Through Her Lens: The Tribeca CHANEL Women's Filmmaker Program

Eligibility and project requirements

Applicants must be at least 21 and reside in the United States or Puerto Rico; current undergraduate and graduate students are not eligible. THE TEAM REQUIREMENT IS THE THING TO UNDERSTAND: eligible applicants may serve as writer-director, writer, or director, and if the applicant is solely the writer then a director must be attached to the project. The prior-credit requirement then falls on that attached director rather than on the writer: applying directors must have directed at least one short film that has screened in festivals, been distributed or been self-distributed to audiences. A producer who is not the film's director must also be attached. So a non-directing screenwriter is eligible provided they arrive with a credited director and a separate producer; a solo writer with nobody attached cannot enter. The script must be a narrative short of no more than 20 minutes, and the film must be completable on a 120,000 dollar budget. The director's prior work sample must be a short of five to 38 minutes completed no earlier than January 2019.

Formats

Short

Eligibility

US residents21+Women & nonbinary

Open to

United States

Deadlines & fees

Dates and fees checked against the official site 28 Sept 2026.

Prepare your entry

Prizes

120,000 US dollars to one winner and 10,000 dollars to each of the four other finalists as development prizes. Read the structure carefully, because this is production finance rather than a prize paid to a person: the award is explicitly for use in the production of the submitted film, paid into a single-purpose LLC the winner must incorporate, released in instalments only after signing a long-form contract and submitting an approved production schedule and budget. The whole film must be delivered inside that 120,000, and the filmmaker assumes all production liabilities including errors and omissions cover, liability insurance and any guild obligations, so those costs come out of the award rather than on top of it. THE RIGHTS TERMS ARE NOT PUBLISHED, and this is the most consequential unknown here. The published rules contain no clause on ownership of the finished film, copyright, licence, distribution, premiere obligation, exclusivity, first look or credit. Everything commercially material is deferred to long-form contracts signed after selection, which an applicant cannot read beforehand. The only published rights grant is publicity: winners authorise use of their name, likeness, biographical data and entry materials for promotional purposes worldwide without further payment. Note also that the purse has changed over time, having stood at 80,000 dollars with 5,000 development prizes for the 2022 edition; the year of the increase is not published.

Judging

Five finalists are selected and pitch to a jury of five to seven jurors at the three-day workshop in New York, from which one winner is chosen. The 2025 jury was Kaitlyn Dever, Meghann Fahy, Allison Janney, Payal Kapadia, Issa Rae and Jenny Slate, with mentors Riva Marker, Sarah Paulson, Frida Perez, Constance Tsang and Odessa Young. No feedback is published for applicants; finalists receive mentorship and a jury pitch rather than written notes. Note that no cycle ran in 2023: Tribeca's own participants archive jumps from 2024 back to 2022, and its count of fully funded winning films is consistent with none added that year.

Frequently asked questions