Arya, a short film by alumna Federica Belletti ’16, has been awarded the BAFTA-Yugo Short Film Commissioning Grant.
This is the fourth year of the BAFTA-Yugo Short Film Commissioning Grant, which supports a short film project about the wellbeing of 15 to 25-year-olds on screen. Belletti will receive $12,000 to help with the production of her short film, Arya, which tells the story of a young woman’s health problems, exploring how she spirals into PTSD following a sexual encounter which goes wrong after non-consensual condom removal.
Belletti’s film was selected by a jury of film industry figures, including Abby Bentley (marketing director at Yugo), Constanza and Doménica Castro (founders of 271 Films), Bryan Dimas (producer and co-founder of LatinX in Animation), producer Marianne Gray, Film Mode Entertainment VP Lydia Ianni, last year’s grant-winner Mishal Mahmud, actors John Pirkis and Danny Ramirez, director Rachel Raimist, and TV writer and creator Taneka Stottsa. The award comes after Belletti was inducted into the BAFTA Newcomers Program in 2020.
“We are committed to doing all we can to help remove the barriers that talented people from all walks of life face when entering and developing a career in our industry,” said BAFTA’s Matthew Wiseman, Executive Director and head of BAFTA North America. “Initiatives like the BAFTA-Yugo Commissioning Grant are important to our mission as an arts organization, and we are so delighted to be able to conclude a productive year by providing financial support to this important project.”
Federica Belletti is a bilingual writer-producer from Italy and based in the US, working across narrative and documentary filmmaking. She worked at Maven Pictures, Gamechanger Films, and was a Location Manager on Tape, Italian Studies (Hulu), and Dick Johnson Is Dead (Netflix). She later joined CounterNarrative Films, the company co-founded by Anna Gerb, Neal Dodson and JC Chandor, and is currently working as Associate Producer at Film Manufacturers Inc. She has produced nine award-winning narrative shorts that played at 100+ festivals worldwide, including Refuge, a Montclair Film Festival premiere, Nice Talking to You, a SXSW premiere and 2022 Vimeo Staff Pick; and Ayaan, a Sydney Film Festival premiere, Vimeo Staff Pick, and 2023 Academy Awards® qualified short. Belletti has been the recipient of the HFPA Fellowship, the Arthur Krim Memorial Award For Excellence in Producing, and the Tribeca Film Institute All Access Program.
