Search Results for: elaine mcmillion
Eight Nest-supported World Premieres at 2023 Sundance Film Festival
We are egg-static that eight Nest-supported films will have their World premieres at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.
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.
*More details about the Critical Issues Fund coming early next year
In Memoriam of Julia Reichert
We are filled with immense grief from the passing of our beloved Nest-supported filmmaker Julia Reichert. She passed away in Yellow Springs, Ohio after a long battle with urothelial cancer, surrounded by the love of her partner Steven Bognar, daughter Lela Klein, and their family.

Julia Reichert was an Oscar® and Emmy®-winning independent documentary filmmaker, activist, professor, mentor, and champion of emerging filmmakers and the working class based in Ohio. Her evolutionary work focused on class, gender, health, and race in the lives of Americans.
In 2016, Julia was the recipient of our inaugural Chicken & Egg Award and embodied what a recipient of the honor should be: collaborative, generous, and committed to the communities she was part of. Prior to that, Julia was also an early recipient of a Chicken & Egg Pictures’ Celebration Grant that honored trailblazing, risk-taking, veteran women filmmakers. She was awarded the Career Achievement Award at the 2018 International Documentary Awards for her incredible contributions to documentary filmmaking. In 2019, a retrospective of her work, Julia Reichert: 50 Years in Film, organized by the Wexner Center for the Arts, premiered at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC and traveled to a dozen cities across the United States.

Julia became a filmmaker compelled to build a movement of intersectional feminism, where all women from all races and classes would feel welcomed. Her first film, Growing Up Female, was the first feature documentary of the modern Women’s Movement and was selected in 2011 for the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. Long before digital screenings, she traveled with a 16 mm projector across the US, using the film as an organizing tool. Julia was also closely involved in the local activism of the places she visited with her films. In 1971, frustrated with the lack of distribution options for films by and about women, she co-founded New Day Films, the democratically run documentary film distribution cooperative. Fifty-one years later, New Day Films is going strong and now has over 140 active members.
“It really could be from anywhere, that people put on a uniform, punch a clock, trying to make their families have a better life,” she said. “Working people have it harder and harder these days, and we believe that things will get better when workers of the world unite.”
–Julia Reichert during her Academy Award® acceptance speech for Best Documentary Feature

Her films Union Maids and Seeing Red were nominated for an Academy Award® for Best Documentary Feature, as was The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant. Her film A Lion in the House (an ITVS co-production), about kids fighting cancer, premiered at Sundance Film Festival, and won a Primetime Emmy® for Exceptional Merit in Nonfiction Filmmaking. Julia’s film American Factory 美国工厂, a film she worked on during her Chicken & Egg Award year, won the US Documentary Directing Award at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, the Best Documentary Spirit Award, the Best Documentary Gotham Award, the Outstanding Nonfiction Feature and Outstanding Direction awards at the Cinema Eye Honors, and the Academy Award® for Best Documentary Feature. It was the first film released by Higher Ground Productions, the production company created by Michelle & Barack Obama.

Julia’s film 9to5: The Story of a Movement, which she also worked on during her Chicken & Egg Award year, was an official selection of SXSW, Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, AFI DOCS Film Festival, and DOC NYC. The film tells the story of secretaries rising up and organizing to fight for their rights and was nominated for a Peabody Award.
She is the author of Doing It Yourself, the first book on self-distribution in independent film, and was an Advisory Board member of IFP. Julia co-wrote and directed the feature film Emma and Elvis. Over the decades, she mentored hundreds of emerging filmmakers. Julia taught for 28 years at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio.

She lived a life dedicated to highlighting the experiences of the working class and celebrating and pushing forward the careers of new, talented filmmakers. As we grieve her loss, we are comforted by knowing that her legacy lives on through her body of documentary films and the powerful impact she had on the documentary community. We will continue to honor her by supporting emerging filmmakers that, like her, are building a world shaped by the power of documentary films.
Rest in power, Julia.
Belly of the Beast Receives Four News and Documentary Emmy® Noms!
