A Photographic Memory

dir. & prod. Rachel Elizabeth Seed

prods. Sigrid Dyekjær, Beth Levison, Matt Perniciaro, Michael Sherman, Danielle Varga

A Photographic Memory was a 2020 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee.

Get your tickets here.

Intercepted

dir. Oksana Karpovych

prods. Giacomo Nudi, Rocío Barba Fuentes, Pauline Tran Van Lieu, Lucie Rego, Darya Bassel

Intercepted is a 2022 Critical Issues Fund grantee.

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Look Into My Eyes

dir. & prod. Lana Wilson

prod. Kyle Martin

Look Into My Eyes was supported through Lana Wilson’s 2019 Chicken & Egg Award.

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The Callers

dir. & prod. Lindsey Dryden

prods. Colleen Cassingham, Samantha Steele

The Callers was supported through the QUEER FUTURES series in collaboration with Multitude Films. 

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Union

dir. & prods. Brett Story, Stephen Maing

prod. Samantha Curley, Mars Verrone, Martin Dicicco

Union was supported through Brett Story’s 2023 Chicken & Egg Award.

Get your tickets here.

In the Forum

The Reality Check Forum at DC/DOX is intended to be a dedicated space for fostering dialogue and collaboration within the documentary film community. This includes numerous panels, workshops, performances and masterclasses offering valuable resources and best practices for keen filmmakers. We are proud to have so many filmmakers from our community and our CEO Jenni Wolfson  participating in this year’s forum!

• Performance: Moore For Sale
  Friday, June 14
  With producer of 2022 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee Joonam, Keith Wilson
  
  
• Panel: Treasure Maps – Finding Story in the Archives
  Friday, June 14
  With 2020 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee Rachel Elizabeth Seed
  
  
• Panel: Filmmaking within a Cooperative
  Friday, June 14
  With 2020 Chicken & Egg Award recipient Kimberly Reed
  
  
• Workshop: The Future of Funding
  Saturday, June 15
  With CEO Jenni Wolfson
  
  
• Workshop: How to Stop Working for Free
  Saturday, June 15
  With 2019 Nest Knight Fellowship recipient Tiffany Fisher-Love
  
  
• Panel: Subject/Matter
  Saturday, June 15
  With producer of supported film Dick Johnson is Dead, Katy Chevigny
  
  
• Panel: State of the Industry
  Saturday, June 15
  With 2017 Chicken & Egg Award recipient Dawn Porter
  
  
• Panel: Documentary and the Real World – Impact Case Studies
  Saturday, June 15
  With Project: Hatched 2021 grantee Maya Cueva
  
  
• Panel: Behind the Scenes
  Saturday, June 15
  With Stephen Maing & Martin DiCicco of supported film Union and 2017 Chicken & Egg Award recipient Dawn Porter

From the AlumNest

• Seat 31: Zooey Zephyr
  dir. & prod. Kimberly Reed
  prod. Robin Honan

• And So It Begins
  dir. & prod. Ramona S. Diaz

• As Long As We Can | World Premiere
  dir. Kristy Guevara-Flanagan

• Familia
  dirs. & prods. Picho García, Gabriela Pena

• In Due Season | World Premiere
  dir. Ashley O’Shay
  prod. Cherrelle Swain

• Luther: Never Too Much
  dir. Dawn Porter
  prods. Trish D. Chetty, Ged Doherty, Jamie Foxx, Datari Turner, Leah Smith

Announced via Variety today, we are proud to present the ten grantees selected for the 2022 (Egg)celerator Lab, who will each receive $40,000 towards the production of their documentary. Additionally, for the first time ever, ten projects have been selected to receive Egg)celerator Lab Finalist Grants of $15,000 each. The 20 projects, directed by emerging filmmakers, will collectively receive a total of $550,000 in grants, marking the largest sum that Chicken & Egg Pictures has ever directed towards the support of an (Egg)celerator Lab cohort and finalists of emerging filmmakers in a single year.

This year, the cohort includes directors hailing from countries such as the US, Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico, Romania, and Belarus. Filmmaker grantees include Volia Chajkouskaya, the founder of the Northern Lights Nordic-Baltic Film Festival, Lina Vdovîi and Radu Ciorniciuc, award-winning independent reporters, Contessa Gayles, an Emmy nominated producer. The films center women reclaiming their stories, and explore similar themes through vastly different subjects: In Matryoshka and TATA, filmmakers illustrate portraits of their parents that connect with their own personal narratives. Here, the Silence is Heard and Joonam explore intimate intergenerational memories in the context of complex political histories, and the search for an identity. 

Click on the film’s titles for more information on each project. We are thrilled to give these filmmakers a warm welcome to the Nest.

The 2022 (Egg)celerator Lab Grantees are:

7 Beats Per Minute
Director: Yuqi Kang (CANADA / CHINA / INNER MONGOLIA)
Producers: Ina Fichman, Anita Lee
7 Beats Per Minute is an intimate and unyielding journey with female freediving champion, Jessea Lu, as she faces her biggest fear and attempts to dive over 100 meters in one single breath.

Here, the Silence is Heard
Director: Gabriela Pena (CHILE / SPAIN)
Co-director: Picho García (CHILE) 
Producers: Gabriela Pena, Picho García
After arriving in Chile at the old house that my family abandoned in exile, ghosts of an unstoppable family spell begin to appear at night.

