Still from Bunnylovr. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.
U.S. in Progress is now through September 5 accepting submissions from American independent filmmakers with pictures in post-production seeking finishing funds. Accepted filmmakers and projects will attend the in-person event, November 4 – 8, in Warsaw and Wroclaw under the framework of Poland’s American Film Festival, where they will present the rough cuts of their narrative projects to European buyers and Polish post-production companies providing over $100,000 in post services.
The program has had a great curatorial run the last few years. Recent projects that are alumni of U.S. in Progress include the recently released Familiar Touch, directed by 2023 25 New Face Sarah Friedland; Katarina Zhu’s Bunnylovr and Amanda Kramer’s By Design, both 2025 Sundance premieres; Sabrina Greco’s 2025 Slamdance premiere, Lockjaw; and Paula González-Nasser’s 2025 Tribeca premiering The Scout. And then there’s the eagerly awaited Erupcja, an upcoming 2025 TIFF premiere directed by Pete Ohs and starring Charli XCX and Lena Góra. Indeed, for a program dedicated to works in progress, the hit rate is astonishingly high. Wrote Steve Dollar about the program for Filmmaker, “One of the best places to get a handle on what’s happening in American (and sometimes Canadian) independent film is a very long travel day away from New York, Los Angeles or Chicago, at the American Film Festival in Wroclaw, Poland, a millennium-old city with a historic Old Town. Adjacent is the very modern cineplex New Horizons, which shares its name with a sprawling summer festival and each November also hosts AFF and its industry-only sidebar, U.S. in Progress.”
From the U.S. in Progress website, here are eligibility requirements:
U.S. in Progress regulations and requirements:
- we are looking for fiction narrative projects in progress (rough cut stage)
- produced in the U.S.
- to reach at least 60 minutes of running time by November
- minimum 20 minutes of footage needs to be provided with the submission
- no sales agent attached by November 9th.
For more information, visit the U.S. in Progress website.