Nominations for the 42nd Annual News and Documentary Emmy® Awards were announced today by The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS): Project: Hatched 2020 grantee Belly of the Beast received FOUR nominations! Also nominated were two films by Chicken & Egg Award recipients and one produced by our Co-founder & Board President Julie Parker Benello.
Belly of the Beast (Project: Hatched 2020)
dir. Erika Cohn
prods. Nicole Docta, Christen Marquez & Angela Tucker
Nominated for Outstanding Direction: Documentary, Outstanding Current Affairs Documentary, Best Documentary, Outstanding Editing: Documentary
AlumNest Films
The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte Hosts The Tonight Show
Nominated for Outstanding Arts and Culture Documentary
dir. Yoruba Richen (2016 Chicken & Egg Award Recipient)
prods. Valerie Thomas & Joan Walsh
Tutwiler
Nominated for Outstanding Short Documentary
dir. Elaine McMillion Sheldon (2016 Chicken & Egg Award Recipient)
prod. Alysia Santo
John Lewis: Good Trouble
Nominated by Outstanding Research: Documentary, Outstanding Historical Documentary, Outstanding Lighting Direction and Scenic Design
dir. Dawn Porter (2017 Chicken & Egg Award recipient)
prods. Erika Alexander & Ben Arnon
Special Congratulations
A special congratulations to our Co-Founder & Board President Julie Parker Benello, producer of Athlete A (dirs. Bonni Cohen & Jon Shenk, prods. Serin Marshall, Julie Parker Benello & Jen Say). The film was nominated for Best Documentary and Outstanding Investigative Documentary.
Check out the full nomination list here. The awards for Documentary Categories will be presented on Wednesday, September 29, 2021. Post by 2021 Summer Communications Intern Mariana Sanson.
Celebrating Women This March at Chicken & Egg Pictures
Today is International Women’s Day, a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women. This year’s International Women’s Day theme is balance—promoting the need for equality and a gender-balanced world.
Chicken & Egg Pictures is honoring women’s voices today by looking back on the many Nest-supported films about women and girls and looking forward at some powerful films to come. Through the lenses of empathy, intimacy, and dignity, these films represent the diverse complexities of what it means to be a woman or girl in our world today. We hope these Nest-supported filmmakers and their work lead to a more balanced film industry.
Get your International Women’s Day inspiration by streaming these egg-cellent women-directed and women-centered films:
After Tiller, co-directed by Martha Shane and Lana Wilson (also a Chicken & Egg Award recipient), paints a complex, compassionate portrait of the four American doctors left who openly provide third-trimester abortions. Since the assassination of Dr. George Tiller in Kansas in May 2009, these physicians have become the new number-one targets of the anti-abortion movement, yet continue to risk their lives every day to do work that many believe is murder, but which they believe is profoundly important for their patients’ lives.
After Tiller is available on Amazon Prime.
The Apology, directed by Tiffany Hsiung, is a film about memory, told through the current relationships three women have with the people closest to them and how these relationships indelibly shape the last years of their lives. The three women – Gil Won-Ok in South Korea, Grandma Cao in China, and Lola Adela in the Philippines – are all former “comfort women” who were among the 200,000 girls and young women forced into military sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II.
The Apology is available on Amazon Prime.
Heroin(e), directed by 2016 Chicken & Egg Award recipient Elaine McMillion Sheldon, follows three women—a fire chief, a judge and a missionary—who are battling America’s modern opioid epidemic in Huntington, West Virginia, once a bustling industrial town, now a place with an overdose rate 10 times the national average. This flood of heroin now threatens this Appalachian city with a cycle of generational addiction, lawlessness, and poverty. But within this distressed landscape, Elaine McMillion Sheldon shows a different side of the fight against drugs—one of hope.
Heroin(e) is available on Netflix.
American Revolutionary: The Evolution Of Grace Lee Boggs, directed by Grace Lee (also a Chicken & Egg Award recipient) tells the story of Grace Lee Boggs, a 98-year-old Chinese American woman whose vision of revolution will surprise you. A writer, activist, and philosopher rooted for more than 70 years in the African American movement, she has devoted her life to an evolving revolution that encompasses the contradictions of America’s past and its potentially radical future.
