Egg-cellent news from POV, television’s longest-running showcase for independent nonfiction films, as they announced yesterday the slate for their Season 32 broadcast. Nine out of POV’s sixteen feature films this season are helmed by women directors, and six of those films are Nest-supported projects or by Nest-supported directors.

At Chicken & Egg Pictures, we are so proud to support women filmmakers whose voices are changing the world, one television broadcast at a time. Make sure to set your DVR or stream on pov.org or amdoc.org in order to catch these powerful documentaries:

Roll Red Roll, directed by Nancy Schwartzman will be the opening film for the new season, broadcasting June 17 on all PBS stations and across its platforms and pov.org and amdoc.org.

In small-town Ohio, at a pre-season football party, a horrible incident took place. What transpired would garner national attention and result in the sentencing of two key offenders. As amateur crime blogger Alex Goddard uncovers disturbing evidence on Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter, documenting the assault of a teenage girl by members of the beloved high school football team, questions linger around the collusion of teen and adult bystanders. Roll Red Roll explores the complex motivations of both perpetrators and bystanders in this story, unearthing the attitudes at the core of their behavior. The Steubenville story acts as a cautionary tale of what can happen when adults look the other way and deny that rape culture exists. With unprecedented access to police documents, exhibits and evidence, the documentary feature unflinchingly asks: “why didn’t anyone stop it?”

On Her Shoulders, directed by 2019 Chicken & Egg Award recipient Alexandria Bombach (2018 SXSW LUNA/Chicken & Egg Pictures Award recipient) will broadcast July 22.

This empowering documentary presents 23-year-old Nadia Murad, a Yazidi genocide survivor determined to tell the world her story. Determined advocate and reluctant celebrity, she becomes the voice of her people and their best hope to spur the world to action.

Inventing Tomorrow, directed by 2018 Chicken & Egg Award recipient Laura Nix will broadcast on July 29.

Meet passionate teenage innovators from around the globe who are creating cutting edge solutions to confront the world’s environmental threats – found right in their own backyards – while navigating the doubts and insecurities that mark adolescence. Take a journey with these inspiring teens as they prepare their projects for the largest convening of high school scientists in the world, the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF).

Grit, directed by Cynthia Wade and Sasha Friedlander, will broadcast on September 9.

Grit is the story of a huge, toxic mudflow in Indonesia widely believed to be caused by shoddy drilling practices. The mud volcano has been erupting violently for the past eight years, burying 17 villages and permanently displacing 60,000 people. Grit follows ordinary Indonesians seeking justice for this disaster during a national election in which one presidential candidate has promised restitution—and the other has not.

The Feeling of Being Watched, directed by Assia Boundaoui (2016 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee) will broadcast on October 14.

In the Arab-American neighborhood outside of Chicago where director Assia Boundaoui grew up, most of her neighbors think they have been under surveillance for over a decade. While investigating their experiences, Assia uncovers hundreds of pages of declassified FBI documents that prove her hometown was the subject of one of the largest counterterrorism investigations ever conducted in the U.S. before 9/11—code-named “Operation Vulgar Betrayal.” With unprecedented access, The Feeling of Being Watched weaves the personal and the political as it follows the filmmaker’s examination of why her community fell under blanket government surveillance.

Blowin’ Up, directed by 2019 Chicken & Egg Award recipient Stephanie Wang-Breal will broadcast on October 21.

Blowin’ Up looks at sex work, prostitution, and human trafficking through the lens of New York State’s criminal justice system. The film captures the growing pains of our nation’s first human trafficking intervention court in Queens, New York, and how we define trafficking and prostitution from many different perspectives: the criminal justice system, the social welfare system, and, most importantly, the women and girls who are at the center of it all.

Changing Same, directed by Impact & Innovation Initiative grantees Michèle Stephenson (also a 2016 Chicken & Egg Award recipient) and Joe Brewster, is on the second season of POV’s Shorts program, following On Her Shoulders.

Chicken & Egg Pictures is supporting the immersive, room-scale virtual reality experience based on the short film, Changing Same: The Untitled Racial Justice Project.

Check your local listings for broadcast times and more information.

And we have some egg-cellent news! Four documentaries by Nest-supported filmmakers will be screening at the festival, happening from Thursday, February 28 to Sunday, March 3.

