Cultivating a New Generation of Documentary Producers
In 2015, we launched our Documentary Producers Fellowship with the goal of celebrating the documentary producer, and fostering emerging producing talent in the field.
Over the years, we have recognized the essential creative role producers play in the documentary filmmaking process and found that often they are underappreciated and underserved. We created our Documentary Producers Fellowship to do our small part to support and cultivate a new generation of talented documentary producers.
Learn more about our fellows past and present here.
Adrienne Collatos
Adrienne Collatos is a documentary filmmaker who focuses on social issue films and archival research and producing. Most recently she co-produced NOTHING LEFT UNSAID: GLORIA VANDERBILT & ANDERSON COOPER, which premiered on HBO in the spring of 2016. Prior to that she worked as an Associate Producer on a number of Netflix and HBO films, including WHAT HAPPENED, MISS SIMONE, a 2016 Academy Award nominee for best documentary, THE LAST LAUGH, which premiered at the Tribeca film festival, and LOVE, MARILYN, a Gala Premiere at the 2012 Toronto Film Festival. Her other credits include A GOOD JOB: STORIES OF THE FDNY and THERE’S SOMETHING WRONG WITH AUNT DIANE. In 2015 Adrienne was named one of 6 inaugural Impact Partners Emerging Documentary Producer Fellows. Collatos graduated from Harvard University in 2010 after completing a thesis on the emergence of West Africa’s video industry.
Alexandra Moss
Alexandra Moss is a documentary producer whose curiosity is matched only by her determination. She spent the first five years of her career as an in-house producer at HBO, working on the Emmy-winning series THE ALZHEIMER’S PROJECT and THE WEIGHT OF THE NATION. In 2012, she co-founded The Public Good Projects, a nonprofit whose mission is to leverage the power of the media to make complex problems easier to understand. While there, she executive produced SLEEPLESS IN AMERICA (National Geographic). After that, she served as a documentary development and production executive at Discovery, where she supervised a diverse array of films while also co-producing RANCHER, FARMER, FISHERMAN, which premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. More recently, she was a producer of the upcoming documentaries NOT DONE (PBS) and YUSUF HAWKINS: STORM OVER BROOKLYN (HBO/Tribeca). She is also the producer of three feature documentaries in various stages of production and post. Alexandra lives with her husband and two young daughters alongside the Hudson River in Dobbs Ferry, NY.
Ann Bennett
Ann Bennett is an Emmy nominated documentary filmmaker and multimedia producer. She produced the NAACP Image Award-winning PBS feature documentary, THROUGH A LENS DARKLY: BLACK PHOTOGRAPHERS AND THE EMERGENCE OF A PEOPLE, as well as the multi-platform community engagement initiative, DIGITAL DIASPORA FAMILY REUNION (DDFR). Bennett’s film credits include: CITIZEN KING and FISK JUBILEE SINGERS for the PBS series “American Experience,” HYMN FOR ALVIN AILEY for “Dance in America,” and the award-winning PBS mini-series AFRICANS IN AMERICA and AMERICA’S WAR ON POVERTY. She is a consulting producer on ALWYS IN SEASON (directed by Jacqueline Olive), one of ten films selected for Tribeca Film Institute’s All Access program 2018 and premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival where it won the Special Jury Award. Bennett is a graduate of the Columbia Journalism School and Harvard College and was a 2019 Laundromat Project Create Change Fellow.
Ann Rogers
Originally from Montana, Ann Rogers is a documentary producer and filmmaker. Her recent credits include co-producer for Participant’s feature documentary WHITE COAT REBELS, which had its world premiere at AFI Docs 2021 and Showtime’s feature documentary DETAINEE 001, which had its broadcast premiere in September 2021. She was also an associate producer for Fishbowl Film’s POV feature documentary INVENTING TOMORROW (Sundance 2018), which went on to win a 2019 Peabody Award. Ann’s past credits include Showtime’s feature documentary THE LONGEST WAR (2020), HBO’s feature documentary THE FINAL YEAR (Toronto 2017), CNN Film’s feature documentary LEGION OF BROTHERS (Sundance 2017), and Netflix’s docuseries FIVE CAME BACK (2017). In 2020, she pitched her directorial debut, THE PROGRAM, at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival’s Big Sky Pitch, which is currently in development. A member of the Documentary Producers Alliance (DPA) and the Producers Guild of America (PGA), Ann now lives in Los Angeles.
Anya Rous
Anya Rous is a Brooklyn-based producer, funding strategist and the Head of Partnerships at Multitude Films, an independent production company that produces award-winning films by and about women, LGBTQ folks, and people of color. Anya is the co-producer of the Sundance and Guggenheim funded documentary NAILA AND THE UPRISING (IDFA 2017) and co-executive produced CALL HER GANDA (Tribeca 2018). She is currently producing AFTERMATH a follow-up to THE BRANDON TEENA STORY (Berlinale 1988) by Emmy-nominated directors Susan Muska and Greta Olafsdottir, and is co-producing TRAUMA, a documentary about violence against women in film and TV. Anya brings a combined 10 years of experience in grantmaking and raising funds for media projects supporting movements for racial, economic, and gender justice. She formerly served as the Director of Strategic Relationships at Just Vision, an organization that creates critically-acclaimed documentaries highlighting stories of Palestinian and Israeli grassroots leaders working to end the occupation and inequality. Prior to that she was a grantmaker at the Nathan Cummings Foundation. Anya is on the Board Executive Committee at Jews for Racial and Economic Justice and is a member of Resource Generation, an organization of young people with class privilege working towards the equitable distribution of resources. She previously served on the North Star Fund’s Community Funding Committee.
Brette Ragland
Brette Ragland is a documentary producer who has worked on several international projects for clients including National Geographic, Netflix, Apple TV+, and more. Currently, Brette is producing a coming-of-age feature documentary set against the backdrop of the Rohingya Refugee Crisis. Most recently she served as the associate producer for Davis Guggenheim’s three-part Netflix special INSIDE BILL’S BRAIN: DECODING BILL GATES. In her role as producer, Brette has found herself in a burning building, on the front lines of a barrage of fireworks in Taiwan, and inside Oprah’s house.
Brian Becker
Brian Becker is a New York-based filmmaker and producer who makes archival documentaries that highlight forgotten narratives of American culture. He was shortlisted for the 2021 FOCAL Jane Mercer Researcher of the Year Award and most recently served as archival producer on MLK/FBI and story producer/archival producer on Spaceship Earth. Both films were nominated for the 2021 Critics’ Choice Award for Best Archival Documentary and MLK/FBI was selected as the winner. He began his career on the Oscar-winning O.J.: Made in America and has worked on the television projects The Fourth Estate and Bobby Kennedy for President. Before turning to production, he worked as an urban ecologist with an expertise in invasive mosquito populations. He is currently directing and producing his first feature Time Bomb Y2K.
