Originally from New York City, Sisa Bueno (she, her, hers; pronoun flexible) is a traveling film and multimedia maker dedicated to making inaccessible stories more accessible to audiences. She studied film production and interactive technologies at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. The NBC Network named Bueno a 2013 Latino Innovator for her upcoming documentary To the Mountains (in post-production) about decolonization in Bolivia. She has completed a short film for AJ+ related to the same subject. Bueno is a recipient of the ITVS-PBS Diversity Development grant and ITVS Open Call, Hot Docs CrossCurrents grant, Bay Area Video Coalition MediaMaker fellowship, Points North Institute North Star Fellowship, and the IDA Pare Lorentz Documentary Fund for her current work in progress, For Venida, For Kalief (in production).

Project Statement

A late mother’s poetry echoes a movement for criminal justice reform for her son in For Venida, For Kalief. This lyrical film is an intentional departure from current storytelling approaches, focusing on personhood to inspire and reimagine a new kind of legacy for Kalief Browder. The film presents Venida’s words as poetic cinema, showcasing the full spectrum of everyday life for people of color in New York City, reveling in lyrical moments of Black and Brown joy and spirituality, as well as constant police surveillance, struggle, and activism. The film explores the concept of legacy and personhood, lyrically weaving together the deeply personal emotions of Venida’s poems with the community activism that emerged in the aftermath of Kalief’s death.

Illya Szilak (she, her, hers) is a writer, artist, director, and creative producer. Shaped by her experiences as a physician, her richly collaborative, multidisciplinary art practice explores mortality, embodiment, identity and belief in an increasingly virtual world. Her longtime artistic partner is Cyril Tsiboulski (he, him, his). Their first virtual reality piece, Queerskins: a love story (2018), received a Peabody Futures of Media Award for transmedia. Their second, Queerskins: ARK, which features live dance performance was developed at The Venice Biennale College V.R. Lab. Their most recent work, In My Own Skin (2021), premiered at CPH:DOX festival. It combines handmade textiles, photography, wearable avatars, and virtual architecture. Szilak continues to work as a doctor, currently caring for inmates at Rikers Island, NYC.

Project Statement

Fly Angel Soul is a short experimental narrative film shot within virtual reality. It tells the story of Sebastian, a young gay physician estranged from his rural Catholic Missouri family, who, having moved to Mali to heal the sick, is diagnosed with AIDS. Inspired by a quote from Meister Eckhart “(let us) rejoice in the everlasting truth in which the highest angel and the soul and the fly are equal,” Fly Angel Soul is shot in real-time, from the unique points of view of three networked virtual cameras adopting the “roles” of the eponymous characters. The “human” p.o.v. will be that of a live cinematographer moving through the virtual set. Thus, in Fly Angel Soul, “liveness” resides in the “embodied” cameras even more so than in the actors in the story. Finding commonality with video games and live performance, Fly Angel Soul explores the potential for virtual production techniques to expand 2-D cinematic language.

Jingjing Tian (she, her, hers) is a Chinese American filmmaker based in NYC. Born in Northeast China, she immigrated to Texas at the age of nine, where she learned to speak with a twang, wore a belt buckle, and discovered her Asian American identity. Tian explores these identities and the themes of autonomy and oppression in her work and her life. Writing and directing are therapy for her. A Sundance Uprise Grantee, she is working on her first feature film, Kid C. Her short films have been screened at Nitehawk Cinema with MoMA, Cleveland International Film Festival, Bentonville Film Festival, Seattle Asian American Film Festival, and Museum of the Chinese in America. Her work has been profiled in Paper Magazine, AM New York, BuzzFeed, High Country News, South China Morning Post, and more.

Project Statement

A character and emotionally driven film, Kid C is a narrative feature that follows Lee during her first year as a Chinese immigrant in a small town in Texas during the late 1990s. Cracking under the pressures of volatile parents, Lee, a rambunctious 10-year-old, attempts to reclaim a sense of childhood with her best friend John, an African American boy. But when she accidentally reveals a secret that he shares, their friendship is threatened and life begins to collapse. Drawing from field research and personal experiences, Kid C explores a child’s agency in the face of parental abuse and intergenerational trauma.

Suneil Sanzgiri (he, him, his) is an artist, researcher, and filmmaker whose work spans experimental video and film, essays, and installations and contends with questions of identity, heritage, culture, and diaspora related to structural violence. He graduated from MIT with a Masters of Science in Art, Culture and Technology in 2017. Sanzgiri’s films have screened extensively around the world, including the New York Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Hong Kong International Film Festival, Chicago International Film Festival, Sheffield Doc Fest, IndieLisboa International Film Festival, Punto de Vista International Documentary Film Festival of Navarra, The Viennale International Film Festival Vienna, LA Film Forum, e-Flux, 25 FPS Festival, and won awards at BlackStar Film Festival, Open City Documentary Festival, VideoEx Festival, and Images Festival. Sanzgiri has participated in residencies and fellowships, including SOMA, MacDowell, Pioneer Works, and was named in Filmmaker Magazine’s 2021 “25 New Faces of Independent Film.”