American Revolutionary: The Evolution Of Grace Lee Boggs is available on Netflix.
Pashtana’s Lesson, directed by Beth Murphy, follows the story of a young girl living in the rural Afghan village of Deh’Subz, on the outskirts of Kabul Province, as she resists an arranged marriage so that she may attend Zabuli Education Center, the first girls’ school in the area.
In 2016, Pashtana’s Lesson debuted as a New York Times Op-Doc. To watch, visit the New York Times Op-Docs website. What Tomorrow Brings, the feature-length documentary on which Pashtana’s Lesson is based, aired on PBS’s POV series and is available on Amazon Prime.
Moving on to the rest of March, Women’s History Month: In a year when women are mobilizing and running for office in unprecedented numbers, tune into PBS for Women, War, and Peace II, the acclaimed documentary series which presents four women-directed films exploring the pivotal role women are playing in dramatic conflicts and peace settlements across the globe. This season, three out of four films featured are Nest-supported projects. Check your local listings for exact times and dates.
The Trials of Spring, directed by Gini Reticker debuts Monday, March 25. The film follows the journeys of three Egyptian women from the early days of the 2011 Arab Spring until today: Hend, from a rural military family, awaiting a harsh prison sentence for protesting against military rule; Miriam, an activist fighting to end sexual assault; and Mama Khadiga, a formerly veiled widow who became a caretaker of the revolutionaries. Their intersecting stories reveal the vital and underreported role women play in shaping the region’s future.
Naila and the Uprising, directed by Julia Bacha debuts Tuesday, March 26. Weaving together interviews, news footage, and expressive animation, award-winning documentarian Julia Bacha (also a Chicken & Egg Award recipient) inventively chronicles the remarkable journey of Naila Ayesh, who in the late 1980s joined a clandestine movement of Palestinian women who played a pivotal role in the nonviolent uprising known as the First Intifada.
A Journey of a Thousand Miles: Peacekeepers, co-directed by Geeta Gandbhir (also a Chicken & Egg Award recipient), Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy (also on our Eggsperts advisory board), and Perri Peltz, debuts Tuesday, March 26. The film follows an all-female, Bangladeshi unit of UN peacekeepers as they leave their friends, families and all familiarity for deployment abroad in Haiti. The film examines how this journey forever alters their lives while illuminating the unique role that women play in restoring peace in the world’s most volatile regions.
Nest-supported films about women and girls to look out for in the future:
Writing With Fire, directed by Rintu Thomas & Sushmit Ghosh (2018 (Egg)celerator Lab), tells the story India’s only newspaper run by Dalit women. Armed with smartphones, Chief Reporter Meera and her journalists break traditions, be it on the frontlines of India’s biggest issues or within the confines of their homes, redefining what it means to be powerful.
Writing With Fire is currently in production.
Reentry (Working Title), directed by Jennifer Redfearn (2018 (Egg)celerator Lab), is an immersive, character-driven film follows three women—who are part of a new reentry program in Cleveland, Ohio—as they prepare to leave prison, reunite with their children, and find jobs after serving time for drug-related charges.
Reentry is currently in post production.
Rajada Dalka/Nation’s Hope, directed by Hana Mire
(2016 Diversity Fellows Initiative; 2017 (Egg)celerator Lab), follows the Somali National Women’s basketball team in their first season since the civil war, as veteran coach Suad Galow shepherds her team of fearless young women and helps them to overcome the violent threats against them from members of the Al-Shabab militia and reclaim their place on the international stage.
Rajada Dalka/Nation’s Hope is currently in post production.
Chicken & Egg Pictures at the News & Documentary Emmy Awards®
Nominees for the 39th Annual News & Documentary Emmy Awards® were announced today. Here are the Nest-supported films and filmmakers included. Congratulations to all and good luck!
Solitary, directed by Kristi Jacobson (2016 Breakthrough Filmmaker Award recipient) for Outstanding Investigative Documentary and Outstanding Editing – Documentary
Solitary investigates an invisible part of the American justice system: the use of isolation and segregation in US prisons, commonly known as solitary confinement. With unprecedented access inside a prison tackling the issue head on, the film explores this divisive issue through the experiences of those on both sides of the bars.
