A trio of stories connected by an ancient ginkgo tree just won director Ildikó Enyedi the Sloan Science on Screen Award.

SFFILM announced the honor for Enyedi’s Silent Friend at the 69th San Francisco International Film Festival, which runs through May 4. The film stars Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Léa Seydoux, and Luna Wedler as souls linked across a century. Enyedi takes home $5,000 along with the award.

But the bigger story is the $115,000 in grants going to five filmmakers developing science-driven screenplays. The Sloan Science in Cinema Initiative, now in its tenth year, pairs writers with science advisors to shape stories where discovery becomes drama.

Destiny Macon’s Talk Black follows a Black engineer battling gentrification and workplace sexism. Justin Kim WooSŏk’s The Green Corridor tracks a Korean-American anthropologist searching for a rumored tiger in the DMZ. Each receives $35,000.

Three more writers split $20,000 grants for early-stage projects inspired by real scientific breakthroughs. Lane Unsworth’s Hello Neighbor imagines how NASA would announce alien life. Sid Gopinath and Aditya Joshi’s One Inch From Earth chronicles the scramble to explore Jupiter’s moon Europa.

“We’re getting to support a filmmaker at the screenplay stage while the story is being shaped,” says SFFILM’s Masashi Niwano.

Since 2015, the initiative has supported 40 artists. The goal? Help audiences connect to science through cinema that gets the facts right.