Q

dir. & prod. Jude Chehab

Q is a 2021 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee. 

Retrospective: Jeanie Finlay

We were proud to watch one of our 2023 Chicken & Egg Award recipients Jeanie Finlay, a prominent documentary filmmaker hailing from Northern England, getting recognized with a retrospective at this year’s Big Sky Film Festival. Jeanie’s films tell intimate stories that resonate with audiences globally, and this retrospective featured 12 selections from her repertoire, including her most recent feature Your Fat Friend. Explore the full program here.

From the AlumNest

• Troll Storm – World Premiere
  dir. & prod. Eunice Lau
  prods. Brooke Pepion Swaney, Zachary Kerschberg

• American Grail: A Quest for the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker  – World Premiere
  dir. Andy Sarjahani
  prod. Jolene Pinder

• Bring Them Home / Aiskótáhkapiyaaya – World Premiere & Winner of the Big Sky Award
  dirs. Ivan MacDonald, Ivy MacDonald, Daniel Glick
  prods. Daniel Glick, Ivan MacDonald, Sarah Clarke

• Confessions of a Good Samaritan 
  dir. Penny Lane
  prod. Gabriel Sedgwick

• Dark Money
  dir. & prod. Kimberly Reed 
  prod. Katy Chevigny

• Eat Flowers
  dir. River Finlay
  prods. Alison Klayman, Cig Harvey, River Finlay, Sashka Rothchild

• Montana Indigenous Voting Rights – World Premiere
  dir. Ivan MacDonald
  prods. ACLU of Montana, Western Native Vote, Jessica Jane Hart

• Seat 31: Zooey Zephyr – World Premiere & Winner of the Mini-doc Award
  dir. & prod. Kimberly Reed 

• Unseen
  dir. & prod. Set Hernande
  prods. Félix Endara, Diane Quon, Day Al-Mohamed

• Colleen Cassingham, producer of QUEER FUTURES films The Script, MnM, How to Carry Water

• Petra Costa, 2023 Research & Development Grant Recipient and 2022 Chicken & Egg Award Recipient, for her Chicken & Egg-supported film

• Jess Devaney director of Chicken & Egg-supported film Love the Sinner and producer of The Script, MnM, How to Carry Water, and It’s Only Life After All

• Ramona Diaz, 2018 Chicken & Egg Award Recipient

• Maryam Ebrahimi, 2021 Chicken & Egg Award Recipient, for her Chicken & Egg-supported film The Phantom Pain of Rojava

• Lorena Luciano and Filippo Piscopo, directors of Chicken & Egg-supported film It Will Be Chaos

• Ivan MacDonald and Ivy MacDonald, for their film, When They Were Here, 2022 (Egg)celerator Lab Finalist

Post written by Communications Intern Tess Caldwell

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.

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.