The Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival (LALIFF) in conjunction with Netflix, is holding its second annual LALIFF Inclusion Fellowship. The fellowship aims to represent and generate greater visibility for underrepresented filmmakers within the Latino community. This year, the number of fellowships in the program has been doubled and will be awarded to five visionary filmmakers who identify as indigenous Latino and five more who identify as Afro-Latino.

"Last summer, LALIFF and Netflix teamed up to elevate Afro-Latino voices within our film community with the goal of advancing Latino representation. As we move into the second year of this crucial work, we are proud to continue our Afro-Latino-centric scholarship, while at the same time adding a new cohort to our work — indigenous Latinos," said actor and LALIFF co-founder Edward James Olmos.

The LALIFF Inclusion Fellowship is committed to providing one-on-one mentorship to each filmmaker, taught by film industry leaders, as well as various networking opportunities and $20,000 for the production of a short film. The resulting films will be premiered in a special program during LALIFF 2022. The grantees will also participate in the festival's Industry Days with the goal of further networking and positioning themselves in the industry.

The program is also part of Netflix's initiative to support Latino-created content, to give space and voice to a collective that has been silenced in the industry, or were represented from negative stereotypes for a long time.

The call is open from Sept. 15 and has a deadline of Oct. 14, 2021.