Note: Cross-posted from the Tribeca Film Institute blog.

Ondi Timoner, Ramin Bahrani Among This Year's Tribeca All Access Participants

The eleven works in progress that have been selected for the 2012 Tribeca All Access program range from a year spent with Detroit firefighters to a drama about a gastric bypass, from the story of a teenage runaway to a look at the intersection between LGBT activists and African-American Christian communities.

We're very excited about this year's line-up, which consists of the six narratives and five documentaries listed below, among them the first fiction feature from Ondi Timoner (DIG!, We Live in Public) and the first nonfiction feature from Ramin Bahrani (Man Push Cart, Goodbye Solo).

Tribeca All Access exists to support emerging and established filmmakers from underrepresented communities. In addition to a $15,000 grant (given to all films except the one chosen through our partnership with the Canadian Film Centre), each project will receive year-round support, industry connections and additional resources, will be presented at a five-day career-development program during the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival and is eligible for one of two $10,000 Tribeca All Access Creative Promise Awards.

Documentaries

Untitled Ramin Bahrani Gold Documentary

Directed and produced by Ramin Bahrani, produced by Jason Orans

Set in today’s global recession, which has catapulted gold prices to historic highs, Untitled Ramin Bahrani Gold Documentary explores our centuries-old obsession with gold, and what – if anything – is its intrinsic value. This will be Bahrani’s first documentary project. [Photo: AlkaliSoaps, 2009]

BURN

Directed and produced by Brenna Sanchez and Tom Putnam

BURN is an action-packed documentary about Detroit, told through the eyes of its firefighters, the men and women charged with the thankless task of saving a city that many have written off as dead.

Two Children Of The Red Mosque

Directed and produced by Hemal Trivedi, co-directed by Mohammad Naqvi, produced by Whitney Dow and Jonathan Goodman Levitt

Amid suicide bombings and U.S. drone attacks in Northwestern Pakistan, twelve-year-olds Zarina and Talha are pursuing different dreams. After attending madrassahs of the Red Mosque – they make different choices that promise to define their adult lives. Zarina recently escaped the madrassah, and her struggle to attend secular school and avoid marriage stands opposed to Talha’s journey over the next two years. Their stories personalize the hard choices facing modern Pakistanis living in rural areas, where ongoing ideological battles between fundamentalist and moderate Muslims are shaping Pakistan’s future.

Desert Stars

Directed and produced by Raouf Zaki, produced by Frank McDonnell

Desert Stars documents the journey of a man who abandons the world and its desires to seek a relationship with God alone as a monk in the desert, but, in order to save his monastery, he must confront the world again in the midst of the bloody Egyptian revolution.

The New Black

Directed by Yoruba Richen, produced by Yvonne Whelbon and Angela Tucker

The New Black is a documentary that uncovers the complicated histories of the African-American and LGBT civil-rights movements.

Narratives

Abigail Harm

Directed by Lee Isaac Chung, Written and Produced by Samuel Gray Anderson

Abigail Harm stars legendary actress Amanda Plummer as a woman living in a fictionalized New York City, who, after being granted a wish by a heavenly visitor, asks for love and learns of a spirit who might provide it. Inspired by the Korean folktale "The Woodcutter and the Nymph."

Bypass

Written and Directed by Liliana Greenfield-Sanders, Produced by Amy Basil and Rowen Riley

20-year-old Katie is popular, high-achieving and obese, but all of this is about to change when she undergoes a series of radical gastric and plastic surgeries. Bypass is a modern day twist on Frankenstein in which the protagonist is herself both creator and monster.

I Believe In Unicorns

Written and Directed by Leah Meyerhoff, Executive Produced by Allison Anders, Produced by Heather Rae and Mark G. Mathis, and Co-Produced by Kwesi Collisson

A troubled teenage girl runs away with an older boy only to discover that their new life together is even more dysfunctional than the home she left behind.

Manchild

Written and Directed by Ryan Koo

A talented basketball player at a small Christian school gets nationally ranked and must choose between schools, coaches, and faiths — all at the age of 13.

Mapplethorpe

Written, Directed and Co-Produced by Ondi Timoner and Co-Produced by Eliza Dushku

A narrative film based on the extraordinary life and complex character of controversial photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, from his rise to fame in the 1970s, to his untimely death from AIDS in 1989. This will be Ondi’s breakout transition from documentary to narrative feature film.

[Photo: Self Portrait, 1975, © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission]

International

Rhymes For Young Ghouls

Written and Directed by Jeff Barnaby, Produced by John Christou & Aisling Chin-Yee

Rhymes For Young Ghouls is a raucous coming of age tale about Aila, a young Mi’gMaq girl embroiled in the family drug trade who is coping with the suicide of her mother and the recent release of her imprisoned father (selected via our partnership with the CFC).

[Photo at top from The New Black]

Learn more about Tribeca All Access.