AGBO Names 5 Grant Recipients for 2025 Italian American Filmmaker Forum

AGBO has selected the five recipients for its 2025 Italian American Filmmaker Forum, hosted annually by AGBO co-founders Joe and Anthony Russo.

The recipients were picked from a nationwide pool of applicants who sent in 3-minute sizzle reels for their short films about the Italian American experience. The five recipients, chosen by a panel of AGBO executives and leaders of the Italian Sons and Daughters of America, will each receive a $10,000 grant to produce their short films.

When the short films have been completed, one of the five filmmakers will be chosen to receive an additional $10,000 grant and will be invited to join the AGBO Storytellers Collective, an alumni network of emerging filmmakers who have won AGBO fellowships or competitions in the past.

The Storytellers Collective offers ongoing mentorship and industry guidance from AGBO executives as well as a collaborative community for filmmakers. To date, AGBO and the ISDA have awarded over $450,000 in RBIAFF grants to 52 filmmakers. The Five winners are:

“St. Joseph,” directed by Maky Rupert (Los Angeles)
Logline: A group of estranged cousins go back to their now vacant childhood home in search of the statue of St. Joseph that their Italian grandmother buried in the yard for good luck thirty years earlier.

“Tiramisu,” directed by Katerina Munis (Los Angeles)
Logline: A Ukrainian immigrant seeks to escape the world inside a little pizzeria, but its Sicilian chef cooks up a different adventure for their night.

“Forgotten Flavors,” directed by Michael Mastronardi (Costa Mesa)
Logline: Forgotten Flavors, is a deeply personal journey into Italian American heritage, documenting a quest to learn and preserve Mike’s late grandmother’s unwritten recipes with the help of his father.

“Pasta de Niente,” directed by Adriano Valentini (Los Angeles)
Logline: In a world where Italian identity is defined by hashtags and hand gestures, a lonely Italian American man’s mouthwatering pasta pic breaks the internet, launching him into a surreal spiral of digital adoration and empty opulence—all hinging on a picture-perfect plate of pasta hiding one shameful secret: it tastes like garbage.

“Luigi Lookalike,” directed by Luke Salvatore Petronella (New York)
Logline: An Italian American struggling with his identity is thrown into an existential crisis when the world becomes convinced he’s the doppelgänger of a notorious (alleged) criminal—forcing him to confront his own motives, the media, stereotypes, and the bizarre nature of Italian Americans in pop culture.

The post AGBO Names 5 Grant Recipients for 2025 Italian American Filmmaker Forum appeared first on TheWrap.