Carrie Weprin
Carrie Weprin is an Ohio-bred film producer and co-founder of Once in a Blue, a female-led production house in Brooklyn, NY. Carrie has produced content for A&E, MTV Networks, The Travel Channel, EPIX, Google, Facebook, The New York Times, and PBS. As an independent producer, Carrie produced the feature-length documentary film, TOUGH LOVE, which premiered at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in April 2014 and premiered on PBS POV in July 2015. TOUGH LOVE was the recipient of the 2016 American Bar Association Silver Gavel Award. Her latest film, BLOWIN’ UP, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2018 and was awarded Best Documentary at the San Diego Asian American Film Festival and the Society of Authors Award at the Film Des Femmes. BLOWIN’ UP was released in theaters in Spring 2019 and premiered on PBS’ POV and Amazon in Fall 2019. Carrie is now in preproduction on her latest feature-length project, FLORENCE FROM OHIO. When she’s not producing, Carrie is hanging out with her husband, son, daughter & cat.
Charlotte Cook
Charlotte Cook is a producer, curator, and writer from London, based in New York. Charlotte is a Co-Founder and Executive Producer of Field of Vision, a film unit that commissions filmmakers and artists to make short form, episodic and feature length creative visual journalism. Prior to Field of Vision, she was the Director of Programming at Hot Docs, North America’s largest documentary festival. In London, Charlotte was the Head of Film Programming and Training at The Frontline Club, an organisation dedicated to championing independent journalism and freedom of expression. She has also worked with BBC Storyville, the Channel 4 BritDoc Foundation’s Puma Creative Catalyst Fund and the Edinburgh International Film Festival, where she curated the strand Conflict | Reportage. She has written extensively for a number of different outlets and was the main photographic researcher for the launch of The Times Online (UK) archive project. In addition to her work at Field of Vision, Charlotte is currently a programmer at CPH:DOX and recently produced the films OUR NEW PRESIDENT (Sundance ‘18), THE GOSPEL OF EUREKA (SXSW ‘18) and THE PROPOSAL (Tribeca ‘18).
Chelsea Matter
Chelsea Matter is an independent documentary producer whose films have screened at Sundance, Tribeca, SXSW, Full Frame and IDFA and received national distribution through outlets such as RADiUS-TWC, The History Channel, Gravitas Ventures and OWN. She co-produced and line produced the film, BEINGE EVEL, directed by Academy Award-winner Daniel Junge, which premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. She also co-produced Junge’s film BEYOND THE BRICK, which premiered at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival and was released through RADiUS-TWC. Prior to this, she produced THE HUMAN EXPERIMENT, directed by Emmy award winning journalists Dana Nachman and Don Hardy and narrated/executive produced by Oscar winner Sean Penn. Her broadcast credits include producing and writing documentary-style television series for networks including Discovery, The History Channel, NatGeo, Travel Channel, Plum TV, A&E and PBS. Chelsea is a graduate of Stanford University and an alumna of the Tribeca Film Institute’s Tribeca All Access program.
Chloe Gbai
Chloe Gbai is the Director of IF/Then Shorts at Tribeca Film Institute. IF/Then supports short documentaries directed by regional filmmakers. Previously, as the POV Shorts and Streaming Producer, she launched POV Shorts, which earned a documentary short Oscar nomination, two Emmy nominations and an IDA Awards nomination for Best Short Form Series. Her directing/editing work centers around race, immigration and gender. She is a member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia and a member-in-residence of the Meerkat Media Collective.
Christina Avalos
Christina Avalos is a documentary producer passionate about telling character-driven stories that reveal the lives of those often left unseen. She began her career in documentary filmmaking after receiving a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University. Since then, she has helped produce feature documentaries and TV news documentary series for HBO, PBS, CNN and Netflix. Her work has covered various topics that explore inequality in America, including the criminal justice system and capital punishment, addiction, housing insecurity and homelessness, and the racial wealth gap. Christina is currently producing a feature-length verite documentary with Story Syndicate.
Colleen Cassingham
Colleen Cassingham is a producer at Multitude Films, where her work focuses on politically committed artful nonfiction. Most recently, she produced the QUEER FUTURES shorts collection (CPH:DOX 2023). She is in production on two Sundance-supported features: Reid Davenport’s second feature LIFE AFTER and Casey Carter’s debut feature TO USE A MOUNTAIN. She is a 2023 Sundance Producing Fellow, a 2019 Points North Fellow, and a 2018 UnionDocs Collaborative Studio Fellow.
Dana Kalmey
Dana is an independent documentary filmmaker who produces, directs, films, and edits. She is trained as an architect, is a lifelong soccer player, a former college soccer coach, and a former architecture teacher with The Green Gecko Project in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Her film roster includes the Sundance award-winning TRAPPED and E-TEAM; and (DIS)HONESTY––THE TRUTH ABOUT LIES, which premiered at Full Frame and Hot Docs Film Festivals and was broadcast on CNBC. Dana is currently directing/producing two sports documentaries, THE LAST 90 MINUTES and TANDEM. She is driven by teamwork, athleticism, humor, and culture, and aims to discover the innate humanity in her projects while making meaningful connections and sharing them with the world.
Darcy McKinnon
A native Floridian and decades-long resident of New Orleans, McKinnon is interested in work that highlights the unique cultures and social issues of the Gulf South and Caribbean. She is a co-founder of ALL Y’ALL, the Southern Documentary Collective. McKinnon’s prior documentary work includes the features MAYUILAPOLIS, LIVE, NUDE, GIRLS, UNITE! and the 2018 short ANIMALS. She is currently in post-production on the features THE NEUTRAL GROUND with CJ Hunt, a documentary about New Orleans’ struggle to remove Confederate monuments, in mid-production on COMMUTED with Nailah Jefferson, in early post on Katie Mathews’ ROLEPLAY. She is also co-directing and producing the Tribeca If/Then supported short A FINE GIRL. McKinnon’s work has been broadcast on POV, LPB and Cinemax, and her current projects have received support from SFIFF, CAAM, Chicken and Egg, Firelight Media, ITVS, Black Public Media, Sundance and the Tribeca Film Institute among others.
