Producer
The cost of Delhi’s noxious ecology is starkly visible in the multitude of patients crowding the city’s busiest hospitals. The Delicate is a lyrical portrait of a surgeon at the frontlines of this unprecedented public health emergency. Early in filming, the surgeon notices the film director is rapidly losing weight, and a cancer diagnosis follows. Through a poetic (and often absurd) account of the surgeon, the hospital and the director-patient, the film explores the terrifying toll of Delhi’s raging toxicity.
The Grizzly Among Us
Rob G. Green, Director
Melissa Grumhaus, Executive Producer
As grizzly conflict moves from the backcountry to the backyard, three bear managers dedicate their lives to keeping Montana connected for those on two legs, and on four.
Particles of Everything
Anna Sandilands, Co-Director, Producer
Ewan McNicol, Co-Director, Producer
In a small forest in rural France, a mythical figure who shares his refuge with a delightful family of creatures, makes some of the world’s most sought-after wine the oldest way. When the seasons turn stranger than anyone can remember, threatening to unravel the world around them, he turns to nature itself to find harmony.
PRIMUS
Fábio Nascimento, Co-Director
Luciana Bobadilha, Co-Director
Denise Zmekhol, Producer
The last howler monkey in the region, Encantado searches for a troop but finds only his own reflection. Allan, a local young man, recognizes himself in that loneliness and seeks a different future for himself and his species.
Wild Goose Days
Andrew H. Brown, Director
Katie Basile, Producer
Mike Morrisroe, Producer
Mia Vyzis, Producer
Along Alaska’s roadless Kuskokwim River, a Yup’ik radio station keeps dozens of villages gossiping, praying, and reporting what’s in their nets, even as two advancing corporate powers — a colossal gold mine pushing to break ground upriver and industrial trawlers stripping the sea below — close in. A station manager and an Yup’ik elder fight to keep the signal, and their people, from going silent.
The Forecasters
Pieter Van Eecke, Director
Hanne Phlypo, Producer
S. Leo Chiang, Producer
On air and under pressure, meteorologists worldwide become reluctant harbingers of doom as extreme weather intensifies. Faced with censorship, denial, and emotional tolls, they must confront a haunting question under darkening skies: How to tell the truth when truth becomes unwelcome?
Metropolis
Anirban Dutta, Co-Director, Producer
Anupama Srinivasan, Co-Director
Ryan Krivoshey, Producer
From New York City’s swampy, damp, and dingy “other worlds” where mosquitoes thrive to crowded streets and urban canyons, the film follows a multi-ethnic team’s quest to keep the people of the metropolis safe from the deadly viruses these tiny insects carry. Here, the “heroes” are a mild-mannered 66-year-old immigrant from Pakistan, a gutsy woman from Malaysia, and a bright, ambitious man of Bangladeshi origin.
Penny & Koko
Tasha Van Zandt, Director, Producer
Sebastian Zeck, Producer
Told through Koko the gorilla’s eyes and a lifetime of never-before-seen archival footage, Penny & Koko reveals the extraordinary 47-year bond between the world’s most famous gorilla and pioneering scientist Dr. Penny Patterson, a relationship that shattered assumptions about the divide between humans and other animals and asks what becomes possible when we learn to truly listen across species.
The River
Caitlyn Greene, Director, Producer
Sara Archambault, Producer
Two fiery Louisiana souls battle the Mississippi River as it threatens to erase them, while the Army Corps struggles to maintain dominance over the landscape. Darkly surreal and intensely alive, The River is an allegory for humankind’s hubris: What happens when nature claims what we thought we could control?
Untitled Brazil Project
Blurring fiction and documentary, a woman draws from personal history to explore the Western genre and reveal how historical inequalities fuel climate collapse and endanger millions of Brazil’s poorest today.
The Redford Center Fellowship for Environmental Film is made possible thanks to generous support from The New York Community Trust, Tauck Family Foundation, Natalie Orfalea Foundation, Farvue Foundation, and Baker Family Foundation.
Fellowship FAQ
Since launching in 2016, The Redford Center Grants program has evolved into a cohort-based program combining funding, mentorship, professional development, industry connections and community. With the increased grant amount and expanded virtual workshops added to the existing program, the new fellowship name reflects the deeper level of support for filmmakers.
No. The fellowship is an evolution of Redford Center Grants, building on the program’s history of supporting environmental filmmakers while more clearly describing its cohort-based model.
Two things are particularly significant.
First, the financial investment is increasing. Each selected project will now receive $40,000, up from $25,000.
Second, the fellowship experience is expanding. We’re adding new virtual sessions to provide additional structured opportunities for learning, connection, and professional development.
The core purpose and approach remain the same. We will continue to:
- Support feature-length documentary films exploring urgent, intersectional environmental stories.
- Select a cohort of 10 projects through an open-call process.
- Provide direct funding to filmmakers.
- Support projects at different stages of their development, production, and impact journeys.
- Bring filmmakers together as a cohort through an in-person summit as well as workshops.
- Provide creative and professional development.
- Connect filmmakers with industry experts, environmental leaders, and one another.
- Offer the opportunity to apply for additional funding in the program’s second year.
The fellowship builds from this foundation.
About The Redford Center
Co-founded in 2005 by activists and filmmakers Robert Redford and James Redford, The Redford Center is a nonprofit that advances environmental solutions through the power of stories that move.
As one of the only U.S.-based nonprofits solely dedicated to environmental impact filmmaking, The Redford Center develops and invests in projects that foster action and strengthen the reach of the grassroots efforts powering the environmental movement.
Over the years, The Redford Center has produced three award-winning feature documentaries and more than 40 short films, supported more than 400 film and media projects with grants and other services, and disbursed $40 million to environmental films, amplifying change-making solutions to millions of people worldwide.
Learn more at www.redfordcenter.org.