SFFS/KRF Filmmaking Grant Spring and Fall 2012 winner

Fruitvale
Dir. Ryan Coogler
Awarded $100,000 for production Spring 2012
Awarded $100,000 for postproduction Fall 2012

THE FILM
Fruitvale is the true story of Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old Bay Area resident, who crosses paths with friends, enemies, family, and strangers on the last day of 2008.



THE FILMMAKER
Ryan Coogler is a 26-year-old filmmaker from the East Bay Area, CA who has been making movies for 5 years. His feature length screenplay Fruitvale, based on the 2009 BART police shooting of Oscar Grant, was recently selected for the 2012 Sundance January Screenwriter’s Lab. He recently finished production on that film in August 2012. In 2011 his student short film Fig, which followed a young street prostitute’s fight to keep her daughter safe, won the Director’s Guild of America Student Filmmaker Award, as well as the 2011 HBO Short Filmmaker Award. Fig will be broadcast on HBO networks and HBO on demand through 2013. Coogler still lives in the Bay Area where in addition to making films, he works as a counselor at Juvenile Hall in San Francisco. He earned his MFA in Film and Television Production at the University of Southern California in May 2011.