This year’s Tribeca Film Festival featured the debut of a new award in memory of a writer and filmmaker who died last year.

The Nora Ephron Award was created to honour women filmmakers. The first winner of the $25,000 prize is Meera Menon for her film Farah Goes Bang. It tells the story of three young women travelling across the United States for the presidential campaign of John Kerry in 2004.

In accepting her award, Menon said she owes a debt of gratitude to the trails blazed by Nora Ephron. She says she tried to follow Ephron’s lead of “taking issues that are painful and fear-ridden for women and finding the humor in them and the joy in each other as women.

Another nominee for the award, Jane Weinstock, says there aren’t enough women making movies today. But she says, “There are more and more, thanks to Nora, who helped pave the way.

The Tribeca Film Festival ends on Sunday.