We extend our heartfelt congratulations to the 2020 Chicken & Egg Award recipient, Maite Alberdi, and her team, whose film The Eternal Memory (La memoria infinita) has received an Academy® Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature. This follows the nomination of her previous film, The Mole Agent (El agente topo), for the same category.

The Eternal Memory debuted at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, where it received the World Cinema Documentary Award. It has since garnered critical acclaim and numerous award nominations, including Berlinale’s Audience Award, Cinema Eye Honors for Outstanding Direction and The Unforgettables Honor, and Maite’s third Goya Award nomination for Best Documentary. This is the second time she has been nominated for both a Goya and an Oscar® Award simultaneously.

Earlier this year, Maite was honored with the Sundance Film Festival Vanguard Award for Non-fiction. She is the founder and director of Micromundo, which has produced her signature films such as The Lifeguard (El salvavidas) and Tea Time (La once).

Maite Alberdi is the first Chilean woman to receive an Oscar® nomination, and the first Latin American woman to earn this nomination twice.

We are proud to support Maite’s groundbreaking career.

The 2023 Sundance slate is made up of 28% first-time filmmakers. Chicken & Egg Pictures is committed to supporting filmmakers through the lifecycle of their films; we’re proud that five of the documentary films premiering at Sundance are grantees of our flagship program (Egg)celerator Lab, designed for first or second-time filmmakers. 

See you in Utah!

Against the Tide

dir. & prod. Sarvnik Kaur

prods. Koval Bhatia

2021 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee Against the Tide is having its world premiere in the World Cinema Documentary Competition. 

Available in person and online
Premiering on Friday, January 20 
Get your tickets

It’s Only Life After All

dir. & prod. Alexandria Bombach

prods. Kathlyn Horan, Jess Devaney, Anya Rous

It’s Only Life After All was supported through Alexandria Bombach’s 2019 Chicken & Egg Award and is having its world premiere in the Premiere section. 

Available in person
Premiering on Thursday, January 19
Get your tickets

Is There Anybody Out There?

dir. Ella Glendining

prod. Janine Marmot

2021 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee Is There Anybody Out There? is having its world premiere in the World Cinema Documentary Competition. 

Available in person and online
Premiering on Sunday, January 22 
Get your tickets

Joonam

dir. Sierra Urich

prod. Keith Wilson

2022 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee Joonam is having its world premiere in the U.S. Documentary Competition. 

Available in person and online
Premiering on Saturday, January 21
Get your tickets here

Milisuthando

dir. Milisuthando Bongela

prod. Marion Isaacs

2019 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee Milisuthando is having its world premiere in the World Cinema Documentary Competition.

Available in person and online
Premiering on Saturday, January 21
Get your tickets

Plan C

dir. & prod. Tracy Droz Tragos

Plan C is supported through the Critical Issues Fund and it is having its world premiere in the Premiere section.

Available in person
Premiering on Monday, January 23 
Get your tickets

The Eternal Memory

dir. & prod. Maite Alberdi

prods. Juan de Dios Larraín, Pablo Larraín, Rocío Jadue

The Eternal Memory was supported through Maite Alberdi’s 2020 Chicken & Egg Award and is having its world premiere in the World Cinema Documentary Competition. 

Available in person and online
Premiering on Saturday, January 21
Get your tickets

The Tuba Thieves

dir. Alison O’Daniel

2021 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee The Tuba Thieves is having its world premiere in the Next section. 

Available in person and online
Premiering on Sunday, January 22
Get your tickets

From the AlumNest

• Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project
  dirs. & prods. Michele Stephenson, Joe Brewster
  U.S. Documentary Competition 
  
  
• Kim’s Video
  dirs. & prods. David Redmon, Ashley Sabin
  prods. Deborah Smith, Dale Smith, Francesco Galavotti, Rebecca Tabasky
  Next section (Opening night) 
  
  
• King Coal
  dir. & prod. Elaine McMillion Sheldon
  prods. Shane Boris, Diane Becker, Peggy Drexler
  Next section
  
