SFFILM Announces Four Year Grant Program Partnership with Cedar Road

SFFILM Cedar Road Iyagi Grant program will expand support for feature filmmakers; applications open March 2025

Today, SFFILM  announced a new annual filmmaking grant in partnership with film finance and production company Cedar Road, behind films like The Last Year of Darkness, The Accidental Getaway Driver and the award-winning Dìdi.

Through a $160,000 partnership, the SFFILM Cedar Road Iyagi Grant program will be a key addition to SFFILM’s Artist Development Narrative Film Fund, which currently provides over $500,000 in direct artist grants a year. Launching in 2025 and continuing through 2028, this new grant is dedicated to discovering and nurturing stories that capture the depth, nuance, and complexity of Asian and Asian American characters and experiences on screen.

“SFFILM is very proud to partner with Cedar Road at this crucial time of investment and growth for film,” said Anne Lai, SFFILM’s Executive Director. “The most exciting work and freshest voices emerge from independent filmmaking which requires access to resources, and this is something that Cedar Road recognizes and champions. The SFFILM Cedar Road Iyagi Grant will provide critical funding and access to tailored support necessary to get films made and in front of audiences.”

“Cedar Road’s mission to produce stories, not stereotypes, is expressed through the SFFILM Cedar Road Iyagi Grant,” said Jennifer J. Pritzker, film producer and founder of Cedar Road. “In Korean, iyagi means “story”—a word that embodies the heart of this grant’s mission: to champion storytelling as a powerful bridge connecting people across cultures and perspectives. We can’t wait to help these filmmakers realize their dreams to get their films made.”

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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