From the Heart Productions Honors Melissa Mars for Her Timely Narrative Short Exploring Identity, Profiling and Systemic Bias
From the Heart Productions is delighted to announce that independent filmmaker Melissa Mars has been named the winner of the 2026 Roy W. Dean Short Film Grant for her narrative short film, UFH [Unidentified Flying Human].
Inspired by true events, UFH follows a French actress of Arab heritage traveling on a domestic flight to begin work on her first major studio film. After being profiled by an overzealous TSA agent, she is detained and subjected to a hostile interrogation.
What began as an imagined dystopian extension of a real experience has taken on an unexpected timeliness. Blending drama with satirical edges, UFH explores identity, profiling and systemic bias while placing the audience inside an encounter in which assumptions about who someone is can quickly determine how they are treated.
“Melissa has taken a deeply personal experience and turned it into a story that can open a much larger conversation,” said Carole Joyce, Director of the Roy W. Dean Grants and Vice President of From the Heart Productions. “UFH is exactly the kind of film this grant was created to support. It is distinctive, thought-provoking and uses storytelling to examine an issue that reaches far beyond one individual experience. We are excited to help Melissa bring the film to audiences.”
UFH [Unidentified Flying Human] was recently filmed on location in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and is now in post-production, with release planned for 2027.
Mars will use the Roy W. Dean Short Film Grant cash award and donated services to help complete the film and prepare it for release. The short also serves as a prelude and proof-of-concept for Mars’ debut feature film, My Ancestors’ Song, currently in development.
From a True Experience to the Screen
For Melissa, the story began with an experience she never expected would become the foundation for a film.
The filmmaker pushed the real-life incident into the heightened world of a dystopian interrogation, using the short film format to examine what can happen when identity, ethnicity and assumptions collide with institutional authority.
Through its mix of tension, drama and satire, UFH asks audiences to consider not only what happens to its central character, but also the judgments that can be made about a person before their story is ever heard.
Roy W. Dean Short Film Grant Includes Cash and Filmmaking Support
As the 2026 winner, Melissa will receive a package of cash and donated filmmaking services designed to help support UFH as it moves through post-production and toward its 2027 release.
The award includes:
- $3,000 cash grant
- $3,000 in music and audio services from composer David Raiklen
- $500 in grip, lighting or expendables from Filmtools
- $1,400 sound mixing package, including a four-hour sound mix session from Silver Sound
- $600 in closed-captioning services from Cineprosmedia
The grant recognizes fiction short films that are unique and make a contribution to society. It is open to independent filmmakers internationally and is designed to help filmmakers move meaningful narrative short films closer to completion.
About Melissa Mars
Born and raised in France and of Algerian heritage, Melissa Mars is an award-winning international screenwriter, filmmaker, actress and singer-songwriter who began writing and filming at age 13.
Mars made her official directorial debut in 2007 with the Universal Music video “Love Machine.” A year later, she made her debut as a producer with the animated musical Army of Love, serving as co-producer, writer and co-director.
She subsequently directed and produced music videos, EPKs, behind-the-scenes features, narrative shorts and internationally released musical projects.
Mars first gained widespread recognition through her pop music career, releasing three solo albums with Universal Music and collaborating with French artists including Lara Fabian, Louis Bertignac and Pascal Obispo. Her duet “1980” became one of her best-known recordings.
As an actress, Mars starred as Aloysia, Mozart’s first love, in the hit stage production Mozart the Rock Opera, staged by Olivier Dahan, director of the Academy Award-winning film La Vie en Rose. She later appeared alongside John Travolta in From Paris with Love, and her song “Beautiful” was selected for Coca-Cola Music’s 52 Songs of Happiness.
Her filmmaking work includes the multiple award-winning dystopian short The Last Touch, now streaming on Vidiverse.
Currently based in New York, Mars is also working with the Garden State Screenwriters group on the horror anthology feature Exit Zero while developing My Ancestors’ Song as her debut feature.
Her latest short, The Sign, is currently on the festival circuit.
About UFH [Unidentified Flying Human]
Her latest short, The Sign, is currently on the festival circuit.
About UFH [Unidentified Flying Human]
Written and Directed by: Melissa Mars
Produced by: Melissa Mars / Made in Mars Studios
Production Location: Albuquerque, New Mexico
Status: Post-production
Planned Release: 2027
Website: www.UFHtheMovie.com
Filmmaker Website: www.melissamars.com
Instagram: @melissamarsofficial
Contact:
About the Roy W. Dean Grant
From its inception in 1992, the Roy W. Dean Grant has awarded over $2,000,000 in cash and donated film services to independent films. Offered four times a year, it has been an important lifeline for independent filmmakers that help to get their projects started or finished. Without assistance from the grant, many excellent and important films may never have been made. Prior winners of the Roy W. Dean Short Film Grant include Ruth, Stairway to the Stars, Hungry Ghosts, and Love Taps.
Winners of other of the Roy W. Dean Grants include winner of the 2025 Truer than Fiction Spirit Award Winner A Photographic Memory, 2021 Emmy winners Belly of the Beast and The Love Bugs, as well as Sundance Film Festival selection Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins
About From the Heart Productions
From The Heart Productions is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to helping independent filmmakers fund, produce, and complete their films. In addition to the Roy W. Dean Grants, From the Heart offers fiscal sponsorship, personal guidance, filmmaker education, and ongoing support throughout the filmmaking process.
The organization’s THRIVE education platform gives filmmakers access to classes, workshops, filmmaker resources, pitch development, accountability sessions, and practical guidance designed to help move projects forward.
Through its fiscal sponsorship program, From the Heart has helped filmmakers raise more than $50 million in donations for their films.
President Carole Dean is the best-selling author of The Art of Film Funding: 2nd Edition, Alternative Financing Concepts and leads From the Heart’s filmmaker education programs, including Learn Producing: The Ultimate Course for Indie Film Production.