  
• Murder in Big Horn
  dirs. Razelle Benally, Matthew Galkin
  prods. Razelle Benally, Matthew Galkin, Ivan Macdonald, Ivy Macdonald
  
  
• Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields
  dir. Lana Wilson
  prods. Christine O’Malley, Jack Turner
  Premiere section
  
  
• Victim/Suspect
  dir. & prod. Nancy Schwartzman
  prods. Julie Goldman, Christopher Clements, Alice Henty, Rachel de Leon, Amanda Pike

Update:

Meet our Team at Sundance Film Festival

Our new Program Director Kiyoko McCrae will be in attendance along with Jenni Wolfson, CEO, and Rebecca Celli, Associate Director of Development.

Julia Reichert was an Oscar® and Emmy®-winning independent documentary filmmaker, activist, professor, mentor, and champion of emerging filmmakers and the working class based in Ohio. Her evolutionary work focused on class, gender, health, and race in the lives of Americans.

In 2016, Julia was the recipient of our inaugural Chicken & Egg Award and embodied what a recipient of the honor should be: collaborative, generous, and committed to the communities she was part of. Prior to that, Julia was also an early recipient of a Chicken & Egg Pictures’ Celebration Grant that honored trailblazing, risk-taking, veteran women filmmakers. She was awarded the Career Achievement Award at the 2018 International Documentary Awards for her incredible contributions to documentary filmmaking. In 2019, a retrospective of her work, Julia Reichert: 50 Years in Film, organized by the Wexner Center for the Arts, premiered at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC and traveled to a dozen cities across the United States.

Julia became a filmmaker compelled to build a movement of intersectional feminism, where all women from all races and classes would feel welcomed. Her first film, Growing Up Female, was the first feature documentary of the modern Women’s Movement and was selected in 2011 for the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. Long before digital screenings, she traveled with a 16 mm projector across the US, using the film as an organizing tool. Julia was also closely involved in the local activism of the places she visited with her films. In 1971, frustrated with the lack of distribution options for films by and about women, she co-founded New Day Films, the democratically run documentary film distribution cooperative. Fifty-one years later, New Day Films is going strong and now has over 140 active members. 

“It really could be from anywhere, that people put on a uniform, punch a clock, trying to make their families have a better life,” she said. “Working people have it harder and harder these days, and we believe that things will get better when workers of the world unite.” 

–Julia Reichert during her Academy Award® acceptance speech for Best Documentary Feature

Her films Union Maids and Seeing Red were nominated for an Academy Award® for Best Documentary Feature, as was The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant. Her film A Lion in the House (an ITVS co-production), about kids fighting cancer, premiered at Sundance Film Festival, and won a Primetime Emmy® for Exceptional Merit in Nonfiction Filmmaking. Julia’s film American Factory 美国工厂, a film she worked on during her Chicken & Egg Award year, won the US Documentary Directing Award at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, the Best Documentary Spirit Award, the Best Documentary Gotham Award, the Outstanding Nonfiction Feature and Outstanding Direction awards at the Cinema Eye Honors, and the Academy Award® for Best Documentary Feature. It was the first film released by Higher Ground Productions, the production company created by Michelle & Barack Obama. 

Julia’s film 9to5: The Story of a Movement, which she also worked on during her Chicken & Egg Award year, was an official selection of SXSW, Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, AFI DOCS Film Festival, and DOC NYC. The film tells the story of secretaries rising up and organizing to fight for their rights and was nominated for a Peabody Award.  

She is the author of Doing It Yourself, the first book on self-distribution in independent film, and was an Advisory Board member of IFP. Julia co-wrote and directed the feature film Emma and Elvis. Over the decades, she mentored hundreds of emerging filmmakers. Julia taught for 28 years at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio.

She lived a life dedicated to highlighting the experiences of the working class and celebrating and pushing forward the careers of new, talented filmmakers. As we grieve her loss, we are comforted by knowing that her legacy lives on through her body of documentary films and the powerful impact she had on the documentary community. We will continue to honor her by supporting emerging filmmakers that, like her, are building a world shaped by the power of documentary films.  

Rest in power, Julia.