Elizabeth Woodward
Elizabeth Woodward is a producer of documentary and narrative films and founder of Willa Productions. Her recent projects include ON THE DIVIDE (Tribeca Film Festival 2021, POV) and YOU RESEMBLE ME (Venice Film Festival 2021, executive produced by Spike Lee, Spike Jonze, Alma Har’el, Abigail E. Disney). Past projects include Netflix’s THE GREAT HACK (Oscars shortlist, Emmy nominee, BAFTA nominee, IDA nominee, Cinema Eye winner, Sundance 2019), HBO’s hit series THE VOW, and PERSUASION MACHINES (Sundance New Frontier 2020). Her films have been supported by Sundance Institute, Tribeca Institute, Chicken and Egg, Film Independent, Impact Partners, Artemis Rising, Field of Vision, Level Forward, The Gotham, Perspective Fund, Berkeley Film Fund, Quiet, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She is a member of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences and the Documentary Producers Alliance. She was selected for Berlinale Talents and for the Impact Partners Producers Fellowship. She is a graduate of Brown University and the University of Cambridge.
Erik Spink
Erik Spink is a producer at Vacant Light a film and media production company based in New York City. He earned his Bachelors of Arts in Cinema Studies at SUNY Purchase College and an MFA in Social Documentary Film from the School of Visual Arts. Erik’s work in film, television, and digital media has been focused predominately in non-fiction story telling. Additionally, Erik has worked with brands and non-profit organizations creating original moving image projects across all platforms. Erik was the producer of Amitabh Joshi’s feature length documentary film Tashi’s Turbine, which aired on PBS’s WORLD Channel in 2016. Erik serves on the faculty in the MFA for Social Documentary Film department at The School of Visual Arts.
Evan Neff
Evan Neff works with creative communities to provide the organizational context for good ideas to thrive. He supports emerging documentary storytellers as an independent producer and industry advocate with organizations like Tribeca Film Festival, Independent Filmmaker Project, SFFILM, and UnionDocs. He produced Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Sam Green’s short, DON’T CALL ME GAY ZELIG for the 2019 Whitney Biennial, and associate produced Green’s 2018 Sundance hit, A THOUSAND THOUGHTS. As a queer person of color, Evan champions bold, underrepresented voices that have the power to create new ways of seeing.
Farihah Zaman
Farihah Zaman is a queer Bangladeshi-American filmmaker, critic, educator, and curator whose award-winning work has screened at Sundance, Toronto, New York Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, South By Southwest, and more. Her first feature was Remote Area Medical, followed by This Time Next Year, and the doc-fiction hybrid Feast of the Epiphany, as well as several shorts (Kombit, Nobody Loves Me, American Carnage, and To Be Queen, which is part of the Emmy-nominated New York Times Op-Doc series From Here to Home). She produced the Sundance-award winning Netflix Original, Ghosts of Sugar Land, which was shortlisted for 2020 Academy Award nomination. Zaman has written for Reverse Shot, Film Comment, Elle, Huffington Post, Filmmaker Magazine, and AV Club, among others, and her diverse background in the film industry includes roles at independent distributor Magnolia Pictures, IFP, The Flaherty Seminar, and serving as the Production Manager for Laura Poitras-founded Field of Vision, where she worked with artists like Garrett Bradley, Lyric Cabral, Steve Maing, and Ramell Ross on films eventually published at The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Buzzfeed, Vice, Wired and more. Zaman supports other filmmakers and the documentary community through equity driven collectives like Beyond Inclusion and Brown Girls Doc Mafia, where she is the Director of Grants and Programs, and various teaching and mentoring roles over the years at SVA, NYU, Uniondocs, NYFF Critics Academy, University of Iowa, and others. She was the Documentarian in Residence at Bard College 2018-2019, has been named a Top 40 under 40 filmmaker by Doc NYC, and is a member of the documentary branch of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.
Fazeelat Aslam
Born in Pakistan and currently based in Brooklyn, New York, Fazeelat Aslam is a documentary filmmaker and correspondent. She co-produced the documentary short about acid attack survivors, SAVING FACE, which won the 2012 Academy Award and 2013 Emmy for Best Documentary. She is also the co-producer of TOMORROW WE DISAPPEAR, a documentary about traditional artists in Delhi which premiered at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival in New York.
Fazeelat has produced and directed for organizations such as PBS Frontline, Channel 4 UK, Buzzfeed, Al Jazeera/AJ+, Field of Vision at the Intercept, VICE on HBO and VICE News. She has also collaborated with the popular blog ‘Humans of New York’ on a global fundraising campaign for one of her subjects, which raised over $2.3 million dollars.
Félix Endara
Félix Endara is a bilingual creative professional splitting his time between his native Ecuador and New York City, where he works in private philanthropy resourcing feminist movements globally and as an independent filmmaker supporting authentic and accountable storytelling. He produced NORTH BY CURRENT (2021, Dir: Angelo Madsen Minax), which premiered at the Berlinale, and was later broadcast on POV in Fall 2021. The film was named one of the Best Movies of 2021 by Rolling Stone, a 2021 highlight in Non-Fiction Cinema by Filmmaker, and won an IDA Documentary Award for BEST WRITING and a Spotlight Award at the Cinema Eye Honors. The film was also nominated for a Film Independent Spirit Award in the Truer than Fiction category. Félix is currently producing UNSEEN (2023, Dir: Set Hernandez), which follows a blind undocumented social worker on a journey of healing. The film was featured as a selected project for the 2022 Gotham Documentary Feature Lab, had its World Premiere at HotDocs in Spring 2023, and will be broadcast on POV in March 2024. Félix is Chair of the Board of Working Films, an organization that convenes documentary filmmakers and grassroots activists to advance social justice. An alum of the “Art of Leadership” at the Rockwood Leadership Institute, Félix has served on selection committees that include BlackStar Film Festival, Creative Capital, National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures, NewFest, and Tribeca Film Festival.
Gabriella Garcia-Pardo
Gabriella Garcia-Pardo is a Colombian-American documentary producer and cinematographer based in Washington, DC. She is drawn to stories of home, immigration, climate justice, and conservation. In addition to a focus on independent filmmaking, Gabriella collaborates with media and journalistic organizations including Showtime, Netflix, TIME, and The Guardian. She has been supported by the Sundance Institute, Catapult Films, IWMF, BAVC, the New Orlean’s Film Society, and the Women’s Sports Film Festival, among others. She is currently producing her first feature film in Colombia with director Sebastián Pinzón Silva. Previously, Gabriella was a one-woman-band for National Geographic’s News and Magazine division, filmed over 150 musicians on NPR’s music team, designed an intensive summer film program for high school students at Yale, and led horse treks through Chile. Gabriella is a graduate of Savannah College of Art and Design and is the founder and director of the DC chapter of the Video Consortium.
