About Vital Stories

A new partnership empowering filmmakers to authentically weave health stories into everyday narratives.

Tribeca Studios is launching a new initiative to prioritize authentic portrayals of patient and disease experiences in entertainment. Sponsored by Lilly, this new program addresses underrepresentation and misrepresentation of health conditions in media by supporting creators in telling more accurate, empathetic, and inclusive stories and bringing them to audiences on a major stage.

The Approach & Mission

With a focus on meaningful impact, the Vital Stories program will begin by providing creative development and mentorship to a select group of talented screenwriters and directors dedicated to authentic portrayals of health and treatment.

The Creative Summit launches this effort by convening approximately nineteen dynamic projects in New York City for intensive, in-person mentorship. Participants will engage in hands-on script development, and hear from experts in both the filmmaking and medical fields to enhance their projects. The event will explore in depth Lilly’s essential toolkit “Advancing Health Storylines in Popular Entertainment” on best practices for health-focused storytelling.

From this group, three projects will be selected to receive full support for short film or proof-of-concept production, plus a guaranteed premiere during the 2026 Tribeca Festival and additional support throughout distribution. Projects will continue to work with Tribeca to find avenues to be produced in longer form.

A Flower's Cut

Feature Film

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Creator:

Princess Adenike

Logline:

For Nigerian-American Adesuwa, turning twelve means carrying grief and judgment. In the wake of her father’ s death, one skipped school day exposes the fractures of a family grieving in silence, and the contradictions of love and judgment that will shape her girlhood.

Bam Bam on the Loose

Feature Film

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Creator:

Amanda Lundquist

Logline:

A water-color hobbyist with dementia hits the road with her ​directionless granddaughter to accuse a professional artist of stealing her paintings and career—immersing them both in a world where they could have been anyone, anything, all along.

#BRAINCHILD

Feature Film

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Creator:

B. Monét

Logline:

When her beloved grandmother begins to fade, eight-year-old Daisy sets out to rebuild her memories piece by piece — crafting a world of music, color, and wonder to keep love alive when memory slips away.

CAM GIRL

Feature Film

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Creator:

Bianca Di Marco

Logline:

SANDRA’s (65) post-retirement dreams are shattered when her 80-year-old mother is diagnosed with dementia. After filling her mother’s home with CCTV cameras, Sandra’s obsessive monitoring soon takes over her stagnant life.

Do I Know You From Somewhere?

Series

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Creators:

Alan Scott Neal, Angela Wong Carbone

Logline:

When her mother’s Alzheimer’s worsens, a struggling actor must use her unique side gig of impersonating strangers’ loved ones to comfort her mother and keep her safe.

Magpie

Feature Film

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Creator:

Grace McNally

Logline:

As she recovers from brain tumor surgery, a young woman is drawn into the world of an Alzheimer’s patient who believes she’s his wife, blurring the lines between identity, memory, and care.

Mother May I

Feature Film

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Creator:

Francesca Mirabella

Logline:

A daughter comes to terms with her mother’s fading memory and her grandmother’s legacy. Does the body remember love even when the mind does not? A story of loss, love, and inheritance.

motif

Feature Film

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Creator:

al’ikens Plancher

Logline:

A multi-timeline story about a dancer who auditions for a renowned Haitian folklore troupe while battling breast cancer.

Naaz

Series

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Creator:

Afia Serena Nathaniel

Logline:

A shy Punjabi housewife, Naaz, recently transplanted to America, finds herself torn between her duty as the good wife to a husband in jail and her secret crush on a Sikh US Marine in her neighborhood.

Nipples for Christmas

Feature Film

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Creators:

Kim Blanck, Jenna Dioguardi

Logline:

Twenty-seven-year-old Jenna, a chronic fixer, resolves to “to-do-list” her way through a breast cancer diagnosis and her rocky relationship until she’s forced to engage with the reality of her new body and ultimate lack of control.

Recurrence

Feature Film

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Creators:

Sonja O'Hara, Adam Hoelzel

Logline:

After losing her academic career to scandal, a brilliant mycologist and breast cancer survivor becomes entangled in a dangerous love triangle with her self-destructive ex and a biotech mogul, where obsession, science, and survival blur.

Take Me for a Drive

Feature Film

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Creators:

Rachael Moton, Jane Velahos

Logline:

After being canceled and losing everything, a struggling comedian is forced back to her childhood home to care for her grandmother with Alzheimer’s, only to realize they’re both grappling with what it means to face the end of the road.

The Character Years

Series

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Creators:

Matthew Syrett, Robyn Wholey

Logline:

An aging actress with a longstanding metastatic cancer diagnosis must return to acting in the wake of her husband’s death and confront the truth that her diagnosis may no longer be terminal.

The Hokkaido Hurricane

Feature Film

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Creator:

Frank Sun

Logline:

On the night of his retirement match, a Japanese wrestling legend’s fading memory forces his daughter to enter the ring and carry him through one final fight for his legacy.

The Name Between Us

Feature Film

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Creator:

Matt Campanella

Logline:

A daughter spends twenty-four hours with her mother, whose fading memory exposes the silence that has defined their relationship.

The Other League

Series

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Creator:

Eunice Levis

Logline:

On the brink of joining the Negro Leagues, a Harlem phenom with a sudden diabetes diagnosis must choose -- protect the dream with secrecy around his disease, or protect his life with the truth.

The Shape of It

Feature Film

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Creator:

Lara Everly

Logline:

When her long-awaited “post-divorce glow-up” gets hijacked by a breast cancer diagnosis, Charlie moves in with her pictureperfect sister for recovery , but one wild night out “for the boobs!” sends both their lives off-script becoming a crash course in sisterhood, second chances and letting go.

Underbelly

Feature Film

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Creators:

Alicia Louzoun-Heisler, Josalynn Smith

Logline:

Back for another year of weight loss camp, Laurie’s best friend and bunk-mate, Mia, goes missing, and no one seems to really care, leaving Laurie alone to solve the mystery of what really happened to her friend.

what are we going to do with you?

Feature Film

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Creators:

Abby Pierce, Tiny Cruz

Logline:

When Sweet Tea returns home from prison, she decides to help rebuild a girls’ drama club inside juvenile detention, where laughter and play become a fierce act of survival.

If you’re interested in learning more about any of these projects please email tribecastudios@tribecafilm.com.

Advancing Health Storylines in Popular Entertainment

A recent USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative study, sponsored by Lilly, highlights a critical issue: chronic health conditions are often underrepresented and inaccurately portrayed in popular entertainment, despite affecting millions of Americans.

Authentic media representation is crucial, as it can inform audiences, drive action toward disease prevention and screening, and combat misinformation or stigmatization. This commitment to accuracy will be integrated into the Creative Summit, where filmmakers will explore this essential toolkit to improve health storytelling and leverage the power of media for public good.