Chicken & Egg Pictures is egg-cited and proud to share some big news: our dearest Executive Director Jenni Wolfson, 2018 (Egg)celerator Lab recipients Rintu Thomas and Sushmit Ghosh (Writing With Fire), 2019 (Egg)celerator Lab recipient Jessica Kingdon (Ascension), 2021 Chicken & Egg Award recipients Cristina Ibarra and Jialing Zhang, and 2022 Chicken & Egg Award recipient Brett Story have been invited to become members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. 

We also want to congratulate Bob Moore (producer of Project: Hatched 2021 grantee Dope Is Death) and Nathan Truesdell (producer of 2019 (Egg)celerator Lab recipient Ascension) for their invitations!  

The Class of 2022 is 44% women, 37% percent underrepresented ethnic/racial communities, and 50% hail from outside of the United States.

Congratulations to the Class of 2022!

World Premiere

Silent Beauty

dir. & prod. Jasmin Lopez

A personal documentary that follows Director Jasmin López as she works to heal from child sexual abuse she endured at the hands of her grandfather, Gilberto, a Baptist minister, almost thirty years ago. In the process of sharing her own trauma with her large family, she learns that generations of children in her family were victims of the same abuse. Told from the director’s perspective, Silent Beauty is a film about confronting and accepting difficult truths while finding beauty in the process. 

Silent Beauty is a 2019 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee and is having its World Premiere in the Persister section. 

Get your tickets + more info with this link.

Alis

dirs.& prods.  Clare Weiskopf, Nicolas van Hemelryck

prods. Radu Stancu, Alexandra Galvis

In a Colombian shelter for teenage girls, filmmakers ask a group of young women to close their eyes and imagine the life story of a fictional classmate named Alis. As reality prevails and fiction fades, the innocent game becomes a descent into hell, where their luminous faces guide the audience to the depths of the dark world they once inhabited, only to emerge with new skin. How to imagine a different life, break the cycle of violence, and embrace a brighter future? 

Alis is a 2022 (Egg)celerator Lab finalist and is part of Made In Chile: A spotlight on docs from Chile

Get your tickets + more info with this link.

All of Our Heartbeats Are Connected Through Exploding Stars

(previously titled Stories From Debris)

dir. Jennifer Rainsford

prods. Mirjam Gelhorn, David Herdies, Michael Krotkiewski

The 2011 Japan tsunami triggers this staggering essay about loss that connects human and environmental trauma using astonishing juxtapositions. Humans breathe out and the oceans breathe in, so that we are constantly breathing together and becoming our planet. If we admit that our human experiences of pain and the Earth’s are just different versions of the same destruction, will recovery come, be it in ripples or waves?* 

All of Our Heartbeats Are Connected Through Exploding Stars is a 2020 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee and is part of the World Showcase section.

Get your tickets + more info with this link.

Boycott

dir & prod. Julia Bacha

prod. Suhad Babaa, Daniel J. Chalfen

When a news publisher in Arkansas, an attorney in Arizona and a speech therapist in Texas are told to choose between their jobs and their political beliefs, they launch legal battles that expose an attack on freedom of speech in 33 states in America.

Boycott was supported through Julia Bacha’s 2019 Chicken & Egg Award, and is a Hot Docs Special Presentation.  

Get your tickets + more info with this link.

Eskape

dir. Neary Adeline Hay

prods. Jasmin Basic

The survival story of a mother and her daughter, the filmmaker, through the desperate flight from a crumbling Cambodia after the collapse of the Khmer Rouge regime. Faced with the silence brought by trauma and time, the longing to understand her mother today resonates in an abysmal echo, while reviving the memories as a political refugee in Europe.

Eskape is a 2020 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee and is having its North American premiere in the Hidden Stories section. 

Get your tickets + more info with this link.

Midwives

dir. & prod. Snow Hnin Ei Hlaing

prods. Bob Moore, Ulla Lehmann, Mila Aung-Thwin

A tale of the complicated relationship between Rohingya and Buddhists in Myanmar, told over five years through the eyes of two midwives from either side of the divide. 

Midwives is a 2020 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee and is having its Canadian premiere as a HotDocs Special Presentation. 

