NAILAH JEFFERSON: 2024 CHICKEN & EGG AWARD RECIPIENT

Nailah Jefferson (she/her) is a New Orleans born filmmaker intrigued and inspired by the enduring human spirit. Her most recent film, Commuted, premiered at the 2023 New Orleans Film Festival where it won the Audience Award for Best Documentary and Best Louisiana Documentary. Commuted tells the story of Danielle Metz, a woman whose triple life drug sentence was commuted by President Obama after serving 23 years. The film will be available on PBS in 2024.

In 2023, Nailah’s acclaimed HBO Original documentary, Donyale Luna: Supermodel, about the first Black supermodel to grace the covers of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, but whose legacy was lost to history, made its debut. Donyale Luna: Supermodel was an official selection of the American Black Film Festival and Sheffield DocFest. The Huffington Post named it one of the best films of 2023. 

In 2021, Nailah released the short documentary Descended From The Promised Land: The Legacy of Black Wall Street. It shed light on surviving families still coping with the injustices their ancestors endured during the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. The film was screened at DOC NYC, Martha’s Vineyard Black Film Festival and is currently streaming on Black Public Media’s AfroPop Youtube channel.

JUMANA MANNA: 2024 CHICKEN & EGG AWARD RECIPIENT

Jumana Manna (she/her) is a visual artist and filmmaker. Her work explores how power is articulated, focusing on the body, land, and materiality in relation to colonial inheritances and histories of place. Through sculpture, filmmaking, and writing, Manna deals with the paradoxes of preservation practices, particularly within the fields of archaeology, agriculture, and law. Her practice considers the tension between the modernist traditions of categorization and conservation and the unruly potential of ruination as an integral part of life and its regeneration. She has directed and produced three award-winning feature films, Foragers (2022), Wild Relatives (2018), A Magical Substance Flows Into Me (2016), and four shorts. Jumana was raised in Jerusalem and lives in Berlin.

KATY LENA NDIAYE: 2024 CHICKEN & EGG AWARD RECIPIENT

Katy Léna Ndiaye (she/her) is a film director and producer whose films offer a window into contemporary Africa, tracing its journey through history and memory. Her lens has a particular focus, a gentle spotlight on women’s perspectives regarding transmission and heritage. Her work has earned awards at festivals across the globe. 

She is known for her documentaries about women muralists, Traces (2003) and Awaiting for Men (2007). Her work reflects on transmission, and the nuanced journey of womanhood. Among her recent films is Time is on Our Side (2019), a portrait of Burkinabe rapper Smockey, whose lyrics became a catalyst in the resistance to Blaise Compaoré’s regime in Burkina Faso. Her most recent work, Money, Freedom, a History of CFA Franc (2022), sheds light on the currency of French-speaking Africa and its lingering ties to colonial history. 

In 2013, Katy Léna founded IndigoMood Films in Dakar, a platform for her narratives to unfold, and where she accompanies talented directors in bringing their unique visual stories to the screen.

BETH AALA: 2024 CHICKEN & EGG AWARD RECIPIENT

Beth (she/her) is a Filipina-American documentary filmmaker. She has won three Emmy® Awards and a Peabody Award for her work at HBO. Recently, Beth directed and produced Uncharted with Alicia Keys and her organization, She Is The Music. The film premiered at the Tribeca Festival in June 2023. She also directed and produced This is Brighton, which premiered at the Newport Beach Film Festival in the fall of 2023.

Beth’s other directing credits include the News and Documentary Emmy®-nominated films Made in Boise and Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon. She is a proud member of various organizations, including A-DOC, Brown Girls Doc Mafia, and Filipinx Filmmakers. Additionally, she is a member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and a Wyncote Fellow.

Beth’s films have received support from organizations such as ITVS, the International Documentary Association, Chicken & Egg Pictures, the New York State Council of the Arts, and Women Make Movies. Her work has premiered at prestigious festivals including Sundance, Tribeca, Toronto International Film Festival, and AFI Docs. Furthermore, her films have been featured on HBO, PBS, MTV, Discovery, and A&E.

SIERRA PETTENGILL: 2024 CHICKEN & EGG AWARD RECIPIENT

Sierra Pettengill (she/her) is a filmmaker from Brooklyn. Most recently, she directed the all-archival film, RIOTSVILLE, USA, which premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. Her previous all-archival feature-length film, The Reagan Show (2017, directed with Pacho Velez), premiered at the Locarno Film Festival; her short The Rifleman premiered at Sundance in 2021, and her previous short, Graven Image (2018), is held at the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. In 2013, she produced the Academy® Award-nominated film Cutie & the Boxer, which also won an Emmy® Award for Best Documentary. She has also worked as an archival researcher for many artists including Jim Jarmusch, Mike Mills, and Adam Pendleton. She was a Sundance Institute Art of Nonfiction Fellow and is a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow. She serves as a board member of Screen Slate, a cinema nonprofit based in New York.

