Created in 2003 to recognize an outstanding feature film addressing ideas or characters central to science and technology, this juried prize is awarded through a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to the Sundance Institute’s Science-in-Film initiative.
For over 20 years, the Science-in-Film initiative has supported emerging filmmakers whose work heightens public awareness of science in our culture, portrays the full range of humanity engaged in scientific and technological pursuits, illustrates the vital and unique role of scientists and their work in our society, and highlights the special possibilities of communicating through independent film. In addition to the prize, the Sloan-funded initiative underwrites the development of projects with science and technology themes through the Sloan Commissioning Grant, the Sloan Episodic Fellowship in the Sundance Institute Episodic Program, and the Sloan Development Fellowship in the Sundance Institute Feature Film Program. Fifty-three scripts have been developed or are currently in development through this program, with numerous feature films produced and released theatrically. The initiative also expands public discourse about science and cinema through a dedicated panel at the Sundance Film Festival. Panelists and jurors over the past 21 years have included Alan Alda, Paula Apsell, Darren Aronofsky, Kerry Bishé, Mike Cahill, Sean Carroll, Antonio Damasio, Ann Druyan, Jim Gaffigan, Brian Greene, Clark Gregg, Tenoch Huerta, Clifford V. Johnson, Margaret Leone, Flora Lichtman, Brit Marling, Marvin Minsky, Ethan Hawke, Sev Ohanian, Alex Rivera, Octavia Spencer, Shawn Snyder, and Yewande Pearse.
The winner of the 2025 Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize is Cristina Costantini’s SALLY.
A committee of film and science professionals selected this year’s prizewinner from among the titles screening at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, basing their decision on the artistic quality of the film and the dramatization of science and technology themes and characters. The jury shared that the Cristina Costantini’s SALLY was selected “for its moving portrait of a pioneering scientist and a complex human being who became the first American woman to fly in space and who insisted on living her own life while negotiating the restrictive culture of NASA and the mass media, and for its engaging use of a rich archive to illuminate the secret history of an extraordinary American that reverberates to our own day.”
Previous recipients of the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize include Sam & Andy Zuchero’s Love Me (2024), Sophie Barthes’ The Pod Generation (2023), Kogonada’s After Yang (2022), Alexis Gambis’s Son of Monarchs (2021), Michael Almereyda’s Tesla (2020), Chiwetel Ejiofor’s The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (2019), Aneesh Chaganty and Sev Ohanian’s Searching (2018), Michael Almereyda’s Marjorie Prime (2017), Ciro Guerra’s Embrace of the Serpent (2016), Kyle Patrick Alvarez and Tim Talbott’s The Stanford Prison Experiment (2015), Mike Cahill’s I Origins (2014), Andrew Bujalski’s Computer Chess (2013), Jake Schreier and Christopher D. Ford’s Robot & Frank (2012), Musa Syeed’s Valley of Saints (2012), Mike Cahill’s Another Earth (2011), Diane Bell’s Obselidia (2010), Max Mayer’s Adam (2009), Alex Rivera’s Sleep Dealer (2008), Chen Shi-Zheng’s Dark Matter (2007); Andrucha Waddington’s The House of Sand (2006), Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man (2005), Shane Carruth’s Primer (2004), and Mark Decena’s Dopamine (2003).
ABOUT THE ALFRED P. SLOAN FOUNDATION:
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is a New York–based philanthropic, not-for-profit institution that makes grants in three areas: research in science, technology, and economics; quality and diversity of scientific institutions; and public engagement with science. Sloan’s program in Public Understanding of Science and Technology, directed by Doron Weber, supports books, radio, film, television, theater, and new media to reach a wide, nonspecialized audience and to bridge the two cultures of science and the humanities.
Sloan’s Film Program encourages filmmakers to create more realistic and compelling stories about science and technology and to challenge existing stereotypes about scientists and engineers in the popular imagination. Over the past two decades, Sloan has partnered with top film schools in the country — including AFI, Carnegie Mellon, Columbia, NYU, UCLA, and USC — and established annual awards in screenwriting and film production, along with an annual best-of-the-best Student Grand Jury Prize. The Foundation also supports screenplay development programs with the Sundance Institute, SFFILM, the Black List, the Athena Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival, and Film Independent. The Foundation has supported over 800 film projects and has helped develop over 30 feature films, including Michael Almereyda’s Tesla, Lydia Dean Pilcher and Ginny Mohler’s Radium Girls, Thor Klein’s Adventures of a Mathematician, Jessica Oreck’s One Man Dies a Million Times, Michael Tyburski’s The Sound of Silence, Shawn Snyder’s To Dust, Logan Kibens and Sharon Greene’s Operator, Morten Tyldum’s The Imitation Game, and Matthew Brown’s The Man Who Knew Infinity. The Foundation has supported feature documentaries such as Werner Herzog’s Theater of Thought, David France’s How to Survive a Pandemic, Sharon Shattuck and Ian Cheney’s Picture a Scientist, Shalini Kantayya’s Coded Bias, Noah Hutton’s In Silico, Ric Burns’ Oliver Sacks: His Own Life, Mark Levison’s The Bit Player, Alexandra Dean’s Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, Mark Levinson’s Particle Fever, and Jacques Perrin’s Oceans. It has also given early award recognition to stand-out films such as BlackBerry, Don’t Look Up, Linoleum, Ammonite, The Aeronauts, The Martian, First Man, and Hidden Figures.
The Foundation has an active theater program and commissions about 20 science plays each year from the Ensemble Studio Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club, and the National Theatre in London, while supporting select productions across the country and abroad. Recent grants from Sloan’s Theater Program have supported Mark Rylance’s Dr. Semmelweis, Mary Elizabeth Hamilton’s Smart, Anchuli Felicia King’s Golden Shield, Sam Chanse’s what you are now, Charly Evon Simpson’s Behind the Sheet, Lucy Kirkwood’s Mosquitoes, Chiara Atik’s Bump, Nick Payne’s Constellations, Lucas Hnath’s Isaac’s Eye, Anna Ziegler’s Photograph 51, David Auburn’s Proof, Leigh Fondakowski’s Spill, and Bess Wohl’s Continuity. The Foundation’s book program includes early support for Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race, the bestselling book that became the highest grossing Oscar-nominated film of 2017, and Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin’s Pulitzer Prize–winning American Prometheus, adapted for the screen in Christopher Nolan’s critically acclaimed film Oppenheimer.
For more information about the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, please visit www.sloan.org or follow the Foundation at @SloanPublic on X and Facebook.
