“Through our mission to advance gender equity in the documentary film industry, Chicken & Egg Pictures is proud to support women and nonbinary filmmakers whose work expands our collective consciousness. We congratulate all Nest-supported filmmakers for their tremendous achievements, and for crafting stories that advance social change.” -Jenni Wolfson, Executive Director of Chicken & Egg Pictures.

Check out each nomination below and celebrate the filmmakers and their teams with us:

A Thousand Cuts

dir. & prod. Ramona S. Diaz

prods. Christopher Clements, Julie Goldman, Carolyn Hepburn, Leah Marino

Nominated for: 

• Outstanding Social Issue Documentary
• Best Documentary

Supported through Ramona’s 2018 Chicken & Egg Award

Coded Bias

dir. & prod. Shalini Kantayya

Nominated for: 

• Outstanding Science and Technology Documentary 

Coded Bias was a Project: Hatched 2020 grantee

Picture a Scientist

dirs. & prods. Sharon Shattuck & Ian Cheney

prod. Manette Pottle

Nominated for: 

• Outstanding Science and Technology Documentary 

Picture a Scientist was a Project: Hatched 2020 grantee

Pray Away

dir. & prod. Kristine Stolakis

prod. Jessica Devaney and Anya Rous

Nominated for:

• Outstanding Social Issue Documentary 

Pray Away was a 2019 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee

Simple As Water

dirs. & prod. Megan Mylan

prod. Robin Hessman

Nominated for:

• Outstanding Direction: Documentary 

Simple As Water was a 2018 Nest-supported project

Storm Lake

dirs. Beth Levison & Jerry Risius

prod. Beth Levison

Nominated for:

• Outstanding Business and Economic Documentary

Storm Lake was a Project: Hatched 2021 grantee

Takeover

dir. Emma Francis-Snyder

prod. Tony Gerber

Nominated for:

• Outstanding Short Documentary 

Takeover is a Project: Hatched 2022 grantee

The Changing Same: An American Pilgrimage

dirs. Michèle Stephenson, Joe Brewster

prods. Scatter, Rada Studio

Nominated for: 

• Outstanding Interactive Media: Innovation 

The Changing Same: An American Pilgrimage was supported through the 2017 Impact and Innovation Grant

From the AlumNest  

• In the Same Breath
  dir. Nanfu Wang
  prods. Jialing Zhang, Carolyn Hepburn, Sara Rodriguez, Julie Goldman, and Christopher Clements 
  Nominated for: Outstanding Current Affairs Documentary, Best Documentary  
  
  
• Through Our Eyes: Apart  
  dirs. Geeta Gandbhir, Rudy Valdez
  prods. Beth Miranda Botshon, Jessica Devaney, Lisa Diamond, Anya Rous
  Nominated for: Best Short Documentary

Check out the full nominations list with this link.

Coded Bias — Outstanding Documentary (Film)

Coded Bias, directed by Shalini Kantayya, explores the fallout of MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini’s startling discovery that facial recognition does not see dark-skinned faces accurately, and her subsequent journey to push for the first-ever US legislation to govern against bias in artificial intelligence. The documentary aims to shine a light on the threat artificial intelligence poses to civil rights and democracy. The film participated in Project: Hatched 2020.

Through the Night — Outstanding Breakthrough Creative (Motion Picture)

Loira Limbal and her work on Through the Night are nominated for Outstanding Breakthrough Creative (Motion Picture). Through the Night is a verité documentary that explores the personal cost of our modern economy through the stories of two working mothers and a child care provider, whose lives intersect at a 24-hour daycare center in New Rochelle, NY. The film participated in the 2018 (Egg)celerator Lab.

AlumNest filmmakers nominated include Chicken & Egg Award Recipients Yoruba Richen, Dawn Porter, and Grace Lee:

The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte Hosts the Tonight Show by Yoruba Richen — Outstanding Directing in a Documentary (Television or Motion Picture) and Outstanding Writing in a Documentary (Television or Motion Picture)

And She Could Be Next by Grace Lee and Chicken & Egg Pictures Board Member Marjan Safinia — Outstanding Documentary (Television)

John Lewis: Good Trouble by Dawn Porter — Outstanding Documentary (Film)

Congratulations to all the nominees! We will be watching the awards ceremony from our Nest on Saturday, March 27th at 8 pm ET.

*Language courtesy of NAACP Image Awards.

“This moment is asking us to drop into a deeper place in our humanity to lead. I’m so grateful to the people in my film who have shown me how to do this. There has never been more clarity that the people who have been systematically missing from the conversation have the most to share with us about the way forward.” — Shalini Kantayya, Letters from the AlumNest

Shalini Kantayya’s newest film, Coded Bias, explores the fallout of MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini’s startling discovery that facial recognition does not see dark-skinned faces accurately, and her subsequent journey to push for the first-ever US legislation to govern against bias in artificial intelligence. The documentary aims to shine a light on the threat artificial intelligence poses to civil rights and democracy. Coded Bias participated in our 2020 Project: Hatched program; was an Official Selection at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival; and was featured in The New York Times, Democracy Now!, and Hollywood Reporter. The film is now playing at 70+ virtual cinemas across the US. Support a local movie theater and stream from home: codedbias.com/virtualcinema. 

Shalini’s other credits include directing the season finale episode for the National Geographic television series Breakthrough, a series profiling trailblazing scientists transforming the future, executive produced by Ron Howard, broadcast globally in June 2017. Her debut feature film Catching the Sun, about the race for a clean energy future, premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival and was named a New York Times Critics’ Pick. Catching the Sun released globally on Netflix on Earth Day 2016 with Executive Producer Leonardo DiCaprio and was nominated for the Environmental Media Association Award for Best Documentary.

Kantayya is a TED Fellow, a William J. Fulbright Scholar, and a finalist for the ABC Disney DGA Directing Program. She is an Associate of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

We also partnered with our friends at The Fledgling Fund for the
Chicken & Egg Pictures/Fledgling Fund Impact Grant, which provides an additional $20,000 to a Project: Hatched film whose campaign strategy has the ability to shape national and international conversations around the world’s most pressing issues. Congratulations to Coded Bias, directed by Shalini Kantayya, for being the first recipient of the Chicken & Egg Pictures/Fledgling Fund Impact Grant! 

Coded Bias (Chicken & Egg Pictures/Fledgling Fund Impact Grant recipient), directed by Shalini Kantayya, explores the fallout of MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini’s startling discovery that facial recognition does not see dark-skinned faces accurately, and her subsequent journey to push for the first-ever US legislation to govern against bias in artificial intelligence.*

The Fight, co-directed by Elyse Steinberg, Josh Kriegman, and
Eli Despres, documents a team of scrappy ACLU lawyers battling Trump’s historic assault on civil liberties.*

Once Upon a Time in Venezuela, directed by Anabel Rodríguez, follows residents of a small fishing village as they prepare for parliamentary election. Once the village of Congo Mirador was prosperous. Now it is decaying and disintegrating—a prophetic reflection of Venezuela itself.*

*Premiering at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.