SFFILM and the Sloan Foundation to Present Award to Adam McKay AWARDS 2021 Sloan Science Cinema Prize to Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up

SFFILM has announced that Don’t Look Up, Adam McKay’s star-studded parody about the end of the world starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Jonah Hill, and many more, is the 2021 recipient of the SFFILM Sloan Science in Cinema Prize, an award that celebrates the compelling depiction of scientific themes or characters in a narrative feature film. Presented through a partnership between SFFILM and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, this annual award carries a $20,000 cash prize and shines a light on special achievement in rendering the worlds of science and technology through the language of film with a screening event and conversation with the film’s creators and experts in the scientific fields being depicted. SFFILM and the Sloan Foundation will present the award on Friday, January 7 during a live online talk with Adam McKay and physicist Joseph Barranco, additional talent joining will be announced in the new year.

It is an honor to celebrate Don’t Look Up with Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s Science in Cinema award. The Sloan Foundation’s commitment to promoting science in storytelling is crucial to understanding our world, especially during these complex times, shares Director of Programming, Jessie Fairbanks. While Adam McKay’s film is a parody of apathy and anarchy, it also serves as a powerful reflection of current world issues and the importance of factual truth. We are thrilled to partner with SFFILM to award the Sloan Science in Cinema Prize to Adam McKay’s sly, hilarious and quietly terrifying cautionary tale, Don’t Look Up, said Doron Weber, Vice President and Program Director at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. This meticulously researched film about two astronomers who try to warn the powers that be about impending doom is a chilling metaphor for the challenges we face today – from the COVID-19 pandemic to climate change. McKay’s trenchant satire dramatizes the terrible costs of ignoring scientific evidence presented by professionally trained scientists, even when those scientists are themselves flawed, imperfect human beings just like the rest of us.