The Smallest Whale in the World
Jasmin Tenucci, Director, Co-Writer
Maggi Briggs, Writer
Sloan Grant(s) Received: 2023, TIFF, Project Pitch Participant
Project Type: Short
Synopsis: The Smallest Whale in the World is a comedy that follows a marine biologist at a career low-point, sent to an obscure town that is home to the smallest whale in the world.
Jasmin Tenucci is a writer and director based in São Paulo, Brazil. Her directing work includes short film August Sky, which won the Special Mention of the Jury at the Cannes 2021 Official Selection, as well as four episodes of the Brazilian television series Shop Tudo (Glaze Entretenimento/Fall 2023). Tenucci’s screenwriting work includes co-developing and writing on Globo’s acclaimed series As FiveE (2020), and a soon-to-be-announced Netflix series that will premiere in June 2022. She is also adapting the novel Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet for Oscar-nominated director Bing Liu, and the Brazilian novel The Pediatrician for Anonymous Content Brazil. Tenucci also served as editor on Joyland, which won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at Cannes in 2022 and Best International Film at the Spirit Awards in 2023. Tenucci holds a BA in Film from São Paulo University and an MFA in Writing and Directing from Columbia University Film School, where she also taught directing. She is currently in development on two feature films that she will direct: Purple Cotton and The Smallest Whale in the World, which won the 2017 Columbia Alfred P. Sloan Development Grant.
Maggie Briggs is a filmmaker based between her hometown of Asheville, North Carolina, and New York City, where she received her MFA at Columbia University. Her short film, To Sonny, premiered at Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival in 2020. Her next short, Louis I: King of the Sheep, a stop-motion animation she wrote and produced, had its World Premiere at the 72nd Berlinale in its Generation Program. Her features in development, Prone to Wander and Sweet as Figs, have been supported by Tribeca Film Institute, Cine Qua Non, and the TIFF Writers’ Studio, where she was awarded with the CHANEL Women Writers’ Network Grant, and, most recently, the Bergman Estate Residency. She co-wrote Saim Sadiq’s feature, Joyland, which premiered at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival in Un Certain Regard, where it won the Jury Prize and the Queer Palme and later went on to win Best International Film at the 2023 Indie Spirit Awards.