Netflix and Film Independent will award one $150,000 cash production grant, plus turn-key resources like film stock, processing, camera rental, and post-productions services, for a total price value of more than $350,000. One of the films in contention is “Why We Pull the Trigger” by Eric Lin. Here’s a synopsis of the film:

While dead people do not scare Harry (Tim Kang), an attendant in the city morgue, his mother’s losing battle with lung cancer terrifies him. With the medical bills piling up, Harry runs errands on the side for Vince, a funeral director who teases Harry with a glimpse of the money that can be made in the underground black market for body parts. Harry hatches a plan to tap into the lucrative market, but when he recruits his friends into the scheme, their descent into the gruesome work quickly spins out of his control. Why We Pull the Trigger looks at the corrosive choices people make in order to survive, even as they are pushed deeper into the cracks of society.

Tim Kang, from the Mentalist and AT&T commercials, is in the film. Vote for the film here. Watch the gritty and disturbing clip from “Why We Pull the Trigger”.

Why We Pull the Trigger Clip

More about director Eric Lin

Eric Lin is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Film Program. MUSIC PALACE, his Student Academy Award nominated short documentary, has screened at numerous film festivals worldwide, including the prestigious New Directors/New Films Festival in New York, the Telluride Film Festival, the Clermont Ferrand Short Film Festival and is now airing on the Independent Film Channel. His latest narrative short film, WHAT REMAINS, was awarded the Caucus Foundation Student Production Grant as well as the Warner Bros. Pictures Film Production Award, and is busy traveling among the film festival circuit. In 2003, he won the Asian American International Screenplay Competition for his script, KILGORE. His work has received support from the C.V. Starr Institute, the Oppenheimer New Filmmakers Grant, and New York State Council for the Arts. In addition to directing high-end industrials and broadcast promos, he freelances as a cinematographer and editor. He recently won the Vague Production Award for his feature film project, WHY WE PULL THE TRIGGER.