The 33rd edition of the New York Human Rights Watch Film Festival will feature two Nest-supported films! The festival will run from Friday, May 20 to Thursday, May 26 with both in-person and online screenings.
A tale of the complicated relationship between Rohingya and Buddhists in Myanmar, told over five years through the eyes of two midwives from either side of the divide.
Delikado Writer and Executive Producer 2018 Chicken & Egg Award Recipient Laura Nix, dir. Karl Malakunas, prods. Marty Syjuco, Michael Collins, Kara Magsanoc-Alikpala
Chicken & Egg Pictures proudly announced via Women & Hollywoodsix new grantees of our 2022 Project: Hatched program. Each film will receive $30,000 toward its completion and impact campaign and will participate in a seven-month program with tailored mentorship for impact strategy and professional development. Additionally, two films will each receive a $15,000 finalist grant.
This year, Chicken & Egg Pictures invited previously supported filmmakers in our alumni community, AlumNest, to participate in the Project: Hatched selection process.
“These processes are always complex and we receive more applications worthy of consideration than we can support. Sharing the power and responsibility that comes with making these selections with our AlumNest filmmakers was a very special and illuminating experience.”
Said Program Director Lucila Moctezuma.
Please click the film titles for more information on each project, and give these passionate and committed directors a warm welcome to the Nest!
Directors: Lisa Riordan Seville, Zara Katz Producers: Kiara C. Jones, Lisa Riordan Seville, Zara Katz Kristal is a young ambitious Philadelphian driven to keep families connected to their incarcerated loved ones. But when her father and brother return from prison, she confronts the ultimate question: can she reunite her own family?
Director: Margaret Byrne Producer: Margaret Byrne Producer/Impact Producer: Latesha Dickerson A filmmaker and three Chicagoans navigate the complexities of living with mental illness.
Director: Rebeca Huntt Producers: Rebeca Huntt, Sofia Geld Impact Producer: Mia Bruno A stunning self-portrait, tough, raw, stubborn, and powerful “Beba” stares down the curses of her ancestry, probing the psychic wounds she has inherited, while simultaneously embracing the vastness of her multitudes.
Director: Deann Borshay Liem Producers: Deann Borshay Liem, Ramsay Liem, Sarah Kim, Gay Dillingham Thirty women peacemakers, including Gloria Steinem, undertake a risky crossing of the demilitarized zone (DMZ), from North to South Korea, to end America’s longest-running war.
Director: Sally Rubin Producer: Sally Rubin Impact Producer: Nick Kelso Mama Has a Mustache is a short animated documentary about identity and family outside of the traditional gender binary, as seen through children’s eyes.
Director: Emma Francis-Snyder Producer: Tony Gerber In 1970, the Young Lords, a group of activists, took over a decrepit hospital in the South Bronx, launching a battle for their lives, their community, and healthcare for all.
Director: Ivey Camille Manybeads Tso Producers: Jordan Flaherty, Emily Faye Ratner, Ewa Jasiewicz A Navajo filmmaker investigates the global displacement of Indigenous people and the devastation of the environment by corporations that have exploited the land where she was born.
Directors: Tia Lessin, Emma Pildes Producers: Emma Pildes, Daniel Arcana, Jessica Levin The Janes is the story of an underground network of women in Chicago in the ‘60s and early ‘70s who provided safe, affordable, illegal abortions
We are egg-static to see eight supported films, and seven AlumNest films in the 29th Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival line-up. This edition will take place in-cinemas in Toronto and will stream across Canada from Thursday, April 28 to Sunday, May 8. The festival stated that 49% of the official selections were directed by women, maintaining its commitment to a roughly 50-50 gender split.
A personal documentary that follows Director Jasmin López as she works to heal from child sexual abuse she endured at the hands of her grandfather, Gilberto, a Baptist minister, almost thirty years ago. In the process of sharing her own trauma with her large family, she learns that generations of children in her family were victims of the same abuse. Told from the director’s perspective, Silent Beauty is a film about confronting and accepting difficult truths while finding beauty in the process.