Get your tickets + more info with this link.

Mija

dir. & prod. Isabel Castro

prod. Tabs Breese, Yesenia Tlahuel

With Doris’ voice as our guide, Mija uses VHS archive, verité footage, and camcorder vlogging to tell the story of two young women’s coming-of-age journeys as they look for success and belonging. The film is an immensely emotional and intimate portrait honoring the resilience of immigrants and their children. 

Mija is a 2021 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee and is part of the Artscapes section. 

Get your tickets + more info with this link.

Once Upon a Time in Uganda

dir. Cathryne Czubek, co-dir. Hugo Perez

prods. Gigi Dement, Cathryne Czubek, Matt Porwoll, Hugo Perez, Kyaligamba Ark Martin

Against all odds, former bricklayer and teacher Isaac Nabwana has turned his small home in the slums of Uganda’s capital city into the Wakaliwood action movie studio. After 10 years and 40+ films, Wakaliwood has become an overnight international media sensation, inspiring others around the world to follow in his footsteps. When New York film nerd Alan Hofmanis shows up on his doorstep one day, everything is bound to change. 

Once Upon a Time in Uganda is a 2017 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee and is part of the Nightvision section. 

Get your tickets + more info with this link.

From the AlumNest

• A Peculiar Silence
  prod. Catherine Gund, dir. Cinque Northern 
  

• Angels of Sinjar
  dir. & prod. Hanna Polak, prod. Simone Baumann

• Don’t Come Searching
  prods. Michelle Serieux, Sherien Barsoum, dir. & prod. Andrew Moir
  
  
• The Martha Mitchell Effect
  prods. Beth Levison, Judith Mizrachy, dirs. Anne Alvergue, Debra McClutchy
  
  
• The Mole Agent
  dir. Maite Alberdi, prod. Marcela Santibanez
  
  
• TikTok, Boom. 
  dir. & prod. Shalini Kantayya, prods. Ross Dinerstein, Danni Mynard
  
  
• To The End
  dir. Rachel Lears, prod. Sabrina Schmidt Gordon

Check out the full line-up with this link.  

*Language courtesy of Hot Docs.

Congratulations and the best of luck!

Simple As Water

dir. & prod. Megan Mylan

prod. Robin Hessman

Storm Lake

dirs. Beth Levison & Jerry Risius

prod. Beth Levison

9to5: The Story of a Movement

dirs. & prods. Julia Reichert &  Steven Bognar

This film was supported through Julia Reichert’s Chicken & Egg Award year.

A Thousand Cuts

dir. & prod. Ramona S. Diaz

prod. Leah Marino

From the AlumNest

• High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America
  2016 Chicken & Egg Award recipient Yoruba Richen directed the Episode 4: Freedom. 
  

• In the Same Breath
  dir. Nanfu Wang
  prods. Jialing Zhang, Carolyn Hepburn, Sara Rodriguez, Julie Goldman, and Christopher Clements

Check out the full nominee list with this link.

The selected fellows will receive a $60,000 grant and a one-year artist development fellowship designed to help each filmmaker with the completion of their films; access to archival research and production resources as well as NBC News Studios executives and journalists; attend the 67th Flaherty Film Seminar, Continents of Drifting Clouds, programmed by Almudena Escobar López and Sky Hopinka; and will also participate in Collective Lens: An Impact Roadmap, a robust impact strategy workshop, led by Peace is Loud, to equip filmmakers with the tools to run their own impact campaigns, advancing transformative peace and social justice through storytelling. 

Congratulations!

2022 Chicken & Egg Award recipient Brett Story  

Union
dirs. Brett Story and Stephen Maing
prods. Samantha Curley and Mars Verrone, 

From the perspective of a single Amazon fulfillment center, this documentary is an intimate portrait of current and former Amazon workers taking on one of the world’s largest and most powerful companies in the fight to unionize.

