Chicken & Egg Pictures announced today, via Variety, the newest grantees of Project: Hatched, a program designed to support directors as they develop and launch strategic impact campaigns. Ten films will receive $30,000 each toward their completion funding and impact campaigns. This was the first year that the grant’s criteria were expanded to include international projects and an increase in the number of projects supported, raising total funds disbursed from $240,000 in 2022 to $300,000 in 2023. 

Project: Hatched 2023 films showcase the work of courageous filmmakers who have uncovered powerful stories, through artful visual storytelling, and who have a clearly articulated impact plan to reach broad audiences. Chicken & Egg Pictures believes all nonfiction films, from the overtly political to the abstract or personal, hold the power to impact their viewers, their communities and beyond, and to continue conversations around important and timely topics.

“We are seeking filmmakers with a strategic vision for the impact they wish to achieve. However, we also value a willingness to embrace diverse interpretations of what constitutes impact and engagement for each individual filmmaker, and how this work can evolve throughout the life of a film,” said Associate Director of Program Sabine Fayoux Cantillo. “All the films supported in this year’s cohort have the potential to create meaningful and specific impact on the lives of the people most affected by the issues being portrayed. Each of them has thought deeply about developing their goals and strategies in collaboration with their film’s core audiences and participants, informed by mutually beneficial opportunities. We are proud to contribute to the larger ecosystem that enables filmmakers to carry this important work forward.”

Please click the film titles for more information on each project, and give these passionate and committed directors a warm welcome to the Nest! 

Project: Hatched 2023 grantees

Bad Press (US)
co-dirs. Rebecca Landsberry-Baker, Joe Peeler
prods.  Rebecca Landsberry-Baker, Joe Peeler
When the Muscogee Nation censors its free press, a rogue reporter races to expose her government’s corruption in a historic battle with ramifications for all of Indian Country.
Sundance U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award: Freedom of Expression

Big Fight in Little Chinatown (CANADA)
dir. Karen Cho
prods. Bob Moore, Katie McKay
Residents, businesses, and community organizers fight to save their Chinatown neighborhoods from erasure in this story of resistance and resilience.
Premiered at DOC NYC 2022, Montreal International Documentary Film Festival (RIDM) Women Inmate Jury Award 2022, Toronto Reel Asian Film Festival Honourable Mention Best Canadian Feature Film 2022

Freedom Hill (US)
dir. & prod. Resita Cox
In North Carolina, residents of Princeville—the first town in America incorporated by formerly enslaved freed Africans—resist the steady erosion of both flooding and environmental racism.
Premiered at Full Frame Documentary Festival 2022; acquired by WORLD

From the Shadows #missingirls (INDIA)
dir. & prod. Miriam Chandy Menacherry
prods. Sheena Matheiken, Aalia Furniturewala, Anand Ramayya, Gary Byung-Seok Kam
impact prod. Triparna Banerjee
An artist and an activist find glimmers of hope as they seek justice for survivors of India’s rampant child sex trafficking.
International premiere as a special International Women’s Day 2023 screening hosted by South Asian House and Film Independent’s Global Media Makers in Austin, acquired by TV2 Denmark and KBS (Korea)

Liquor Store Dreams (US)
dir. & prod. So Yun Um
prod. Eddie Kim
Two Korean American children of liquor store owners in Los Angeles set out to bridge generational divides with their immigrant parents. 
Premiered at Tribeca Festival 2022, CAAMFest 2023 Honorable Mention for Best Documentary; acquired by POV

Now That We Are Together (MEXICO)
dir. & prod. Patricia Balderas Castro
co-prod. Claudia Ruiz Capdevielle
impact prods. Merle Iliná, Michelle Plascencia
After an unexpected encounter with a group of women taking back the streets, a filmmaker begins an intimate-yet-collective journey to understand her own experience with violence.
Premiered at Morelia International Film Festival 2022, where it won Best Movie Directed by a Woman and Audience Favorite

PAY OR DIE (AUSTRALIA, CANADA, US)
dirs. & prods. Rachael Dyer, Scott Alexander Ruderman
prod. Yael Melamede
Three families facing life-or-death decisions reveal the harrowing reality of America’s insulin affordability crisis, where 2 million people are being held ransom to pharmaceutical profits. 
Premiered at SXSW 2023, acquired by MTV Documentary Films, streaming premiere launch on Paramount+ 

Suddenly TV (US)
dir. & prod. Roopa Gogineni
At a besieged protest in Khartoum, young revolutionaries create an imaginary television station to confront the violence of the regime and conjure a new Sudan.
Premiered at IDFA 2022, SXSW 2023 Documentary Short Competition Special Jury Award, IndieLisboa Short Film Grand Prize

The Mind Game (AFGHANISTAN, CANADA, NETHERLANDS)
dirs. Eefje Blankevoort, Els van Driel, Sajid Khan Nasiri 
prod. Laura Verduijn
impact prods. Els van Driel, Eefje Blankevoort, Tina Farifteh, Nienke Huitenga, Lara Aerts, Khadidja Benouataf
An Afghan teenager’s first-hand, cell-phone filmed perspective reveals the psychological pressure facing unaccompanied minor refugees. 
Premiered at Movies that Matter Festival 2023, upcoming broadcast on Dutch public television KRO-NCRV

