SUBJECT MATTER TO AWARD $90,000 IN GRANTS AT DOC NYC
Returning for a third year, Subject Matter has partnered with DOC NYC to award their latest grantees.
Lorena Luciano’s Nuns vs. The Vatican, which will make its U.S. premiere at the 2025 edition of DOC NYC, will receive a $25,000 grant, and a corresponding $25,000 grant will be awarded to the nonprofit BishopAccountability.org. In addition, Subject Matter is awarding a $20,000 grant to Sandra Winther’s debut feature Lowland Kids, also making its U.S. premiere at DOC NYC. A corresponding $20,000 grant will be awarded to the nonprofit the First People’s Conservation Council.
She was a nun. He was a world-renowned priest and artist, the “Michelangelo” of the
modern Catholic Church, courted by Popes and cardinals. In Nuns vs. The Vatican, Gloria’s jaw-dropping sexual abuse story is just the beginning as nuns start to break decades of silence, exposing a system built to protect power. The film will premiere on Saturday, November 15, 2025 at 1:45 PM at Village East by Angelika in DOC NYC’s Investigations section.
The corresponding nonprofit grant will go to BishopAccountability.org, the largest public information resource dedicated to documenting the Catholic clergy abuse crisis and the institutional cover-up. The organization gathers and makes hundreds of thousands of pages of court documents, news articles, and secret church archives publicly accessible, acting as a crucial historian for the survivor movement. Its comprehensive databases profile accused clergy and bishops involved in misconduct, and serve as an essential tool for survivors, journalists, scholars, and law enforcement.
Subject Matter’s grants will support the film’s outreach efforts to impacted communities and will support BishopAccountability.org’s on-going documentation to ensure transparency and accountability in the Catholic clergy abuse crisis.
Lowland Kids follows the story of the last two teenagers living on the once thriving Isle de Jean Charles, LA, their strikingly beautiful ancestral home that is now being swallowed by the sea. Surrounded by lush, crumbling landscapes, Howard & Juliette along with their Uncle Chris, navigate the emotional journey of growing up in a place that is soon to be lost forever. Howard and Juliette share an inextricable bond, which has strengthened after the tragic deaths of their parents. The trio, described as an unbreakable triangle by Howard, are part of the community deemed America’s First Climate Refugees. Along with other indigenous members of their community, they are being offered a new place to call home, as part of the first federally funded mass relocation in the USA. The film premieres on Saturday, November 15, 2025 at 8:00 PM at Village East by Angelika in DOC NYC’s Resilience program.
The corresponding nonprofit grant will go to the First People’s Conservation Council (FPCC), an association formed to provide a forum for Native American Tribes in Coastal Louisiana to identify and solve natural resource issues on their Tribal lands. They’ll use their Subject Matter grant to address the impacts of climate displacement by making a real world difference to members of the Jean Charles Choctaw Nation – for disaster services and to support long-term planning for their future – while also contributing to a national transformation in policy and practice to advance Indigenous-led adaptation efforts through a partnership between FPCC, Jean Charles Choctaw Nation, and Climigration Network.
To further support the issues featured in Nuns vs. The Vatican and Lowland Kids, Subject Matter will be present at each of the DOC NYC screenings to invite audiences to join them in donating to the corresponding nonprofit grantees to create a positive community action in response to the films. Subject Matter will match audience donations up to $5,000 through DOC NYC, taking place November 12th – 30th, 2025.
Also screening at DOC NYC are past Subject Matter grantees The Librarians which follows dedicated librarians across the US as they bravely fight against the unprecedented surge of coordinated efforts to ban books and defend the fundamental right to read and intellectual freedom, and All The Empty Rooms which follows journalist Steve Hartman and photographer Lou Bopp on a seven-year project to memorialize the bedrooms of children killed in American school shootings.
Subject Matter provides funds and resources to documentary films highlighting urgent social issues and to nonprofits tackling the featured topics, while inviting inspired audiences to take action. Subject Matter is led by Co-Executive Directors Colleen Hammond and David Earls, along with Board Co-Chairs Jeffrey Wright and Lily Band, and board members Christie Marchese, Loren Hammonds, Din Blankenship, and Samantha Rudin Earls.
Since Subject Matter launched in 2022, they have awarded over $587,000 in grants to fourteen social issue documentaries (Aftershock, Lakota Nation vs. United States, Refuge, A Woman on the Outside, Breaking the News,Every Body, 36 Seconds: Portrait of A Hate Crime, Daughters, All We Carry,I’m Your Venus,Homegrown, The Librarians, Just Kids, and All The Empty Rooms) and fourteen impactful nonprofits (saveArose Foundation, Lakota People’s Law Project, Parents for Peace, Essie Justice Group, The 19th, interAct, Our Three Winners, Girls For A Change, Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, House Lives Matter, The 22nd Century Initiative, PEN America, Campaign for Southern Equality, and John Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions).