2019 Chicken & Egg Award recipient Stephanie Wang-Breal

Florence From Ohio
dir. Stephanie Wang-Breal
prod. Carrie Weprin & Mynette Louie

Florence from Ohio is a real-life, genre-twisting film about Florence Wang and her second-generation daughter, Stephanie Wang-Breal. Told through the lens of Florence’s St. John Knit power suits and 1980s local TV cooking show, mother and daughter collectively reimagine and grapple with their generational ideas of motherhood, feminism, racism, and assimilation. 

Check out the full list of recipients with this link.

Kirsten Johnson

Special Guest of Visions du Réel

2017 Chicken & Egg Award recipient Kirsten Johnson will give a masterclass in partnership with Le Temps, and her work as director as well as a selection of films to which she contributed will be featured in a retrospective. Plus, the posters and visual identity of the festival were taken from Kirsten’s body of work. 

• Masterclass
  Thursday, April 14  
  
  
• Cameraperson (Nest-supported)
  dir. & prod. Kirsten Johnson, prod. Marilyn Ness
  Get your tickets with this link. 
  
  
• Bintou in Paris
  dirs. Kirsten Johnson & Julia Pimsleur, prod. Julia Pimsleur  
  
  
• Deadline
  dirs. Kirsten Johnson & Katy Chevigny, prods. Katy Chevigny & Dallas Brennan 
  
  
• The Above
  dir. & prod. Kirsten Johnson, prod. Marilyn Ness  
  
  
• Dick Johnson is Dead (Nest-supported)
  dir. Kirsten Johnson, prods. Katy Chevigny & Marilyn Ness  
  
  
• Derrida
  *Cinematography by Kirsten Johnson
  dirs. Kirby Dick & Amy Ziering Kofman, prod. Amy Ziering Kofman

All of Our Heartbeats Are Connected Through Exploding Stars

(previously titled Stories From Debris)

dir. Jennifer Rainsford

prods. Mirjam Gelhorn, David Herdies, Michael Krotkiewski

On March 11, 2011, a tsunami devastated the coasts of Japan, claiming thousands of lives. Today, the scars of this tragedy remain visible. Yet in spite of this, people, plants and animals alike continue to exist. Through striking images shot on land and in the sea, Jennifer Rainsford’s film celebrates human resilience and the endless beauty of our planet.* 

All of Our Heartbeats Are Connected Through Exploding Stars is a 2020 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee and is having its world premiere in the International Feature Film Competition . 

Get your tickets with this link. 

Check out the trailer with this link.

Take a look at the full line-up with this link. 
*Text courtesy of Cineuropa.

Congratulations to all the nominees! Tune in to the live ceremony on Saturday, February 26 at 8 pm ET on BET.

Rise Again: Tulsa and the Red Summer

dir. and prod. Dawn Porter

2017 Chicken and Egg Award recipient Dawn Porter was nominated for Outstanding Directing in a Documentary (Television or Motion Picture).

Black and Missing

dirs. Samantha Knowles, Yoruba Richen, Geeta Gandbhir, Nadia Hallgren

prods. Samantha Knowles, Nimco Sheikhaden

Two Chicken & Egg Award recipients Yoruba Richen and Geeta Gandbhir were nominated for Outstanding Directing in a Documentary (Television or Motion Picture). Both were directors on the four-part HBO documentary.

Yoruba Richen was also honored with nominations for Outstanding Documentary for her films American Masters: How It Feels To Be Free*, prod. Julie Sacks, and High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America**, prods. Jonathan Clasberry, Christina Lenis, Lauren Vance.

Check the full nomination list with this link.

*Film developed during Yoruba Richen’s Chicken & Egg Award year

**Yoruba directed the episode: Freedom.

Announced via Women & Hollywood today, Chicken & Egg Pictures is proud to introduce the seventh cohort of our Chicken & Egg Award, which supports six advanced-career women and gender nonconforming filmmakers with unrestricted funding. The directors will receive a $50,000 grant, and for the first time ever two directors will receive a $15,000 finalist grant.

“The Chicken & Egg Award makes bold investments in the personal and professional wellbeing of visionary women and gender nonconforming documentary makers. Over the past seven years, we have given unrestricted cash grants totaling $1.9 million US dollars to 38 change-making directors,” said Program Director Lucila Moctezuma. “Because filmmakers—especially those affected by roadblocks tied to their gender, race, class, and location—deserve financial freedom while they create new projects.”

