CIX: Lab Projects
The Chicago Industry Exchange (CIX), hosted by Cinema/Chicago and the Chicago International Film Festival, invites filmmakers with narrative fiction feature films to participate in CIX:Lab. CIX:Lab is a year-long creative development program, focused on script development, directing and visualization, and preproduction and pitching, finally culminating in The Pitch at Industry Days in fall 2024, where the filmmakers will pitch their projects in front of a live audience and a panel of industry judges and have private meetings with producers, financiers, and distributors.
The selected projects for 2023-2024 CIX: Lab are:
Art of Alchemy
Writer/Director: Colin Parker
Producer: Dashawna Wright
Three friends try to rob a cult.
Broken Sinclair
Writer/Director: Beth Ashby
Co-producer: Eesha Patkar
An eighth-grade boy who was born empty—literally—fights for the right to attend a classmate’s birthday party when his parents try to sell him to a collector of oddities, and discovers along the way that you can have heart without, well, having an actual heart.
The Caterpillar and the Butterfly
Writer/Director: Eliyannah Amirah Yisrael
Producer: Natasha Parker
The Caterpillar and The Butterfly explores the emotional journey between broken and whole through TaLisha King and Sharonda “Ronnie” Jones, two women who ride the same bus on Chicago’s south side. When TaLisha’s boyfriend mysteriously vanishes, she swiftly falls into a state of despondency while the sudden reappearance of Ronnie’s absent father interrupts the rigid order she has created for herself.
I Can’t Sleep Here Tonight
Director: Linh Tran
Writer: Alex Gonzalez
Producer: Pete McClellan
A newly engaged couple moves into a NYC apartment that cleans itself of whatever is deemed unwanted. Everything is fine until one of them realizes that they no longer love the other person.
Lucy Is a Loser
Writer/Director: Wendy Jo Carlton
Co-Producer: Daniel Kullman
Associate producer: Susana Darwin
Lucy Gatlin is a 36-year-old queer musician living in a friend’s garage after drinking herself out of a famous band, and must return to her hometown to see what her beloved Aunt left her in a will while facing old demons, avoiding ex-lovers, and trying to stay sober.
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