Twice Colonized (DENMARK)
dir. Lin Alluna
prods. Emile Hertling Péronard, Alethea Arnaquq-Baril, Stacey Aglok MacDonald
Renowned Inuit lawyer Aaju Peter, who has led a lifelong fight for the rights of Indigenous people, delves into her own origins to mend the wounds of dislocation, colonization, and loss.
Premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2023, Movies that Matter Festival 2023 Camera Justitia Award

We are proud to present the twelve grantees selected for the 2022 Critical Issues Fund. The Critical Issues Fund supports filmmakers, with more than $250,000 in funding, whose work is focused on important and topical issues that are currently having a decided and material impact on communities domestically and internationally. The 2022 grant awardees have projects exploring some of the most pressing issues of the moment: the war in Ukraine, gun violence, reproductive justice, and climate emergencies. 

“Through the Critical Issues Fund, we have identified films that have the potential to drive social change by sharing these stories with the world now—not years down the line. Chicken & Egg Pictures cares deeply about these issues and believes that a more equitable and just world can be shaped by the power of documentary films. Our hope is that through highlighting these stories told by talented women filmmakers, others will be motivated to action to support the films and the issues they highlight,” said CEO of Chicken & Egg Pictures, Jenni Wolfson. “We live in a world that’s not doing enough to prevent war, gun violence, climate change, or advance reproductive justice. We firmly believe these films can help in the fight for these issues.” 

We are thrilled to give these filmmakers a warm welcome to the Nest. The 2022 Critical Issues Fund grantees are: 

After Roe (Working title)
Directors: Amber Fares, Geeta Gandbhir (US/CANADA)
After Roe explores the ongoing nationwide battle playing out after the Supreme Court left the fate of tens of millions of women in the hands of politicians across the country.

Breaking the News
Directors: Heather Courtney, Chelsea Hernandez, Princess Hairston (US)
Producer: Diane Quon
Breaking the News follows a group of women and non-binary journalists, bucking the white male status quo, to launch The 19th*—a digital news startup that asks who has been omitted from mainstream coverage and how they can be included.

Displaced 
Director: Olha Zhurba (UKRAINE)
Producer: Darya Bassel 
Displaced captures a collective portrait of Ukrainians fleeing the grindstones of war, and those who stayed and are forced to adapt to life under constant shelling.

Frontline 
Director: Alisa Kovalenko (UKRAINE)
Producer: Katarzyna Kuczyńska 
Co-producers: Monica Hellström, Valeryi Kalmykov
Frontline is a diary from the frontline of the Russian invasion of Ukraine by a director and mother turned soldier.

Hollywood Does Abortion (Working title)
Directors & Producers: Barbara Attie, Mike Attie, Janet Goldwater (US)
Producer: Eliza Licht 
Hollywood Does Abortion explores descriptions of abortion in film and television, revealing how Hollywood both reflects and distorts this safe but controversial medical procedure.

Intercepted 
Director: Oksana Karpovych (UKRAINE/CANADA)
Producer: Les Films Cosmos
Intercepted is a journey through Ukraine that reveals the banality of evil behind the Russian invasion.

Plan C
Director & Producer: Tracy Droz Tragos (US)
Plan C follows the journey of a grassroots network, with a controversial visionary at the helm, as they fight to expand access to abortion pills across the United States, and keep hope alive during a global pandemic and the fall of Roe v. Wade.

Razing Liberty Square 
Director: Katja Esson (GERMANY/US)
Razing Liberty Square features Miami as ground zero for sea level rise. When residents of the Liberty Square public-housing community learn about a $300-million revitalization project in 2015, they soon discover that this sudden interest comes from the fact that their neighborhood is located on the highest and driest ground in the city. Now they must prepare to fight a new form of racial injustice: climate gentrification.

Red Zone
Director: Iryna Tsilyk (UKRAINE)
Producer: Darya Bassel 
Red Zone shares Tsilyk’s very intimate and female perspective on the question—what does it mean to be a woman in the war times?

Sol in the Garden 
Directors: Emily Cohen Ibañez, Débora Souza Silva (US/COLOMBIA/BRAZIL)
Sol in the Garden features Sol—who is released from prison after 16 years of incarceration—and follows her journey as she discovers that coming into her own freedom can be as challenging as living behind bars. Through a community gardening collective of formerly incarcerated horticulturalists in East Oakland, Sol strives to recover her humanity and sense of self.

Untitled Baby Doe Film 
Director: Jessica Earnshaw (CANADA)
Producer: Holly Meehl Chapman
Untitled Baby Doe Film intimately explores the phenomena of pregnancy denial through the stories of two women, a generation apart, given life sentences for the deaths of their newborns.

Untitled Uvalde Documentary 
Director & Producer: Anayansi Prado (PANAMA/US)

Note: The parentheses next to the directors’ names indicate the directors’ country or countries of origin.