VIOLET DU FENG: 2024 CHICKEN & EGG AWARD RECIPIENT

Violet Du Feng (she/her) is an Emmy® Award-winning independent documentarian. She is a Documentary branch member of AMPAS and an adjunct professor at the Journalism School of Columbia University. Violet directed and produced the Oscar® Shortlisted Hidden Letters, which premiered in competition at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival, won ten international festival awards, and was broadcast in more than 15 countries. Her debut feature Harbor From The Holocaust (2020) was broadcasted as a PBS/CPB special program, , with music performed by Yo-Yo Ma.

Violet has directed, produced, and executive produced more than ten films over the past decade. Her films have been invited to more than 100 international film festivals and supported by ITVS, IDA, Sundance DFP, Chicken & Egg Pictures, Ford Foundation, Doc Society and IDFA Bertha Fund. Her producing credits include Dear Mother, I Meant To Write About Death (2022), which received a Special Mention at Busan International Film Festival; Singing In The Wilderness (2021), nominee of Golden Alexander Award at Thessaloniki International Film Festival; Confucian Dream (2019), winner of a Special Jury Award at Karlovy Vary International Festival and the Chinese Academy Award of Documentary Film; Maineland (2017), winner of a Special Jury Award at SXSW; and Please Remember Me (2015), the first film to launch a national impact campaign in China which resulted in policy changes. The film was awarded DocImpactHi5 in 2019. 

Violet started her career as a co-producer on the critically acclaimed 2007 film Nanking, which won a Sundance Special Jury Award, a Peabody Award, and an Emmy® Award; was distributed theatrically in 30 countries and was the highest-grossing documentary in China. Born and raised in Shanghai, Violet is currently based in New York City.

URSULA LIANG: 2024 CHICKEN & EGG AWARD RECIPIENT

Ursula Liang (she/her) is an award-winning director and producer with 25 years of experience in storytelling. Her debut feature, 9-Man (2014), was broadcast on public television and called “an absorbing documentary” by The New York Times. Her second film, Down a Dark Stairwell (2020), had its premiere at True/False and was called “the most essential Asian American documentary in decades.” Her latest feature, Jeanette Lee Vs. (2022), is part of ESPN’s acclaimed 30 for 30 series while her most recent short, Two Strikes (2023), aired on the iconic PBS series Frontline. Her work has been supported by ITVS, Ford Foundation, Sundance Institute, Firelight Media, and the Center for Asian American Media. Before becoming a filmmaker, Ursula held staff positions at The New York Times Op-Docs, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, ESPN The Magazine, Asia Pacific Forum, and Hyphen magazine. She has also produced for television, including UFC Primetime and NBC Spartan Ultimate Team Challenge. Ursula is a member of Film Fatales, A-DOC, IDD, and is the Board Vice President of Brown Girls Doc Mafia. Originally from Newton, Massachusetts, she spent two decades in the Bronx, and currently works from Oakland, California 

ALISA KOVALENKO: 2024 CHICKEN & EGG AWARD RECIPIENT

Alisa Kovalenko (she/her) is a Ukrainian award-winning director and a member of the European Film Academy. Alisa’s debut documentary Alisa in Warland, a personal diary through revolution and war in Ukraine, premiered at IDFA in 2015. Home Games, a social fairytale about a young Ukrainian female soccer player, appeared at Sheffield DocFest in 2018, and was again selected at IDFA. Home Games has played at over 100 festivals and was the first Ukrainian creative documentary acquired by Netflix.

In 2019, Alisa started filming a teenage adventure documentary set in war-torn Donbas. We Will Not Fade Away had its World Premiere at the Berlinale 2023. To date, the film has won 15 international awards, including the Ukrainian Film Academy Award 2023 for the best Ukrainian documentary, and it was selected for the European Film Awards 2023.

After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Alisa immediately joined a volunteer combat unit associated with the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Alisa fought in the frontline trenches for months, where she captured footage for her current work-in-progress, Frontline. 

Alisa grew up in Zaporizhzhia, in South-Eastern Ukraine, and studied at the Karpenko-Kary National University of Cinema in Kyiv and at the Andrzej Wajda School in Warsaw.