Project Statement

Two Refusals (working title) is a personal journey through ancestry, anti-colonialism, and harbingers of dissent across India and Africa, inspired from the myths of an unlikely source—Portugal’s oldest work of epic poetry Os Lusíadas, or The Lusiads—repositioning key elemental and mythological figures to ask the question, “How can one refuse an empire?” The film weaves together personal reflections of Sanzgiri’s family history as freedom fighters against the occupying Portuguese forces in Goa with stories of liberation and resistance across the Goan diaspora. This film focuses on the bonds of solidarity that developed across India and Africa against the Portuguese Empire.

Photo by Arin Sang-urai.

Yasmin Mistry (she, her, hers) is an Emmy-nominated animator and filmmaker. Her work has been displayed worldwide, including showings at the United Nations and White House as well as at SXSW, Tribeca Film Festival, DOC NYC, and more. She is the recipient of grants from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Brooklyn Arts Council, Puffin Foundation, Riverside Sharing Fund, and Harnisch Foundation and was a two-time finalist for funding from the ITVS Diversity Development Fund. Films from her documentary shorts series about foster care have been featured in over 140 film festivals and nominated for more than 80 awards. In 2018, Mistry received the CASA Hero Award for her advocacy work, giving youth in the child welfare system an opportunity to be heard.

Project Statement

Together (working title) is a film about a Vietnamese-American woman’s efforts to reconcile her tumultuous childhood by exploring her family history. This journey leads to the discovery of two sisters, a legacy of childhood abuse, and a forced confrontation with the haunting question: “How do you heal when you don’t know the truth?” Blending personal interviews, verité footage, and animation, this feature-length documentary explores family separation and trauma while questioning the destructive notion that seeking help is a sign of weakness instead of a path to empowerment. These sisters’ stories weave a dynamic narrative, demanding changes to the ingrained social hierarchies which perpetuate intra-familial violence.

Kristian Mercado Figueroa (he, him, his) is a Puerto Rican filmmaker from Spanish Harlem. His psychedelic reggaeton short film, Nuevo Rico, won the Animation Jury Award at SXSW 2021, and in 2019 his short film/music video Pa’lante won a Jury Award at SXSW. In 2020 his screenplay Hawkbells won Slamdance’s Screenwriting Award. He has been the recipient of awards and grants from Cinereach (2020) and others. In 2020, Kris received official selection at SXSW 2020 for the Grammy-nominated Colors by Black Pumas and “Miami Nights Comedy Special” for Hannibal Buress. His work can be seen on Netflix, Comedy Central, Adult Swim, and more. He’s currently working with HBO and A24. Mercado’s distinct voice addresses issues of identity, family, and systemic oppression across race and class.

Project Statement

Mataron A Pedro (They Killed Pedro) is a narrative film about a Puerto Rican man attending Harvard and leading labor strikes against a white Chief of Police and white Governor in the early 1930s. The compelling moments in this story range from an epic sugar cane workers strike in the backdrop of a burning plantation field to a husband and father putting his life on the line to defend his people. The film explores the question: “For whom has democracy been crafted in America?” It explores the themes of class struggles, family, colonialism, and the justice system.

Photo by Matt Carey.

Dean Colin Marcial (he, him, his) is an international filmmaker working in New York and Manila. His award-winning films have been screened at Toronto International Film Festival, SXSW, Sitges Film Festival, Fantastic Fest, and Slamdance. Several of his shorts are Vimeo Staff Picks and Short of the Week selections and featured on VICE, CNN, and Filmmaker Magazine. He co-founded Calavera USA in 2010. This Brooklyn-based production company’s credits include All That I Am (SXSW Special Jury Prize 2013, distributed by Gunpowder & Sky), Fishtail (Tribeca Film Festival 2014, distributed by Netflix), and Yearbook (Sundance Film Festival Jury Prize 2014 and 25+ awards, 125+ festivals). In 2017, he was a recipient of the Tribeca All Access Grant and Tribeca All Access Alumni Grant and shortlisted for the Russo Brothers Fellowship.

