Shore Scripts Announces Spring 2026 Short Film Fund Winners

LOS ANGELES - EntSun -- Shore Scripts announces its Winners of the Spring 2026 Short Film Fund, which awards a $15,000 cash production grant to one unproduced script and $4,000 in finishing funds to a short film in post-production.

To Beita, With Love, written by Abdullah Kokash, follows a group of naive kids who are barred from entering Palestine due to their refugee status and execute a wild scheme to frame their parents for petty crimes and turn them in to ICE, convinced that deportation is a free ticket to the West Bank. Kokash is a Palestinian-Jordanian filmmaker based in Brooklyn, New York, whose work is rooted in the experiences of Arabs and Palestinians in the diaspora. His film Two Moons has screened in over ten countries across Europe, and he founded Short Cuts, a filmmakers' collective fiscally sponsored by NYFA, now home to 1,500 members and more than 500 original short films produced through monthly challenges.

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Fifty Kilometers From the Shenzhen-Zhongshan Bridge, Two Drunken Pigeons Are Dancing, written and directed by Zheng Adam Yuan, follows Chuang and his former lover Lizhen when they reunite in Zhongshan after twenty years apart. As they wander through the old town, memory, dream, and reality begin to overlap. Blending archival footage from Chuang's youth with fiction, the film traces a polyphonic journey that mirrors both a life lived and a city in decline. Zheng is a New York and Guangdong-based director with an MFA from Columbia University. His work blends fiction with non-fiction to explore locality and the interplay between personal memory and collective history. His latest project was recently selected for the 2025 Maritime Guangdong Young Director Support Program.

The prize packages also include industry guidance from two-time Oscar-nominated producer Maria Gracia Turgeon (FAUVE, Brotherhood), camera equipment rental provided by ARRI Rental, film festival strategy consultancy from Tribeca programmer, filmmaker, and Academy member Kimberley Browning, and more.

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Shore Scripts' first Short Film Fund grant was awarded in 2016 for Salam, written and directed by Claire Fowler, which premiered at Tribeca in 2018 and went on to win a BAFTA Cymru in 2020. Other alumni include Nora Kirkpatrick (Daisy Jones and the Six, A Tree Fell in the Woods), Sam Baron (Chloe, Lockwood & Co), Anthony Florez (Deputy, Dark Winds), Alexandra Qin (Thirstygirl, Sundance 2024), and Cameron Kwan (Paper Daughter, Annecy 2026).

Shore Scripts was founded in 2012 by filmmaker David Beazley to connect emerging writers with the film and television industry and provide much-needed support as they advance their careers. Since the inception of the Short Film Fund, Shore Scripts has greenlit 28 commissioned short films (http://www.shorescripts.com/history-of-the-short-film-fund/).