We are pleased to announce the theme for the 2021 MPI Short Film Creative Development and Production Lab—“When the Cure is Worse Than the Disease.” This Lab is a comprehensive program that provides filmmakers with hands-on training and mentoring to take their initial film concepts through the process of developing, producing, and releasing a short film. The Lab connects MPI’s Rising Filmmaker Program to MPI Original Films. Filmmakers accepted into the program receive fellowship grants and participate in MPI Screenwriting Workshops. Those with the top scripts in these workshops advance to participate in the MPI Directing Workshop and have the opportunity for their script to be produced as an MPI Original Film with budgets of up to $75,000. 

With a worldwide pandemic raging, our 2021 Lab theme couldn’t be more timely. “When the Cure is Worse Than the Disease” is a phrase that we’ve heard a lot lately in the news and discussed in various opinion pieces. We hope that the film projects developed in our Lab will challenge audiences to think more broadly about the consequences of overcorrections in society and policy. 

Click here to learn more and apply to the Lab. The application deadline is December 1, 2020. MPI will acquire two to three films from the 2021 Lab for production in 2022, which will be packaged together as an anthology for screening and VOD. 

MPI recently acquired three films from our 2020 Lab to produce as MPI Original Films in 2021 and the MPI Original Film A Piece of Cake is a perfect case study for what this Lab can accomplish. The film was developed in our 2019 Lab and has been accepted into over a dozen festivals including three that are Oscar-qualifying—the Tribeca Film Festival, the Cleveland International Film Festival, and the Indy Shorts International Film Festival. It was nominated for Best Narrative Short at Tribeca, and it won Best Comedy and the Audience Choice Award in Comedy at Indy Shorts. The film will enjoy its television broadcast premiere on ShortsTV in 2020.