Grantee Spotlight: Barney Cheng's 'Baby Steps'

We constantly keep in touch with our grantees and alumni to see how their projects are coming along and continue to give guidance and assistance where needed. From time to time, with the filmmakers' permission, we'll spotlight projects on our blog that we think you'll be hearing about soon on the festival circuit. Here's one example.

Barney Cheng was awarded a Tribeca All Access® grant this year for his feature film, Baby Steps, which looks at Danny, a Taiwanese-American man, and his partner Tate, as they commence on the long journey to become parents. But things get more complicated when Danny's mother wants to control every aspect of the process.

Cheng, who is writing and directing the film, has some strong talent on the producing side of the project. Li Kong Hsu, whose credits include Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Ang Lee's "father trilogy" films, is on as a producer/executive producer and Stephen Israel, known best for executive producing Swimming with Sharks, is also producing.

Following being part of our industry meetings during the Tribeca Film Festival, Cheng is nearing completing of the film. "We are very close to picture lock," he said via e-mail last week from Taipei, where he's doing post. He added that he hopes to have the film's first trailer by September.

Stay updated on the project over at their Facebook page.