Giona Jefferson
Giona Jefferson is a producer, writer, and founder of Third Rail, a multi-media production company based in Brooklyn, New York. Her prior work includes The Innocence Files (Netflix), the audio doc The Wilderness (Crooked Media), and content for AMC and Paramount. Formerly a Legal Assistant at the U.S. Department of Justice, and Washington, DC-based advocate for low-income families, Giona draws upon her versatile experiences to curate stories that explore the gray areas of humanity. Among several projects in development, she is producing her first short film, Constructs, which explores her own complexities growing up amidst the shadows of the confederacy in Richmond, Virginia.
Holly Meehl
Holly Meehl is a creative producer who guides films from original inception through distribution. For the past six years she’s produced award-winning narrative and documentary features and short films through her company, Lunamax Films. Her credits include the critically acclaimed feature documentary, FOR THE BIRDS (directed by Richard Miron) and the festival darling romantic comedy, IN REALITY (directed by Ann Lupo). JACINTA (directed by Jessica Earnshaw) is Holly and Lunamax’s third produced feature and was selected for the Tribeca Film Festival 2020. She is currently co-producing a feature documentary with Oak Street Pictures about culinary mastermind Chef Charlie Trotter (directed by Rebecca Halpern).
Iyabo Boyd
Iyabo Boyd is an independent film producer and the founder of Feedback Loop, a consulting firm for documentary filmmakers. She’s a 2016 Sundance Creative Producers Fellow, a 2016 Impact Partners Creative Producers Fellow, and is currently producing the feature documentary For Ahkeem by Emmy winning directors Jeremy Levine and Landon Van Soest. Iyabo previously held positions at filmmaker support institutions Chicken & Egg Pictures, Tribeca Film Institute, Hamptons Film Festival, and IFP. She has served on juries for DOC NYC, the IDA Awards, Cinema Eye Honors, and SXSW. Iyabo previously produced the fiction feature film Sun Belt Express which had its international premiere in Paris at the Champs-Elysée Film Festival in 2014. In 2015, Iyabo started the Brown Girls Doc Mafia, a collective for women filmmakers of color working in documentary. Originally from Denver, she graduated from NYU’s Tisch School with a BA in Film & Television, and lives in Brooklyn.
Jameka Autry
Jameka Autry is a creative producer and 2017-18 Impact Partners Creative Producers Fellow. She produced MARATHON: The Patriots Day Bombing, which premiered on HBO in 2016. She previously co-produced IN MY FATHER’S HOUSE, which premiered at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival and garnered wins for Best Documentary at both the Nashville Film Festival and Geena Davis’ Bentonville Film Festival. Most recently, she was a line producer on MATANGI/MAYA/M.I.A. (Sundance ’18) and consulted on Jeremiah Zagar’s WE THE ANIMALS (Sundance ’18) and LOVE, GILDA (Tribeca ’18). She also spent two seasons helming the docu-series The Fashion Fund in collaboration with Conde Nast and Vogue, which aired on Amazon.
Originally from Durham, North Carolina, she attended Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies and currently lives in New York City.
Jamie Gonçalves
Jamie Gonçalves is a Brasilian-American filmmaker. Work he’s produced has received support from the Venice Biennale, the Sundance Institute, and the Points North Institute, and critical praise from The New York Times, The Village Voice, Los Angeles Times and Reverse Shot, among others. Filmmaker Magazine named him one of the 25 New Faces of Film in 2015, and the True/False Film Fest employed him for five years as a programming associate. He co-founded Sin Sitio Cine with Juan Pablo González, Ilana Coleman and Makena Buchanan, and is producing three feature length films and a short called LAS NUBES (IFFR, Habana) directed by Juan Pablo and one feature length film by Ilana Coleman. He’s photographing and producing an observational film in central Missouri directed by Nick Berardini. Additionally he’s producing a shorts trilogy for Field of Vision, THE WATER SLIDE (BAMcinemaFest, Sheffield) and BALLOONFEST (Oscilloscope, Topic) all directed by Nathan Truesdell. He produced the feature length KILLING THEM SAFELY (IFC Films), which premiered in the World Documentary Competition at Tribeca. He lensed and directed a segment on Jeff Deutchman’s election documentary, 11/8/16 (The Orchard, Netflix).
Jeffrey Star
Jeffrey’s work in documentary began as a producer on For the Birds, a verite film that began shooting in 2011, participated in the 2016 IFP Documentary Labs, and is currently in post-production. Along the way, he has worked on other feature documentaries: as Assistant Director and Archival Producer for Pump (directed by Sundance Audience Award-winner Josh Tickell), Associate Producer and Post-Production Coordinator for Voyagers Without Trace (Audience Award, Ashland Independent Film Festival), and Associate Producer for Boone (SXSW, 2016). He received his B.A. in Literature from Yale, where he also shot, directed and edited dozens of film projects. Elsewhere in the film industry, he has also worked as a Production Assistant on Brother Nature (produced by Lorne Michaels) and NBC’s Grimm, and taught video production to middle school and high school students in New Haven, CT and Portland, Oregon. Jeffrey is currently based in New York.
Julia Pontecorvo
Julia Pontecorvo is a creative producer enthusiastic about telling humanity’s most idiosyncratic and heartfelt stories through traditional and innovative forms. She started at RadicalMedia working on a variety of short documentaries for original YouTube channel THNKR and on The System With Joe Berlinger (Al Jazeera America 2014). Notable projects include the docuseries Year Million (National Geographic 2017), the Grand Clio-winning interactive horror audio play Possession Begins (Cinemax 2017), and Lance Weiler’s acclaimed Where There’s Smoke (2019 Tribeca Film Festival). Recently, she was a producer on season two of Home (Apple TV+ 2022), and a forthcoming docuseries exploring the intersection of fashion and modeling in the early 90s. Julia was also proud to be a 2020 Impact Partners Producers Fellow. She currently serves as Supervising Producer across an array of documentary projects for Firelight Media.
Justin Levy
Justin Levy is a filmmaker from NYC working primarily in documentary film. His recent credits as producer include SNOWY, a short documentary that premiered at Sundance 2021, and the feature documentary WELL GROOMED that premiered at SXSW in 2019. He is the associate producer of 2018 Academy Award best short documentary nominee KNIFE SKILLS. He has directed short documentaries released by The New Yorker and Vice, and produced films released by HBO, PBS and TIME. He is a NYC Regional Representative of the Documentary Producers Alliance (DPA). Prior to working in film, he was a public radio producer at NPR stations for 6 years.
Katia Maguire
Katia Maguire is co-directing and producing HOME TRUTH, a forthcoming documentary about a domestic violence survivor who pursues a case about police non-enforcement of restraining orders to the U.S. Supreme Court and beyond. HOME TRUTH is a co-production of Latino Public Broadcasting, and is produced with the support of the Independent Television Service, the New York State Council on the Arts, The Garrett Scott Documentary Development Grant, Women Make Movies, the National Association of Latino Independent Producers, and the Independent Film Project.