Joonam
Director: Sierra Urich (US)
Producer: Keith Wilson
A filmmaker uncovers her family’s lost Iranian past, and with it the complex relationships between mother and daughter, Iran and America, and displacement and identity.

Life + Life
Director: Contessa Gayles (US)
Producer: Contessa Gayles
An incarcerated musician struggles for healing and peace as he comes of age in this documentary-musical odyssey composed behind bars.

Matryoshka
Director: Maricarmen Merino Mora (COSTA RICA) 
Producers: Karla Bukantz, Paulina Villegas
Matryoshka is an intimate portrait of a mother through her daughter’s eyes, following the complex journey of a woman finding her own voice.

Olimpia
Director: Indira Cato (MEXICO)
Producer: Jessica Rito
After being a victim of sexual virtual violence, Olimpia Coral Melo sought the enactment of a groundbreaking law to protect women against cyberviolence, but now she’s still looking for a way to heal her internal wounds.

Our Daughters (working title)
Director: Chithra Jeyaram (US / INDIA)
Producers: Chithra Jeyaram, Jonna McKone
For the sake of their twin daughters, an Indian adoptive mother and a white birth mother venture into uncharted territory with an open adoption, crossing racial and cultural lines.

TATA
Co-directors: Lina Vdovîi and Radu Ciorniciuc (MOLDOVA / ROMANIA)
Producer: Monica Lazurean Gorgan
A journalist estranged from her violent father discovers that he’s become a victim of exploitation at work. When she agrees to help him expose the injustice, it reopens the wounds of their past.

The Wife Of
Director: Volia Chajkouskaya (BELARUS / ESTONIA)
Producers: Volia Chajkouskaya, Ivo Felt, Christian Popp, and Marius Markevicius
Undisclosed project.

Undisclosed Project
Details to be announced later this year.

The 2022 (Egg)celerator Lab Finalists are:

Alis 
Directors: Clare Weiskopf, Nicolas van Hemelryck (COLOMBIA)
Producers: Clare Weiskopf, Nicolas van Hemelryck, Radu Stancu, Alexandra Galvis
Teenage girls, who lived on the streets of Bogota, dream up a fictional classmate. Their soulful narrative reveals their perseverance to break the cycle of violence and embrace a brighter future.

Eat Bitter 
Directors: Pascale Appora-Gnekindy, Ningyi Sun (CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC / CHINA)
Producer: Mathieu Faure
Eat Bitter is a character-driven vérité film set in the Central African Republic, one of the poorest countries in the world. During the civil war, a Chinese immigrant construction manager and a local African laborer work on opposite ends of the spectrum to construct a sparkling new bank. As deadlines loom, they don’t hesitate to strip the earth and destroy their family lives for a seat at the table of prosperity.

How to Build a Library 
Co-directors: Maia Lekow, Christopher King (KENYA / AUSTRALIA) 
Producers: Maia Lekow, Christopher King
Two tenacious Kenyan women are transforming a dilapidated, junk-filled library in downtown Nairobi into a hub for the city’s population and creatives. But first they must wrangle with the local government, raise several million dollars for the reconstruction, and confront the ghosts of a problematic colonial history still trapped within the library walls.

Hummingbirds 
Directors: Silvia Castaños, Estefanía Contreras (US / MEXICO)
Producers: Leslie Benavides, Miguel Drake-McLaughlin, Ana Rodriguez-Falco, Jillian Schlesinger
Co-directors: Miguel Drake-McLaughlin, Diane Ng, Ana Rodriguez-Falco, Jillian Schlesinger
Best friends Silvia and Estefanía emerge at night to escape the cruel heat of summer in their Texas border town, wandering empty streets in search of inspiration, adventure, and a sense of belonging. When forces threaten their shared dreams, they take a stand and hold onto what they can—the moment and each other.

Light of the Setting Sun 
Director: Vicky Du (US)
Producer: Danielle Varga
A Taiwanese-American filmmaker confronts her family’s silence around the cycles of violence that have persisted since the Chinese Communist Revolution of 1949.

River of Grass 
Director: Sasha Wortzel (US)
Producer: Danielle Varga 
Co-producer: Houston Cypress
River of Grass unfolds as a voyage through the past, present, and precarious future of the iconic and imperiled Florida Everglades; told through the writings of the late environmentalist Marjory Stoneman Douglas, and those who today call the region home.

There Was, There Was Not 
Director: Emily Mkrtichian (US / ARMENIA) 
Producer: Mara Adina
There Was, There Was Not tells the collective myth of a homeland nearly lost to war and four women’s resistance to that loss.

We Are Volcanoes 
Co-directors: Sharon Yeung, Natalie A. Chao (HONG KONG)
Producer: Sharon Yeung
Undisclosed project.

When They Were Here 
Director: Ivy MacDonald (US / BLACKFEET TRIBE)
Co-director: Ivan MacDonald (US / BLACKFEET TRIBE)
Producer: Jessica Jane Hart
Told through the memory and lives of those left behind–families, When They Were Here examines the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) crisis and its legacy on the Blackfeet Reservation in Northern Montana. 

Untitled Project 
Directors: Shirley Abraham, Amit Madheshiya (INDIA) 
Producers: Shirley Abraham, Amit Madheshiya
Undisclosed project.

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