Silent Beauty is a 2019 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee and is having its World Premiere in the Persister section.
dirs.& prods. Clare Weiskopf, Nicolas van Hemelryck
prods. Radu Stancu, Alexandra Galvis
Still from Alis
In a Colombian shelter for teenage girls, filmmakers ask a group of young women to close their eyes and imagine the life story of a fictional classmate named Alis. As reality prevails and fiction fades, the innocent game becomes a descent into hell, where their luminous faces guide the audience to the depths of the dark world they once inhabited, only to emerge with new skin. How to imagine a different life, break the cycle of violence, and embrace a brighter future? Alis is a 2022 (Egg)celerator Lab finalist and is part of Made In Chile: A spotlight on docs from Chile
prods. Mirjam Gelhorn, David Herdies, Michael Krotkiewski
Still from All of Our Heartbeats Are Connected Through Exploding Stars
The 2011 Japan tsunami triggers this staggering essay about loss that connects human and environmental trauma using astonishing juxtapositions. Humans breathe out and the oceans breathe in, so that we are constantly breathing together and becoming our planet. If we admit that our human experiences of pain and the Earth’s are just different versions of the same destruction, will recovery come, be it in ripples or waves?*
All of Our Heartbeats Are Connected Through Exploding Stars is a 2020 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee and is part of the World Showcase section.
When a news publisher in Arkansas, an attorney in Arizona and a speech therapist in Texas are told to choose between their jobs and their political beliefs, they launch legal battles that expose an attack on freedom of speech in 33 states in America.
The survival story of a mother and her daughter, the filmmaker, through the desperate flight from a crumbling Cambodia after the collapse of the Khmer Rouge regime. Faced with the silence brought by trauma and time, the longing to understand her mother today resonates in an abysmal echo, while reviving the memories as a political refugee in Europe.
Eskape is a 2020 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee and is having its North American premiere in the Hidden Stories section.
A tale of the complicated relationship between Rohingya and Buddhists in Myanmar, told over five years through the eyes of two midwives from either side of the divide.
With Doris’ voice as our guide, Mija uses VHS archive, verité footage, and camcorder vlogging to tell the story of two young women’s coming-of-age journeys as they look for success and belonging. The film is an immensely emotional and intimate portrait honoring the resilience of immigrants and their children.
prods. Gigi Dement, Cathryne Czubek, Matt Porwoll, Hugo Perez, Kyaligamba Ark Martin
Still from Once Upon a Time in Uganda
Against all odds, former bricklayer and teacher Isaac Nabwana has turned his small home in the slums of Uganda’s capital city into the Wakaliwood action movie studio. After 10 years and 40+ films, Wakaliwood has become an overnight international media sensation, inspiring others around the world to follow in his footsteps. When New York film nerd Alan Hofmanis shows up on his doorstep one day, everything is bound to change.
Nominations for the 82nd Annual Peabody Awards were announced on Wednesday, April 13. The Peabody Awards recognize compelling and meaningful storytelling in electronic media and aim to honor stories that matter. The winners will be announced from Monday, June 6 through Thursday, June 9 in a multi-day virtual celebration on the official Peabody Award social media platforms. See below the Nest-supported films and AlumNest films that were nominated.
We are egg-cited to see three Nest-supported filmmakers, and two AlumNest filmmakers participating at the 65th San Francisco Film Festival, taking place from Thursday, April 22 through Sunday May 1, with a full in-person lineup.
With Doris’ voice as our guide, Mija uses VHS archive, verité footage, and camcorder vlogging to tell the story of two young women’s coming-of-age journeys as they look for success and belonging. The film is an immensely emotional and intimate portrait honoring the resilience of immigrants and their children. Mija is a 2021 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee and is part of the McBaine Documentary Feature Competition.
Wanda Johnson and Angela Williams, mothers of young Black men victimized by police brutality, come together and build a network of community-led support, mutual aid, and healing in this trenchant documentary. Black Mothers Love & Resist is a 2020 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee and is part of the Documentaries: USA section.
A tale of the complicated relationship between Rohingya and Buddhists in Myanmar, told over five years through the eyes of two midwives from either side of the divide. Midwives is a 2020 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee and is part of the Documentaries: USA section.