Heroin(e), directed by Elaine McMillion Sheldon (2016 Breakthrough Filmmaker Award recipient)* for Outstanding Short Documentary
“Once a bustling industrial town, Huntington, West Virginia has become the epicenter of America’s modern opioid epidemic, with an overdose rate 10 times the national average. This flood of heroin now threatens this Appalachian city with a cycle of generational addiction, lawlessness, and poverty. But within this distressed landscape, Peabody Award-winning filmmaker Elaine McMillion Sheldon (Hollow) shows a different side of the fight against drugs—one of hope.”**
National Bird, directed by Sonia Kennebeck for Outstanding Current Affairs Documentary
“National Bird follows the dramatic journey of three whistleblowers who are determined to break the silence around one of the most controversial current affairs issues of our time: the secret US drone war. At the center of the film are three US military veterans. Plagued by guilt over participating in the killing of faceless people in foreign countries, they decide to speak out publicly, despite the possible consequences.”*
Sonia’s second film Enemies of the State is a participant of the 2018 Accelerator Lab.
See the rest of the nominees here. The 39th Annual News & Documentary Emmy Awards® will be presented Monday, October 1.
*Chicken & Egg Pictures did not directly support Heroin(e), but supported Elaine during her Breakthrough year. Check out Elaine’s newest film on the subject, Recovery Boys (on Netflix streaming).
**Synopsis from the Heroin(e) webpage.
***Synopsis from the National Bird webpage.
Post by 2018 Communications Intern Morgan Lee Hulquist.
Peabody Nominations are in!
The 77th Peabody Award nominations and we’re thrilled to announce that three Nest-supported filmmakers are in the running. Congratulations to all!
Heroin(e), directed by Elaine McMillion Sheldon (2016 Breakthrough Filmmaker Award recipient)*
“Once a bustling industrial town, Huntington, West Virginia has become the epicenter of America’s modern opioid epidemic, with an overdose rate 10 times the national average. This flood of heroin now threatens this Appalachian city with a cycle of generational addiction, lawlessness, and poverty. But within this distressed landscape, Peabody Award-winning filmmaker Elaine McMillion Sheldon (Hollow) shows a different side of the fight against drugs—one of hope.”**
Motherland, directed by Ramona Diaz (2018 Breakthrough Filmmaker Award recipient)
One of the world’s poorest and most populous countries, the Philippines, struggles with reproductive health policy—both in the legislature where laws are in debate, and in a hospital with the busiest maternity ward on the planet.
Strong Island, directed by Yance Ford
Set in the suburbs of the black middle class, Strong Island seeks to uncover how—in the year of the Rodney King trial and the Los Angeles riots—the murder of the filmmaker’s older brother went unpunished. The film is an unflinching look at homicide, racial injustice, and the corrosive impact of grief over time.
*Chicken & Egg Pictures did not directly support Heroin(e), but supported Elaine during her Breakthrough year.
**Synopsis from the Heroin(e) webpage.
Ten Nest-supported films at Hot Docs 2018!
Showcasing over 200 films and hosting over 200 thousand people each year, Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival is North America’s largest documentary film festival. Chicken & Egg Pictures is excited to announce that ten Nest-supported films will be gracing this year’s line-up!
The 2018 Hot Docs festival will run April 26-May 6 in Toronto. You can view the schedule here and purchase festival passes and packages here.
Blowin’ Up, directed by Stephanie Wang-Breal
Roll Red Roll, directed by Nancy Schwartzman
Recovery Boys, directed by Elaine McMillion Sheldon (2017 Breakthrough Filmmaker Award Recipient)
The Devil We Know, directed by Stephanie Soechtig and Jeremy Seifert (co-director)
The Feeling of Being Watched, directed by Assia Boundaoui (2015-16 Accelerator Lab)
A Thousand Girls Like Me, directed by Sahra Mani (2016 Diversity Fellow Initiative)
United Skates, directed by Dyana Winkler and Tina Brown (2016 Diversity Fellow Initiative)
Tree, directed by Milica Zec and Winslow Turner Porter
Warrior Women, directed by Christina King and Elizabeth Castle (2017 Diversity Fellows Initiative)
On Her Shoulders directed by Alexandria Bombach (2018 SXSW LUNA / Chicken & Egg Pictures Award recipient)
***
In addition to the Nest-supported films that will be screening at the 2018 Hot Docs Festival, keep an eye out for the following films by directors whose work Chicken & Egg Pictures has supported and recognized in the past.