As a producer for Quiet Pictures, Katia Maguire recently produced Participant Media’s KINGDOM OF SHADOWS, a film about the U.S.-Mexico drug war set broadcast on PBS’ POV in the fall of 2016, and THE GRADUATES/LOS GRADUADOS, a bilingual series about Latino high school students that premiered on PBS’ Independent Lens in 2013. Previously Katia worked with veteran journalist Bill Moyers, and on two projects about women in conflict: the PBS series WOMEN, WAR & PEACE, and the independent documentary QUEST FOR HONOR, about violence against women in Iraq.
Kellen Quinn
Kellen Quinn graduated from Wesleyan University in 2005 with a dual degree in Film and Russian & East European Studies.After an internship with Albert Maysles, Kellen worked on several short films, music videos and feature documentaries. From 2006 to early 2009, he worked at the Tribeca Film Festival, first on the festival’s original content team, and then in the programming department. From April 2009 to May 2012, Kellen was the deputy director of the Abu Dhabi Film Festival. In late 2012 he developed Aeon Video for Aeon Magazine, a curated program of short documentaries that he still manages. He currently lives between Minneapolis and New York City where, in addition to his work on Aeon Video, he is producing several feature-length documentaries.
Lance Kramer
Lance is a documentary filmmaker based in Washington, DC and co-founder of Meridian Hill Pictures with his brother Brandon. Lance produced CITY OF TREES (official selection — 2016 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival) broadcast on the PBS series America ReFramed and currently in educational distribution with Cinema Guild. In collaboration with Van Jones, Lance produced the web series THE MESSY TRUTH (2017 Webby Award nominee). Lance is the co-producer of the feature documentary VOICES FROM WITHIN (2015), associate producer of FLY BY LIGHT (2015), associate field producer of the Kartemquin/Al Jazeera America documentary series HARD EARNED (2015, winner of Alfred I. duPont Award). In 2014, Lance received the DC Mayor’s Arts Award and an Individual Artists Fellowship from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Lance served two terms on the Docs in Progress Board of Directors. Lance holds a bachelor’s degree in history and film from Dartmouth College.
Larissa Rhodes
Larissa Rhodes is a film producer and currently the Director of Creative Development at Exposure Labs, where she develops environmentally and socially motivated projects. Most recently, she produced the Sundance Award Winning CHASING CORAL, a a Netflix Original feature film following a team of adventurers trying to reveal how the oceans are changing. It premiered along with a VR companion film at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival and won the Sundance Audience Award, a Peabody Award, a Satellite award, and was nominated for a PGA Award. Rhodes previously worked on the Emmy® Award-winning documentary, CHASING ICE. She holds an MFA in Film from Columbia University and a BFA & BA from the University of Colorado in Film Studies and International Spanish for the Professions.
Lindsey Megrue
Lindsey Megrue is a producer and director with over a dozen years experience creating documentary films for theatrical release and television broadcast. She has worked on many critically acclaimed programs for PBS, including eight episodes of the award-winning series American Experience. She has directed for the highly rated series Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and was a Field Producer for the Emmy-nominated Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies. She co-produced Koch, a documentary about former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, which opened theatrically in 2013 and broadcast on PBS’s POV. Lindsey also creates web content. She has produced work for The New York Times, Retro Report and The Marshall Project. Lindsey is currently producing a feature-length documentary about Syrian refugee resettling in Baltimore. She is a member of the Directors Guild of America and a graduate of Smith College.
Marjon Javadi
Marjon Javadi is the Film and Partnerships Executive at Doc Society (formerly known as BritDoc). Based in New York, she works across all international film funds supporting feature documentary stories. Her experience is in development, production, and acquisitions for both fiction and non-fiction features. Prior to Doc Society, she worked in the documentary division at Netflix Originals on series and films including Emmy-award winning CHEF’S TABLE and MAKING A MURDERER, and Academy-Award nominated films VIRUNGA, WHAT HAPPENED, MISS SIMONE? and WINTER ON FIRE. She previously worked as the development executive for Scott Rudin Productions, and in CAA’s Film Finance and Sales Group. More recently she was an associate producer on WAITING FOR HASSAN (Dir: Ifunanya Maduka; Sundance 2017) and co-produced the documentary short CROSSING THE DIVIDE (Dir: Streeter Phillips) for WGBH and Groundtruth, which will broadcast later this year. She started her career assisting documentary director Ross Kauffman.
Monica Berra
Monica Berra (she/her) is an Emmy-nominated documentary film producer who specializes in historical and archive-based storytelling. Her work has been featured on HBO, PBS, WORLD Channel, Field of Vision, NYT Op-Docs, and The Atlantic. Most recently, she produced the Emmy-nominated feature documentary, A CHOICE OF WEAPONS: INSPIRED BY GORDON PARKS (Kunhardt Films/HBO). Originally from South Florida, Monica is the daughter of Cuban and Colombian immigrants and is endlessly curious about the idiosyncrasies and contradictions of her home state – a fascination that informs much of her approach to storytelling. She holds an M.F.A. in documentary filmmaking from Wake Forest University and works between Miami, FL and New York, NY.
Naja Lockwood
A producer, investor, patron and collaborator of social change through film and the arts, Naja is the Founder of RYSE Media which supports stories of diverse voices. Her independent producing and philanthropic credits include Try Harder! which premiered at Sundance 2021, 76 Days, the first major documentary about COVID in its earliest days in Wuhan, academy nominated Last Days in Vietnam, PBS Asian Americans film series, Toronto International Film Festival premiere of Coming Home Again, Gook, Cries From Syria and First Days with StoryCorp. The First Days Project is a collaboration between StoryCorps and PBS which aimed to collect, preserve and celebrate the stories of Vietnamese American refugees and Vietnam veterans throughout America. She is an associate instructor and lecturer at the University of Utah teaching the Power of Storytelling: Asia and the Global Cinema. She is currently working on three producing projects and directing and co-producing her first documentary.
Naja was an investor in Impact Partner Films, which supports documentaries that enrich and ignite social change. She was part of Silicon Valley’s campaign to fund and support Crazy Rich Asians that have blazed a pathway for greater Asian-American representation. She served on the Sundance Utah Advisory Board, working with Utah legislators and leaders to support the initiatives of Sundance. She partnered with Sundance Institute to help build and fund the Sundance Screenwriters Fellowships for Asian Americans filmmakers. Naja currently serves on the Board of the Utah Film Commission and Center for Asian America Media (CAAM). As a refugee, she continues to advocate for immigrants from her undergraduate years to her current work with the Governor’s Workforce Services and Catholic Community Services in Utah. She serves on the Committee for Ethnic Studies and Asian American Studies at Harvard University and The Coalition for Diverse Harvard. She is the Founder and CEO of www.najalockwooddesigns.com to support female artisans of Southeast Asia. Throughout Naja’s life, there has always been a commitment to social justice and making sure the voices of the under-represented, the minority and the oppressed are heard.
