Last Updated on September 12, 2025 by Angel Melanson
FANGORIA’s own Diffan Sina Norman is one of the recipients of a major film grant! This week, Austin Film Society announced the fourteen recipients of their 2025 AFS Grants for Feature Films, an annually raised production fund for emerging Texas filmmakers. Over $130,000 was awarded to thirteen projects, with FANGORIA Studios’ first feature film, Sitora, being one of the films awarded.
Norman is one of four directors to receive grants as a part of AFS’s North Texas Pioneer Award, co-presented by Ley Line Entertainment, David Lowery, and the Oak Cliff Film Festival. This special section of the grant program aims to fund debut feature projects from underrepresented North Texas-based directors, including Norman for Sitora, as well as the documentaries Let Your Hands Go from Kenny Rigsby, and Mother of Buffalo from Luis Arturo Tapia.
“AFS raises more than $200,000 annually to give away as cash grants to emerging filmmakers in Texas. Over the course of nearly 30 years, the AFS Grant has provided a major lift to the state’s creative sector with this important and sustained funding platform for filmmakers,” said Holly Herrick, AFS Head of Film and Creative Media. “We know that artists are key to our unique culture in Texas. When we support Texas films, we ensure the cultural heritage of our state; the grant remains absolutely pivotal to the development of Texas as a film hub.”
Other projects that received funding included three in development films by experienced artists, including PJ Raval’s Love Visa, Maisie Crow and Abbie Perrault’s Reflejo, and Illiana Sosa and Isidore Bethel’s Sueños que se te cumplen (Dreams That Come True). The New Texas Voices Award was also given to Alejandro Hendricks for his feature Airport Blvd, awarded a cash grant of $10,000 and an industry mentorship.
Sitora has been in development with FANGORIA Studios since 2021, inspired by the lost 1964 Malay horror film Sitora Harimau Jadian. Following a tyrannical shaman who puffs up the threat of a supernatural half-man, half-tiger as a means of preserving his feudal control, the film is set to star Wan Hanafi Su, and will shoot on location in Malaysia. The AFS grant is the first update on the project since Norman took the film to this year’s Sundance Screenwriters Lab.