American Factory, directed by Julia Reichert (2016 Chicken & Egg Award recipient) and Steve Bognar

Dizzying, hilarious and devastating, this tale of two factories makes for a landmark story of workplace anxiety. Directors Reichert and Bognar have spent a decade documenting the plight of Ohio’s factory workers, and their dedication pays off when they are given astonishing access to Fuyao, a Chinese auto glass manufacturer, as it revives a shuttered General Motors plant in Dayton.

• Friday, Mar. 1 / 2:30PM / Jesse Auditorium
• Friday, Mar. 1 / 9:15PM / The Globe
• Saturday, Mar. 2 / 6:30PM / Missouri Theatre
• Sunday, Mar. 3 / 6:00PM / The Picturehouse

One Child Nation, (2017 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee), directed by Nanfu Wang (also a 2018 Chicken & Egg Award recipient) and Jialing Zhang

How much control does a person have over their own life? In China, state control begins before a child is even born.

• Friday, Mar. 1 / 4:30PM / Forrest Theater
• Saturday, Mar. 2 / 3:15PM / The Picturehouse
• Saturday, Mar. 2 / 7:00PM / Jesse Auditorium
• Sunday, Mar. 3 / 9:30AM / Missouri Theatre

The Changing Same, directed by Impact & Innovation Initiative grantees Michèle Stephenson (also a 2016 Chicken & Egg Award recipient) and Joe Brewster

In the Florida Panhandle lies the provincial town of Marianna, Florida, where one native resident runs a particular marathon in hopes of lifting the veil of racial terror caused by the town’s buried history.

Chicken & Egg Pictures is supporting the immersive, room-scale virtual reality experience based on their short film. In Changing Same: The Untitled Racial Justice Project,  the participant travels through time and space to witness the connected historical experiences of racial terror in America.

Screens before The Commons:

• Thursday, Feb. 28 / 7:30PM / Showtime Theater
• Friday, Mar. 1 / 1:45PM / Forrest Theater
• Sunday, Mar. 3 / 12:00PM / Showtime Theater
• Sunday, Mar. 3 / 4:00PM / Jesse Auditorium

Knock Down the House, directed by Rachel Lears (former Nest grantee for The Hand That Feeds)

What’s more important: charismatic political candidates or the behind-the-scenes machine that works to elect them? Knock Down the House gives us both, breathlessly following a new breed of politician alongside a tireless collective of activists enraged by the state of American governance.

• Thursday, Feb. 28 / 7:00PM / Missouri Theatre
• Friday, Mar. 1 / 1:30PM / Showtime Theater
• Friday, Mar. 1 / 10:00PM / Jesse Auditorium
• Saturday, Mar. 2 / 9:30AM / Showtime Theater

And if you’re not in Columbia, Missouri this weekend, we have some egg-cellent news regarding these women directed documentaries. Netflix has acquired American Factory and Knock Down the House, and Amazon acquired One Child Nation; the three films will be available to stream soon.

The Changing Same, directed by Impact & Innovation Initiative grantees Michèle Stephenson (also a 2016 Breakthrough Filmmaker Award recipient) and Joe Brewster, is screening in competition on Friday, October 26 at 12:45 PM at the Oprah Winfrey Theater in the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

“In the Florida Panhandle lies the provincial town of Marianna, Florida, where one native resident runs a particular marathon in hopes of lifting the veil of racial terror caused by the town’s buried history.”*

Chicken & Egg Pictures is supporting the immersive, room-scale virtual reality experience based on their short film. In Changing Same: The Untitled Racial Justice Project,  the participant travels through time and space to witness the connected historical experiences of racial terror in America.

United Skates, directed by Tina Brown and Dyana Winkler (2016 Diversity Fellows Initiative) is also is screening in competition on Friday, October 26 at 4:15PM in the museum’s Oprah Winfrey Theater.

When America’s last standing roller rinks are threatened with closure, a community of thousands battle in a racially charged environment to save an underground subculture—one that has remained undiscovered by the mainstream for generations, yet has given rise to some of the world’s greatest musical talent.

The Juried Competition Film Awards is Saturday, October  27 at 10:30 AM. Congratulations to Michèle and Joe and Tina and Diana! See you in DC.

*Synopsis courtesy of the Smithsonian African American Film Festival wesbite.