Kitty Genovese's story is one of the city's most notorious: the woman was killed while dozens of her neighbors stood by--leading to the development of the notion of the "bystander effect" and a little glimpse into man's inhumanity. It's an almost archetypal story--and the Sloan Foundation and Tribeca Film Institute awarded screenwriting MFA grad Robert Cohen $50,000 to produce a film on the incident and its aftermath for psychologists studying the case, reports IndieWire.
Per Cohen, a psychologist involved "starts to meet them and there’s a sense that he feels a strong connection to them. Too strong? One of the witnesses, Liz, becomes a love interest in the story and questions of ethics arise." For an indie film, this certainly sounds like a potboiler--and the Tribeca Film Institute will spend the next year helping Cohen, who works at Current TV, shepherd his project along.
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