Project Statement

Green Gorillas chronicles the rise and fall of an impassioned eco-terrorist group over an explosive decade in the Philippines. When they were young, they were reckless—and when they grow up, they face off.  Jess, Eddie, and Emilia were best friends, a love triangle, and the leaders of an environmental action group who called themselves the Green Gorillas. They staged protests and demonstrations by day--and by night, they organized tree-spiking, tree-sitting, and sabotage. At the heart of the film are visionaries whose ideals collide. Their emotions and history run deep. Three people, who long to be together, but keep themselves unrequited. In Tagalog this is called “hugot”—a deeply-felt aching inside your bones and body, a wistful longing for something that may never be.

As a descendant of immigrants displaced by conflict, Eunice Lau (she, her, hers) is drawn to stories about the journey of the immigrant and the profundity of hyphenated identities. It’s this inheritance that makes her cognizant of injustice and makes her storytelling personal. Her feature documentary Accept the Call, set in Minnesota’s Somali community, explores the impact of injustice and intergenerational trauma. It aired on PBS’ Independent Lens after screening at acclaimed film festivals. Her work has been supported by the Jerome Foundation, Tribeca Film Institute, Woodstock Film Festival, ITVS, Chicken & Egg Pictures, North Point Institute, and YouTube Impact Lab. A Masters of Fine Arts in film graduate from NYU, Lau was born and raised in Singapore and now lives in Queens on Lenape land.

Project Statement

Son of the Soil is a documentary film about the exigency of our ecocide told through the story of David Buckel, a lawyer-turned-environmentalist who set himself on fire in the name of climate change. Once celebrated for being a public defender of LGBTQ rights and for creating America’s largest hand-powered compost sites, David’s suicide captures the trauma and impact of climate change on our psyche. By documenting David’s journey as he struggled against the political expedient defunding of his cherished compost site, Lau’s documentary reveals how our profit-driven economy compels politicians to pay lip service to the climate movement. The film is also a love story to the world, capturing the zeal of his protégé Domingo Morales as he expands composting across public housing in NYC.

Photo by Wong Maye-E.

Nadav Kurtz (he, him, his) is an Israeli/Japanese/American filmmaker and editor born in Israel and raised in Europe and the United States. His work has been shown at the Sundance Film Festival, True/False Film Fest, Sheffield Doc Fest and more, and has been showcased by the Criterion Channel, POV, and the New York Times’ Op-Docs. His directorial debut, Paraíso, won Best Documentary Short at multiple international festivals and was short-listed for an Academy Award. His direction of 35 short accounts of immigration won him three Gold Pencil awards at The One Show. Kurtz was named in Filmmaker Magazine’s 2020 “25 New Faces of Independent Film” and was a Points North Fellow at the 2021 Camden International Film Festival. He is a member of the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective.

Project Statement

When Omar was six years old, his father Sam produced Street Thief—a fictional feature film about a burglar. Only weeks before the film’s premiere, Sam was arrested for an armed robbery and sentenced to 24 years in prison. Now twenty-two, Omar struggles under the weight of his father’s long absence, while Sam, still incarcerated, hopes to reach Omar through a creative collaboration on a screenplay. Through Kurtz’s intimate relationship with Omar’s family—whom he met while editing Street Thief—this hybrid documentary draws on a wealth of personal archival, behind-the-scenes footage, and 16mm dailies from the film Sam produced before his arrest. It follows Omar’s coming of age as he seeks freedom from his past, reckoning and reconciling on the way to healing his relationship with his father.

Photo by Nolis Anderson.

Madeleine Hunt Ehrlich (she, her, hers) is a filmmaker and artist who has presented projects in Kingston, Jamaica, Miami, Florida, and extensively in the five boroughs of New York City. Her work has screened at the Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum of Art in New York, and at the New Orleans Film Festival, Doclisboa, and Blackstar Film Festivals. She has been featured in Essence Magazine, Studio Museum’s Studio Magazine, ARC Magazine, BOMBLOG, Guernica Magazine, and Small Axe journal, among others. She was named in Filmmaker Magazine’s 2020 “25 New Faces of Independent Film” and is the recipient of a 2020 San Francisco Film Society Rainin Grant, a 2019 Rema Hort Mann Award, a 2019 UNDO fellowship, a 2015 TFI ESPN Future Filmmaker Award and a 2014 Princess Grace Award.

Project Statement

Madame Negritude is the true story of Suzanne Roussi Césaire, the rebellious Martiniquan writer and wife of the Caribbean poet and politician Aimé Césaire. The Césaires were formative members of the group of writers, artists, and philosophers involved in the black power Négritude movement. The couple and their contemporaries led the rejection of colonialism and the rise of African and Caribbean independence movements. Negritude made an impact on how the black people viewed themselves. For fifty years, the impact of writer and activist Suzanne Césaire on influential works of art and political movements has been overshadowed by the political stardom of her husband. This film will break the silence about the important contributions of Suzanne Césaire’s life and work.