Born in Vietnam, Naja immigrated to Massachusetts during the Fall of Saigon. She graduated with a BA from Boston University. She then returned to Vietnam under the sponsorship of Georgetown University, from 1991 to 1993, as one of the first Vietnamese Americans to study at Hanoi University after the war. After returning from Vietnam, Naja earned an MBA from Harvard Business School and worked in investment banking and media in New York, Singapore and London. She was the first Vietnamese-American to be appointed by Mayor Willie Brown and Mayor Gavin Newsom to be Arts Commissioner of San Francisco with a focus on community and diversity and the expansion and capital campaign development of the Asian Art Museum.
Nicole Docta
Producer Nicole Docta (she/her) is an award-winning documentary filmmaker who has focused her career on producing socially provoking BIPOC stories offering her unique viewpoint as a transracial Korean-American adoptee raised in the Midwest. Her previous films include Emmy Award-winning BELLY OF THE BEAST (HRWFF 2020) and duPont Award-winner THROUGH THE NIGHT (Tribeca 2020.) Nicole is also a USC CPD NextGen Creative Fellow, one of DOC NYC’s 40 Under 40, and a Sundance Producers Fellow.
Opal H. Bennett
Opal H. Bennett is an Emmy-winning Senior Producer at POV and Executive Producer at POV Shorts. Under her leadership, POV Shorts broadcast the 2021 NewsDoc Emmy Winner for Short Documentary, The Love Bugs. Previously, Opal was Shorts Programmer and Dir. of Artist Development at DOCNYC and Senior Programmer at Athena Film Festival. She has also worked with Nantucket Film Festival, Aspen ShortsFest and Tribeca Film Festival. Opal is a member of the AMPAS Documentary branch. She has participated on various festival juries and selection committees for film grants. A Columbia Law grad, Opal holds a Masters from the LSE and received her B.A. from NYU.
Pamela Ryan
Pamela Ryan is a New York-based producer of documentary and narrative films who has partnered with independent production company Gigantic Pictures on numerous projects, including credits on the award-winning features GOODBYE SOLO (Venice Film Festival / Roadside Attractions), DARE (Sundance Film Festival) and NIGHT CATCHES US (Sundance / Magnolia Pictures). Most recently, she served as producer on feature doc NIGHT SCHOOL, which premiered at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival, and as co-producer on the Emmy Award nominated, SXSW Grand Jury prize winning documentary THE GREAT INVISIBLE, distributed by Radius-TWC.
Pamela graduated summa cum laude from Northwestern University where she was one of 10 participants in her year selected to join the school’s Creative Writing for the Media program. In 2015, Pamela was named an Impact Partners Emerging Documentary Producer Fellow.
Patrick Lee
Patrick G. Lee (he/they) is a queer diasporic Korean documentary filmmaker, writer, and community organizer. He’s interested in building collaborative, community-based models of filmmaking that reject traditional hierarchies of authority and that equip queer and trans people of color with media-making skills. Patrick has made award-winning films about Asian American coming out stories, LGBTQ self-representation, and queer Asian history. His writing has appeared in Mother Jones, The Nation, ProPublica, The Atlantic, and more. In 2018, Patrick helped organize KQTcon, the first national Korean queer and trans conference in the U.S. His debut feature documentary, UNTITLED KQT PROJECT, is supported by Firelight Media, Sundance, and CAAM. Patrick has been coping with pandemic times mostly by eating carbs.
Pulkit Datta
Raised in six countries across four continents, Pulkit’s filmmaking interests are inherently cross-cultural. He started his career assisting award-winning director Mira Nair and has since worked on a wide range of international projects. He has worked on the creative development and production of narrative films, Sundance-backed documentaries, commercials, short films, and multimedia campaigns. His films have screened at festivals such as, Toronto International Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, and NewFilmmakers New York. JASON, a short film written/directed by Pulkit, won the Reel 13 competition by popular vote and was broadcast on PBS. His new short film, WISHFUL WHISKERS, premiered at Atlanta Film Festival, and is touring festivals. Pulkit has independently produced the feature documentary THE FORGETTING GAME (IndiePix), and is a producer on INVISIBLE, a feature documentary in post-production. Pulkit is an INK Fellow, Impact Partners Producing Fellow, and is also in development on his narrative feature COLONY, which is backed by IFP (USA), NFDC Film Bazaar (India), and Cine Qua Non Lab (Mexico).
Rachel Pikelny
Rachel Pikelny is a Chicago-based filmmaker and the Director of Production at Siskel/Jacobs Productions, where she is currently producing two feature documentaries: No Small Matter, a co-production with Kindling Group about early childhood education; and The Road Up, which centers on The Cara Program and its students as they rebuild their lives and find employment. She is also directing a short film titled Grace about reclaiming control of one’s life and body after surviving breast cancer. Previously, with Kartemquin Films, she produced The Trials of Muhammad Ali (Independent Lens, 2014), which won a national Emmy for Best Historical Long-Form Program; served as co-producer on American Arab (America ReFramed, 2016); and as associate producer on A Good Man (American Masters, 2011). She got her start at Kurtis Productions, where she produced several episodes of the series Cold Case Files for A&E and American Greed for CNBC. Originally from Tampa, she graduated from Northwestern University in 2005 and lives in Oak Park with her husband and two children.
Rajal Pitroda
Rajal Pitroda is a producer of fiction and non-fiction films that examine issues of race, class and gender beyond the mainstream narrative. She is a 2020-2021 Sundance Creative Producing Fellow, a Black Public Media 360 Incubator Fellow, an Impact Producing Fellow with Firelight Media, and a Resident at SFFILM FilmHouse. Rajal most recently produced “Down a Dark Stairwell,” a feature documentary that premiered at the 2020 True/False Film Festival and was broadcast on Independent Lens. Prior to producing, Rajal was the Founder/CEO of Cinevention, a media company focused on marketing and distribution where she designed and executed distribution strategies for feature films. Rajal started her career in film working in international marketing for Bollywood movies based in Mumbai. She has a degree in Economics from the University of Michigan and an MBA from London Business School.
Razi Jafri
Razi Jafri is a Detroit-based documentary filmmaker and producer. His documentary, HAMTRAMCK, USA, premiered at the SXSW Film Festival and aired nationally on PBS. He is also producer of THREE CHAPLAINS, which will air nationally on the PBS program Independent Lens in the Fall 2023. He’s been awarded fellowships by the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), The Salzburg Global Forum, the Knight Fellowship at the Sundance Film Festival, and the Sundance Documentary Producing Fellowship. Razi holds an MFA from the University of Michigan.
