A Lot Like You will be screening on
March 28, 29, and 30th as part of
Cleveland International Film Festival.
(tickets go on sale 3/9)

As we mentioned earlier, thanks to CIFF being the sole recipient of a grant from The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, they are able to focus on filmmakers from traditionally underrepresented communities, highlighting their stories and contributions to the world of film.  This year’s focus is on filmmakers from the African diaspora.  And so thanks to this generous grant from “The Academy”, our festival travel and lodging is being covered by CIFF!

And as if that wasn’t sweet enough ~ they are screening our film as part of their “Standing Up” competition (cash prize of $5,000–with the winner  being determined by audience vote).  Please read on for a description of this category and the story of its namesake…

Greg Gund Memorial Standing Up Film Competition

Our Standing Up Film Competition is a tribute to Greg Gund. Greg’s friends and family described him as “intensely creative and talented, and wholly without pretension.” For five years Greg lived in Playa Negro near Tamarindo, Costa Rica where he immersed himself by becoming part of the local community. As much as he deeply loved his home there, Greg was also an extensive world traveler with an adventurous spirit and an insatiable curiosity about different cultures and people. He lived by this Mahatma Gandhi quote inscribed in his passport: “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”

Greg died at the age of 32 in a small plane crash off the Pacific Coast on July 16, 2005.

Our Standing Up program includes “films with a conscience.” These films especially celebrate social justice and activism.  Through the films, Standing Up honors Greg Gund—as well as others with a different view of the world in which we live—and the continual fight to make it a better world.

Based on audience vote, the winner of this competition’s $5,000 cash prize will be announced at the Closing Night Reception.