Vera Drew’s ‘Trandemic’ Takes Inaugural Found Footage Feature Fund Award from Transgender Film Center

Vera Drew’s found footage feature project ‘Trandemic’ has been named the inaugural recipient of the Transgender Film Center Found Footage Feature Fund award, according to an announcement reported Tuesday by Deadline.

The Found Footage Feature Fund is described by the organizers as a micro-budget initiative intended to support feature filmmaking by transgender creators. In its inaugural year, the program selected Drew’s project from an applicant pool after a multi-stage review process.

Deadline reported that applications were first evaluated by the Transgender Film Center alongside partner representatives. Finalists from that early review were then presented to Duplass Brothers Productions, which selected the winning project.

Drew’s ‘Trandemic’ is set to receive a $25,000 cash grant to support production of the feature, the report said. The announcement positions the award as the first in the Found Footage Feature Fund series and frames the selection process as spanning both community-facing review and a production-experience selection step.

The role of Duplass Brothers Productions was described in the report as part of the fund’s selection structure, with the company also identified as one of the original supporters of the program. The fund’s structure, as outlined in the announcement, reflects an approach that separates early screening from the final decision by a production organization.

As a result of Tuesday’s selection, Drew’s project moves to the production-support stage under the grant’s terms, with the award amount intended specifically for development and making the feature. The report did not outline separate milestones or a release schedule, focusing instead on the selection and award value.

The award also marks a new funding lane within the Transgender Film Center’s broader efforts to back transgender-led storytelling, using a specialty format, found footage, as the organizing theme for the first competition year. Organizers have not indicated whether additional rounds will use the same format constraints, beyond the inaugural fund’s stated focus.

For applicants, the announcement underscores that the review process involved multiple gatekeepers, beginning with evaluations by the Transgender Film Center and partner representatives and concluding with the final selection by Duplass Brothers Productions.