Grit directed by Cynthia Wade (Freeheld, 2007 and 2008) and Sasha Friedlander (Mudflow, 2013)
Inventing Tomorrow directed by Laura Nix (2018 Breakthrough Filmmaker Award recipient)
Skywards directed by Eva Weber (Black Out, 2007)
And a special shout out to Barbara Kopple (2011 Chicken & Egg Pictures Celebration Award) who has a few films playing at Hot Docs!
Chicken & Egg Pictures wants to wish these Nest-supported films and filmmakers luck with their participation in the Hot Docs Forum on May 1st and 2nd of the festival.
Born In China directed by Nanfu Wang and Lynn Zhang
The Rashomon Effect directed by Lyric Cabral
Nobody Loves Me, directed by Farihah Zaman and Jeff Reichert, co-directores of the Nest-supported documentary Remote Area Medical.
Congratulations everyone!
Post by 2018 Spring Programs Intern Dinayuri Rodriguez.
Chicken & Egg Pictures Oscar Nominees!
Two Nest-supported filmmakers’ films have been nominated for the 90th Academy Awards®, and we could not be more excited!
First-time filmmaker Yance Ford’s Nest-supported film Strong Island is nominated for Best Documentary (Feature).
Set in the suburbs of the black middle class, Strong Island seeks to uncover how—in the year of the Rodney King trial and the Los Angeles riots—the murder of the filmmaker’s older brother went unpunished. The film is an unflinching look at homicide, racial injustice, and the corrosive impact of grief over time.
2016 Breakthrough Filmmaker Award Recipient Elaine McMillion Sheldon‘s film Heroin(e) is nominated for Documentary (Short Subject).
“Once a bustling industrial town, Huntington, West Virginia has become the epicenter of America’s modern opioid epidemic, with an overdose rate 10 times the national average. This flood of heroin now threatens this Appalachian city with a cycle of generational addiction, lawlessness, and poverty. But within this distressed landscape, Peabody Award-winning filmmaker Elaine McMillion Sheldon (Hollow) shows a different side of the fight against drugs—one of hope.”*
Many joyful congratulations, and best of luck, to Yance and Elaine!
Check out a full list of all Oscar nominees here. We will be watching the 90th Academy Awards® on Sunday, March 4, 2018, at 8pm EST. Join us as we tune in!
*Synopsis from the Heroin(e) webpage.
2016 Chicken & Egg Award Recipient
Elaine McMillion Sheldon: 2016 Chicken & Egg Award Recipient
Elaine McMillion Sheldon is a documentary filmmaker and media artist who explores themes of identity, roots, and change. She’s the director of Hollow, the Emmy-nominated and Peabody-winning interactive documentary that explores life in the Appalachian coalfields. She’s also the co-producer of The Lower 9, a feature-length documentary about The Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Sheldon’s film and interactive work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, from the New York Film Festival to IDFA. Sheldon was a 2013 Future of Storytelling Fellow, and named one of the “25 New Faces of Independent Film” in 2013 by Filmmaker Magazine and one of “50 People Changing The South” in 2015 by Southern Living Magazine. She works across platforms and mediums—film, photo, audio, interactive media—to create storytelling experiences. Sheldon is currently working on several projects that employ the storytelling skills she has developed for multiple mediums, including short and feature filmmaking, longform and interactive journalism, participatory media, virtual reality, and audio storytelling. Two of the film-based projects include a feature-length documentary about home, identity, and roots of Latino families living in Appalachia, and a short-film collaboration with the New York Times Op-Docs centered on the election year in rural America.