From the AlumNest
The Janes dirs. Tia Lessin and Emma Pildes prods. Emma Pildes, Daniel Arcana, Jessica Levin
TikTok, Boom. dir. & prod. Shalini Kantayya prods. Ross M. Dinerstein, Danni Mynard
A special shout out to our Co-Founder & Board President Julie Parker Benello, producer of Sell/Buy/Date (dir. & prod. Sarah Jones, prods. David Goldblum, Julie Parker Benello), screening in the Documentaries: USA section.
The industry awards of the 2022 edition of Visions du Réel were announced on Wednesday, April 13. We are celebrating 2021 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee Against the Tide on winning the Freestudios Award for VdR-Work in Progress project for the creation of a DCP package.
During the awards announcement, Madeline Robert, Head of Industry, also noted that this festival edition had a record of people in attendance. We are also sending a huge congratulations to the festival and the team that made it possible.
A tale of love, brotherhood, and resentments against the backdrop of an adoring sea, which is turning adverse under the menacing effects of an all-pervading calamity called climate change.
Check out the full list of industry awards winners with this link.
At Chicken & Egg Pictures we are sending massive congratulations to Chicken & Egg Award recipients Brett Story and Stephanie Wang-Breal on being selected for an NBCU Academy Original Voices Fellowship. The fellowship is directed towards documentarians who identify as–or showcase stories highlighting social issues affecting–women, LGBTQ+, communities of color and people with disabilities.
The selected fellows will receive a $60,000 grant and a one-year artist development fellowship designed to help each filmmaker with the completion of their films; access to archival research and production resources as well as NBC News Studios executives and journalists; attend the 67th Flaherty Film Seminar, Continents of Drifting Clouds, programmed by Almudena Escobar López and Sky Hopinka; and will also participate in Collective Lens: An Impact Roadmap, a robust impact strategy workshop, led by Peace is Loud, to equip filmmakers with the tools to run their own impact campaigns, advancing transformative peace and social justice through storytelling.
Untitled Labor Union Documentary dirs. Brett Story and Stephen Maing prods. Samantha Curley and Mars Verrone,
From the perspective of a single Amazon fulfillment center, this documentary is an intimate portrait of current and former Amazon workers taking on one of the world’s largest and most powerful companies in the fight to unionize.
Florence From Ohio dir. Stephanie Wang-Breal prod. Carrie Weprin & Mynette Louie
Florence from Ohio is a real-life, genre-twisting film about Florence Wang and her second-generation daughter, Stephanie Wang-Breal. Told through the lens of Florence’s St. John Knit power suits and 1980s local TV cooking show, mother and daughter collectively reimagine and grapple with their generational ideas of motherhood, feminism, racism, and assimilation.
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 WasNot 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.
We are egg-cited to see Nest-supported filmmakers participating at Visions du Réel (International Film Festival Nyon, Switzerland): 2017 Chicken & Egg Award recipient Kirsten Johnson, who is the Special Guest, and 2020 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee All of Our Heartbeats Are Connected Through Exploding Stars (previously titled Stories from Debris), which is having its world premiere. The in-person festival will take place in the city of Nyon from Thursday, April 7 to Sunday, April 17, and online from Monday, April 11 through Monday, April 18.
2017 Chicken & Egg Award recipient Kirsten Johnson will give a masterclass in partnership with Le Temps, and her work as director as well as a selection of films to which she contributed will be featured in a retrospective. Plus, the posters and visual identity of the festival were taken from Kirsten’s body of work.
prods. Mirjam Gelhorn, David Herdies, Michael Krotkiewski
Still from All of Our Heartbeats Are Connected Through Exploding Stars
On March 11, 2011, a tsunami devastated the coasts of Japan, claiming thousands of lives. Today, the scars of this tragedy remain visible. Yet in spite of this, people, plants and animals alike continue to exist. Through striking images shot on land and in the sea, Jennifer Rainsford’s film celebrates human resilience and the endless beauty of our planet.*
All of Our Heartbeats Are Connected Through Exploding Stars is a 2020 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee and is having its world premiere in the International Feature Film Competition .
At Chicken & Egg Pictures, we congratulate 2021 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee Alison O’Daniel on her 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship. Alison is a filmmaker and visual artist, and Assistant Professor of Film at California College of the Arts. She is currently working on her first feature film The Tuba Thieves. Huge congratulations, Alison. We are so proud of you!
2022 Chicken & Egg Award recipient 
2019 Chicken & Egg Award recipient 