Please click on the Recipients’ names for more information on each filmmaker and give these visionary directors a warm welcome to the Nest!

2022 CHICKEN & EGG AWARD RECIPIENTS

Petra Costa is a Brazilian documentary filmmaker whose work lives on the borderlines of the personal and political. She directed The Edge of Democracy (2019), which was nominated for the Academy Award® for Documentary Feature in 2020; Undertow Eyes (2009); Elena (2012); and Olmo and the Seagull (2015). Petra is associate producer of Barbara Paz’s Babenco (2019), producer of Moara Passoni’s Ecstasy (2020), and EP of Rebeca Huntt’s BEBA (2021).   

Dr. Bev Palesa Ditsie (Hon) is a radical gender nonconforming lesbian activist and award winning filmmaker, disruptor and change agent who was instrumental in bringing LGBTIQA+ rights into focus in the late 80’s and 90’s in South Africa and the world. She is also a reality TV director whose credits include Big Brother Africa, Survivor South Africa, and Project Runway South Africa. Among her film credits are Simon & I, A Family Affair, and The Commission. Lesbians Free Everyone (2020), their latest work filmed during lockdown, takes the viewer along their journey as the first African Lesbian to address the UN at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing 1995.

Anayansi Prado is an award-winning documentary filmmaker whose work has focused on issues of undocumented immigration, indigenous rights, and race identity. Her feature films have aired nationally on PBS including The Unafraid (2018), Paraiso for Sale (2010), and Maid in America (2005). Anayansi is a Rockefeller Media Fellow and a Creative Capital Artist; her work has been supported by the MacArthur Foundation, Ford Foundation, Chicken & Egg Pictures, amongst others.

Brett Story is an award-winning filmmaker and writer based out of Toronto. She is the director of the critically acclaimed feature documentaries The Prison in Twelve Landscapes (2016) and The Hottest August (2019), both of which have screened around the world. Brett has held fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and Sundance Institute, and she was named one of Variety’s 10 Documentary Filmmakers to Watch 2019.

Margreth Olin is a director and producer with a large cinema audience in Norway. She has made 13 films, which have received critical acclaim, participated at numerous festivals abroad, and won several Norwegian and international awards. Margreth has managed to catalyze important dialogues with the topics her films shed light on. She has personally received 26 honorary awards for her commitment and focus on human rights. Her credits include My Body (Tribeca 2002), EFA-nominated Raw Youth (2004), The Angel (TIFF 2010), Nowhere Home (IDFA 2012), Cathedrals of Culture (Berlinale 2013), Self Portrait (DOC NYC 2020).

Tracy Heather Strain, a two-time Peabody Award-winning and Emmy-nominated filmmaker, explores stories about the ways diverse peoples have experienced life in the US. She won an NAACP Image Award for Motion Picture Directing for Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart, which premiered at TIFF and made its television debut on American Masters. She is presently developing Survival Floating, a hybrid documentary investigating African-descended peoples’ relationships with swimming.

2022 CHICKEN & EGG AWARD FINALIST DEVELOPMENT GRANT RECIPIENTS

Ditsi Carolino studied filmmaking at the National Film & Television School in the UK on a Chevening Scholarship. Her past projects include Life on the Tracks, about a couple who live by the railway slums (IDFA World Premiere, BBC Storyville Broadcast); and Bunso: The Youngest, about three imprisoned boys from 11–13, which was used by child rights advocates to pass the juvenile justice law. Ditsi is a member of Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.   

Sonia Kennebeck is an award-winning director and producer and has released three critically-acclaimed independent feature films: National Bird (Berlinale Special 2016), Enemies of the State (TIFF 2020), and United States vs. Reality Winner (SXSW 2021). She received the Adrienne Shelly Excellence in Filmmaking Award and Ridenhour Documentary Film Prize. She is a first-generation college graduate who was born in Malaysia, raised in Germany, and lives in the US.  

Read the Women & Hollywood article about the 2022 Chicken & Egg Award.