Rebecca Stern
Rebecca Stern is a documentary producer and director. She is the producer of the feature documentary TRE MAISON DASAN (San Francisco International Film Festival 2018) and co-producer of the feature documentary NETIZENS (Tribeca, Hot Docs 2018). She was the associate producer of “the bomb,” an installation and film experience which premiered at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival and the 2017 Berlinale. Her previous work includes the Academy Award nominated documentary CARTEL LAND, as production coordinator. She directed the short film, WELL GROOMED, which has reached nearly 500,000 viewers across all platforms and is currently expanding the short into her first feature documentary as director. She previously was a staff member of Picture Motion, managing film marketing campaigns for acclaimed documentaries including FOOD CHAINS (2016 BritDoc Impact Award) and THE YES MEN ARE REVOLTING.
Rebekah Fergusson
Rebekah Fergusson is a documentary producer with a passion for character driven stories. Based in Durham, NC, she has produced long form documentaries for Netflix, ITVS, HBO and Fox Sports. Prior credits include Crip Camp, winner of an Independent Spirit Award, Peabody Award, and Academy Award nominee; Q Ball produced for Fox Sports with executive producer Kevin Durant; and End Game, a Netflix Original about end-of-life care that premiered at Sundance and was nominated for an Academy Award.
Reuben Atlas
Reuben Atlas is a filmmaker and former entertainment lawyer. He recently produced and directed with Sam Pollard, ACORN AND THE FIRESTORM, about the impactful and controversial community organizing group, ACORN. The film premiered at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival, was released by First Run Features, and was supported by Sundance, Tribeca, ITVS, Black Public Media, and the IDA. He also recently co-directed with Jerry Rothwell the Netflix hit, SOUR GRAPES, about a counterfeit wine conman. His first film, BROTHERS HYPNOTI, about the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, which featured Prince and Damon Albarn, premiered at the SXSW Film Festival in 2013, broadcast internationally and on PBS’ Independent Lens and is distributed by Factory 25. He was selected for DOCNYC’s inaugural 40 Under 40 list.
Richie Reseda
Freed from prison in 2018, Richie is a producer, abolitionist-feminist community organizer, and the founder of Question Culture, a social impact media company.
Sam Tabet
Sam Tabet is a Brooklyn based creative producer. Sam produced a short film called Love The Sinner (Tribeca 2017) which explores the Evangelical roots of homophobia in the wake of the Pulse shooting. Sam produced Southwest of Salem: The Story of the San Antonio Four (Tribeca Film Festival, HotDocs, IDFA 2016) which had its television premiere on Investigation Discovery to over five million viewers this fall. The critically acclaimed film helped exonerate the ‘San Antonio Four’. From 2010-2014 Sam worked at Chicken & Egg Pictures. During this time Sam was also the assistant producer for award-winning feature documentary Call Me Kuchu (Berlin Film Festival, HotDocs 2012) and produced SIGNIFIED. They previously worked and volunteered at NewFest and American Documentary, POV, and holds a B.A. from Connecticut College in Film and Gender studies. Sam is a founder of the Queer Producers Collective, a Firelight Impact Producer fellow, and a Impact Partners Producing fellow.
Samantha Curley
Samantha Curley is a film producer and creative entrepreneur based in Los Angeles. She is the co-founder of Level Ground, an artist collective and production company creating experiments in empathy. Her first project FRAMING AGNES (dir. Chase Joynt) won the NEXT Innovator Award and Audience Award at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. She’s currently producing several projects, including UNTITLED LABOR UNION DOCUMENTARY (dir. Steve Maing, Brett Story). Samantha is a graduate of Northwestern University and the Kellogg School of Management.
Sami Khan
Sami Khan’s most recent film, ST. LOUIS SUPERMAN (with Smriti Mundhra), was nominated for a 2020 Academy Award (Best Short Documentary). THE LAST OUT, Sami’s upcoming feature documentary (with Michael Gassert), was slated to premiere at the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival. Sami’s work has been supported by the Sundance and Tribeca Film Institutes, the Toronto Film Festival, Rooftop Films, IFP, the NBC/Universal Director’s Fellowship, and the Berlinale.
Sara Archambault
Sara Archambault is a Creative Producer dedicated to the craft of artful nonfiction storytelling. After a 10 year tenure as Program Director at the LEF Foundation, and Founder/Head Programmer of the award-winning film series The DocYard, she is now producing independent features. Past producing credits include Emmy-nominated documentary Traces of the Trade (Sundance, POV 2008), Sundance-supported Street Fighting Men (First Run Features 2020 release), award-winning short Community Patrol (Big Sky, T/F 2018) and Truth or Consequences (Rotterdam 2020). Sara’s work has received support from Tribeca Film Institute, Sundance Film Institute, SFFILM, CPH:FORUM, Hot Docs Forum, Film Independent, and IFP Spotlight on Documentaries among others. Sara was a 2013 Sundance Creative Producers Lab Fellow and sited among the “Ten to Watch” by The Independent.
Shaleece Haas
Shaleece Haas is an Emmy Award-winning documentary producer and a director based in Los Angeles. Her films have premiered at Tribeca, SXSW, Hot Docs and more than 100 other festivals worldwide and have been broadcast on POV, Independent Lens, and The Sundance Channel. Shaleece has been a Film Independent Documentary Lab fellow, a Working Films fellow, and is a member of Film Fatales and the Queer Producer’s Network.
Shane Boris
Shane Boris is a creative producer, focusing on films that push the boundaries of conventional forms in order to tell timeless stories. Most recently he produced the narrative film, WALDEN: LIFE IN THE WOODS starring Demián Bichir and featuring T.J. Miller and is in post-production with the Sundance and Tribeca supported feature documentaries IMPEACHMENT and THE SEER AND THE UNSEEN. ALL THESE SLEEPLESS NIGHTS (2016) premiered at Sundance where it won Best Directing in the International Documentary Competition. The creative nonfiction, OLMO AND THE SEAGULL (2015), premiered at Locarno and won Best Documentary at the Rio International Film Festival. FUCK FOR FORCAST (2013), screened at festivals such as Rotterdam and SXSW, won Best Documentary at the Warsaw International Film Festival, and was the most screened Polish Documentary of 2013. His first feature documentary as a producer, YOU’RE LOOKING AT ME LIKE I LIVE HERE AND I DON’T (2010), appeared on several seasons of PBS’s Independent Lens and was called a “transfixing television experience” by The New York Times. In addition to making movies, Shane has been a startup cofounder, served as a writing consultant for authors, academics, and musicians, and has worked in strategy for a global healthcare technology business, Native Alaskan non-profit, and Indian social enterprise. He received his B.A. from Oberlin College and M.A. from Jawaharlal Nehru University.
