Master's student helps filmmaking team land production grant

The Office of Fellowships is happy to announce that Maya Ben-Shahar (TGS ’21) is part of a filmmaking team that just secured a $25,000 Greenlight Grant from the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs and the National Endowment for the Humanities! With the grant, Maya and her team are on track to complete their film by June 2021.

Maya is a second-year master’s student in the mental health counseling program at Northwestern’s Family Institute. She holds a BA in psychology from Carleton College and plans to be a school-based therapist for children and teens. Meanwhile, she has found herself becoming deeply engaged in the world of impact documentary production. While studying at Carleton, Maya joined a student organization, Carls Against Prisons, and began to learn about mass incarceration.

This experience eventually led her to send a letter to Cedric B. Theus (left), a current prisoner who was serving a life sentence and working to change the system from the inside. As their pen pal correspondence developed into a close friendship, Maya grew to learn more about the issues Ced confronted. Several years later, Ced shared a pitch for a film that would highlight the racial disparities in incarceration, and she decided to go all in on the project. Now she’s juggling her roles as a therapist-in-training and a first-time filmmaker while learning to see how the two disparate worlds overlap and complement each other.

Please visit the team’s website to learn more about the film.

The Greenlight Grant supports home-grown Iowa film and digital media productions that benefit Iowans and small businesses in the state. Eligible projects must be ready for production and contain excellent content that advances Iowa’s brand and demonstrates public value. The program is administered by the Iowa Arts Council on behalf of Produce Iowa.

Contact Jason Kelly Roberts at jason-roberts@northwestern.edu to learn more about the Greenlight Grant.