
The 2023 Tribeca Festival provided milestone career opportunities for two Loyola Marymount University film community members: a graduating senior screened his thesis project at this premier film festival, and an alumnus received a $1 million grant to help turn his short film into a feature.
AT&T and Tribeca chose “Color Book” as the winner of the 2023 AT&T Presents: Untold Stories event. Writer/director David Fortune ’18 and producer Kiah Clingman competed among four other finalists to win $1 million and receive year-round mentorship to produce their feature film.
“Honestly, I’m filled with so much gratitude and appreciation,” said Fortune. “This grant allows us to tell beautiful and intimate stories based in black communities. It’s a true honor to do community service through the art of cinema.”
The Tribeca Festival, an annual, two-week film festival since 2002, hosts more than 600 screenings each year with approximately 150,000 attendees, and awards independent artists in 23 juried competitive categories.
Vahan Bedelian ’22 had three screenings of his thesis film “The K-town Killer” during the festival. “There is no way I can express what the Tribeca official selection meant to me,” said Bedelian. “Getting into a top-tier film festival has been a dream of mine for 13 years. The reception was amazing, we had people cheering in all three of our screenings during the biggest moments.”
“The K-Town Killer,” Bedelian said, is inspired by the lives of different martial artists he has known throughout his career. The film follows a professional fighter who is hiding her career but protects her mother from an abusive landlord.
LMU School of Film and Television helped boost Fortune after graduation. “SFTV’s Incubator Lab and Village Roadshow Lab provided a platform and experience to exercise my voice as an independent filmmaker,” Fortune said. “While I was trying to find my feet as a director fresh out of college, they financially seeded the early work that prepared me for Indeed Rising Voices and other directing fellowships. I’m forever grateful to all the programs that support my creative endeavors during those pivotal times.”
Fortune and Clingman’s film “Color Book” concerns a devoted father learning to raise his son — who has Down syndrome — following the passing of the family matriarch. While adjusting to their new reality, the duo takes a journey through metro Atlanta to attend their first baseball game. The Atlanta-set picture is like Fortune’s prior films in that it finds power in normalizing the themes of compassion and intimacy set in inner-city communities.