Steffie van Rhee
Steffie van Rhee is a Dutch documentary filmmaker and producer. She graduated from The New School’s Documentary Media Studies program in 2016 with the short doc A LIFE BEFORE THIS about police brutality. She is the associate producer of Cynthia Lowen’s NETIZENS (Tribeca 2018) and a co-producer of Lowen’s new feature documentary, currently in production. Steffie’s credits for Dutch public broadcasting include AT ALL COSTS and research for an episode of climate series THE RISING TIDE. Her one venture into narrative film with SWIPE was short listed for a Dutch ‘Gouden Kalf’.
Stephanie Jenkins
Stephanie Jenkins has worked with Ken Burns and Florentine Films since 2010. She is currently a co-producer on a new film about the history of public housing, as well as a biography of Muhammad Ali. She was the associate producer and archival producer for JACKIE ROBINSON, and was the production coordinator on THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE.
Raised in Manhattan, Stephanie studied ethnomusicology and English at Cornell University. In addition to her interest in non-fiction media, Stephanie enjoys playing banjo and bass in various bands where she lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Taylor Hom
Taylor Hom is a documentary film producer / writer based in Brooklyn, New York. She has written and produced documentaries and branded content for clients and media outlets such as National Geographic, NYTimes, PBS, CNN, CBS, ITVS, Google, Rolex, and GMC. Her work focuses on topics of social justice and women’s issues. She has filmed in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa and has worked on projects that range from the fight against ISIS in northern Iraq, the black-market pipeline of looted antiquities in the Middle East, and the role of women in the Arab uprisings. A graduate of New York University’s honors program, she studied journalism, political economy, and Arabic. Taylor is currently working on a feature-length documentary about three Yazidi women as they rebuild their lives after ISIS.
Ursula Liang
Ursula is a journalist-turned-filmmaker who has told stories in a wide range of media. She has held staff jobs at The New York Times Op-Docs, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, ESPN The Magazine, Asia Pacific Forum on WBAI, StirTV, the Jax Show, Hyphen magazine and currently freelances as a film and television producer and story consultant. Her credits include: “One October” (Full Frame), “Tough Love” (POV), “Wo Ai Ni Mommy” (POV), “Spartan Ultimate Team Challenge” (NBC) “UFC Primetime” (FX). She directed, produced and shot the award-winning “9-Man: A Streetball Battle in the Heart of Chinatown” (DOC NYC, America ReFramed) which The New York Times called “an absorbing documentary” and co-produced The New York Times’ first video interview with a sitting president in 2014. Ursula has also worked for the film publicity company, the 2050 Group, is a founding member of the Filipino American Museum, and sits on the advisory board of the Dynasty Project. Ursula is a member of A-Doc, Film Fatales and Brown Girls Doc Mafia. She grew up in Newton, Mass. and lives in the Bronx, New York.
William Smith
Upon graduating from the University of Leicester, England, William Smith secured a place on the BBC Production Trainee Scheme. There he worked on a range of different productions sourcing new talent, developing TV pilots, and creating online content. He then moved into BBC radio, producing the ‘Tim Westwood Drivetime Show’ for BBC Radio 1Xtra, which received a SONY Award for ‘Best Entertainment Show’. William has produced content for media networks including ESPN, TNT, SONY and hip-hip radio station Hot 97, as well as producing music videos for the likes of P. Diddy. His work has premiered at The Tribeca Film Festival and South By Southwest. William was born in Lewisham, South London. He graduated as a Dean’s fellow from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts with a MFA in Filmmaking. He is currently in post-production producing his first documentary feature SANCTUARY.
Yoni Golijov
Yoni Golijov is an Academy Award- and BAFTA-nominated nonfiction producer. Most recently, Golijov produced Laura Poitras’s feature film All The Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022) about legendary artist and activist Nan Goldin. The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival where it won the Golden Lion. Previously he produced When We Fight (2022, co-dir. Yael Bridge and Yoni Golijov); Poitras’s feature film Risk (Cannes | 2016) with producer Brenda Coughlin; and various video art installations and short films by Poitras. His current projects include Untitled by Sura Mallouh. Golijov was a 2022 Sundance Producing Lab Fellow and is a member of New Day Films and the Documentary Producers Alliance.
Yvonne Shirley
Yvonne Michelle Shirley is a Newark, NJ-based filmmaker, inspired by filmmaking in the social realist tradition. In 2018, she produced the award-winning documentary short, Black 14, directed by Darius Clark Monroe and executive produced by Spike Lee. She produced and directed the webseries, Frame by Frame, for Topic, which premiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival. She’s directed non-fiction work for NY Times’ T Magazine, AFROPUNK and NIKE. And was named to DOC NYC’s 2019 40 under 40 list. She is currently producing a feature length documentary on the artist Gil Scott-Heron, directed by Orlando Bagwell. In Newark, Yvonne is working with local storytellers to develop The Newarkive — a creative archive, centering imagery of and by Newark’s Black communities. She is also a member of the New Negress Film Society, a collective of Black women and non-binary filmmakers.
How to Apply
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Frequently Asked Questions
When will the workshops be?
As the workshops are dependent on our guests’ availability, we will not have a confirmed schedule in advance.
Are workshops virtual or in-person?
Workshops are a combination of virtual and in-person. Stipends are provided to cover travel for the in-person workshops.
Can I apply with my producing partner?
While we welcome producers who have worked together to apply for the same year’s cohort, we consider all applicants as individuals. We require individual nomination and application forms for all applicants.
Do I need to be nominated first to apply?
No. Applicants no longer need to be nominated before applying. However, they will be required to have someone submit a recommendation form on their behalf. The recommendation and the application can be submitted in either order.
Does it help me to receive more than one recommendation?
We only require one recommendation per applicant. However, you are welcome to ask additional colleagues to send in supplementary recommendations and we will take them into consideration when evaluating your application.
Am I eligible to apply if my only documentary was a short?
No. In order to be eligible, the applicant must have at least one completed feature or series project.
What if my only film is incomplete?
In order to be eligible, the applicant must have at least one completed feature or series project. For the purposes of this application, we consider ‘completed’ to mean that your project has premiered for a public audience (ie. premiered at a festival, been released by a distributor) or is currently prepared to do so (ie. final post production is complete and a premiere is imminent). If you have a nearly completed feature or series project that doesn’t quite meet these qualifications, please provide a thorough explanation in your application.