2024 Chicken & Egg Award Recipient
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.
The Phantom Pain of Rojava
SYNOPSIS
The Phantom Pain of Rojava is a documentary that follows a group of Kurdish guerillas in northern Syria who are willing to devote their lives to protecting the newbornWomen’s Revolution in Rojava. The film takes us on a journey into the lives of these fighters who have been injured, mostly by drone attacks, or have had body parts amputated. They live together in a secret house for the wounded, and their daily lives are both extraordinary and surreal. Despite the challenges they face, including moments of humor, they demonstrate incredible human willpower.
Since 2019, the balance of warfare for the Kurdish guerrillas has radically changed due to new drone technology being used by Turkey. The battlefield has shifted from the ground to the air, and the guerrillas’ bodies are controlled and terrorized by this new unmanned machine that tracks and targets them from thousands of kilometers away.
Rojava, the homeland of the Kurdish people and a utopia for them, is the birthplace of the Women’s Revolution and serves as a metaphor for the guerrillas’ bodies. While the fighters of Rojava lose body parts every day in drone attacks, the homeland of Rojava is also invaded step by step. Phantom Pain is pain that stems from a body part that no longer exists, usually from a part of the body that has been amputated but is still remembered by the brain. This is why the rest of the body continues to feel the pain forever. For the people of Rojava, the memory of their lost homeland serves as a metaphor for a lost body part, and reality becomes injured and painful.
Perhaps the new drone weapons will bring an end to Rojava’s resistance, or maybe they’ll be the last generation of guerrillas that fight using their bodies and instincts.
The Phantom Pain of Rojava was supported through Maryam Ebrahimi’s 2021 Chicken & Egg Award.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Maryam Ebrahimi (she/her) is an Emmy® Award-winning producer and director born in Tehran in 1976. She studied art and art theory at the University of Tehran’s Faculty of Fine Arts before continuing her education in Sweden. Ebrahimi began working as a producer, director, and researcher in the documentary field.
Ebrahimi co-directed and produced Nimafilm’s 2012 documentary No Burqas Behind Bars, which is set in an Afghan women’s prison, and directed the short documentary Susie’s Dollhouse for Swedish broadcaster Sveriges Television. She also produced I Was Worth 50 Sheep (2010), filmed in Afghanistan; Those Who Said No (2014), filmed in Iran, Sweden, and Japan; and Prison Sisters (2016), filmed in Sweden and Afghanistan, all for Nimafilm. Herer film Stronger Than A Bullet, shot on the Iran-Iraq border, premiered at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam in 2017. Her latest feature documentary film as a director is The Phantom Pain of Rojava.
As a producer, her latest project is Born to Struggle, currently in production. The film takes place in a Rohingya refugee camp and follows 16-year-old Ayaz and 35-year-old Muhammad Noor, two Rohingya from different generations. Ebrahimi has extensive experience in location shooting and a deep knowledge of visual storytelling.
ABOUT THE PRODUCER
Stina Gardell (she/her) is a director and producer in documentary film, educated at Stockholm Dramatic University. In 2005, she started the production company Mantaray Film and as a producer has been awarded several prestigious awards such as Guldbaggen, Kristallen, Ikaros, and Silverfjärilen. Internationally, Stina has twice been awarded Best Documentary at the Prix Italia, 2007 for Nunnan and 2012 for He Thinks He Is the Best. The latter also received the Special mention award at the Prix Europa. Among her latest documentaries is The Most Beautiful Boy In the World, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival 2021.
Songs of Earth
SYNOPSIS
It does not get much bigger than Songs of Earth. Margreth Olin has created a stunning, cinematic work about life, death, nature and about simply being present in the world. With her native Norway’s dizzyingly beautiful mountain landscapes as its monumental backdrop, Olin embarks on an existential journey with her own aging parents as the human yardstick out in the vast expanses. Here, their family has always lived side by side with nature. Even when the earth’s primordial forces have shown their most merciless side. Her parents’ love and lifelong loyalty bear quiet witness to how surroundings and inner space resonate with each other. But not even the most rock-solid mountain is unchanging – and certainly not in times like ours. The level of detail in Olin’s lyrical and visionary poem to her homeland is almost beyond anything seen on the big screen. And that is most definitely where Songs of Earth should be experienced.
Songs of Earth was supported through Margreth Olin’s 2022 Chicken & Egg Award.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Margreth Olin was born in Stranda, Sunnmøre, Norway, on April 16, 1970. She was educated at Volda University College and at the University of Bergen. Margreth made her directorial debut in 1995, with the school production In the House of Love. In 1998, her first full-length documentary In the House of Angels was released theatrically in Norway. The film received multiple awards, among them The Amanda Award (Norwegian equivalent of an Oscar®) for Best Documentary. Her breakthrough came with the film My Body. The film generated multiple dialogues in media; won an Amanda Award; received and The Golden Chair and Audience Award at The Norwegian Short Film Festival in Grimstad; was nominated and given a diploma at the IDFA Awards 2002; and received other international prizes.
Her film Raw Youth was released in Norwegian cinemas and was nominated for best documentary at the European Film Award in 2005. Margreth’s feature film The Angel was selected as the Norwegian entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the 83rd Academy Awards®. Her documentary Nowhere Home (2012), about unaccompanied minor asylum seeking children, created a vast debate in Norway and was screened at numerous international festivals and conferences. Olin is one of the six directors that participated in Wim Wenders’ Cathedrals of Culture (2013), she directed the section dedicated to the Oslo Opera House, the film premiered at Berlinale in 2014. Olin’s documentary Doing Good is one of the highest grossing documentaries ever in Norway. She produced the film Self Portrait, which participated at DOC NYC, was eligible for consideration in the Documentary Feature category for the 93rd Academy Awards®, and has won seven international awards.
How It Feels to Be Free
SYNOPSIS
How It Feels to Be Free takes an unprecedented look at the intersection of African American women artists, politics, and entertainment and tells the story of how six trailblazing performers, Lena Horne, Abbey Lincoln, Diahann Carroll, Nina Simone, Cicely Tyson and Pam Grier, changed American culture through their films, fashion, their music and their politics.
How It Feels to Be Free was supported through Yoruba Richen’s 2016 Chicken & Egg Award.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Yoruba Richen (she/her) is an award-winning documentary filmmaker whose work has been featured on multiple outlets, including Netflix, MSNBC, FX, HBO, The Atlantic, and Field of Vision. Her most recent film The Rebellious Rosa Parks premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in June 2022 and is now streaming on Peacock. Other recent films include the Emmy®-nominated How It Feels to Be Free and the Emmy® and Peabody nominated The Sit In: Harry Belafonte Hosts the Tonight Show. She was a director on the award winning series Black and Missing for HBO and High on the Hog for Netflix. Yoruba is the co-director of American Reckoning which aired on PBS’s FRONTLINE and The Killing of Breonna Taylor which won an NAACP Image Award. She is also a past Guggenheim fellow and a 2016 Chicken & Egg Pictures Award Recipient. Yoruba is the founding director of the Documentary Program at the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.
ABOUT THE PRODUCERS
Elliott Halpern (he/him) is an Emmy® Award-winning producer and director of documentary specials and series and the Creative Director of the Toronto-based production company, Yap Films. Elizabeth Trojian (she/her) is an executive producer at Yap Films, as well as an award-winning producer, writer and director. She has worked on, and created many television documentaries and series for North American and international broadcasters including – the Emmy® nominated How it Feels to Be Free, Unabomber: In his own Words, The Genetic Revolution, Mosquito, Made by Destruction and My Trans Journey.
Mehret Mandefro (she/her) and Lacey Schwartz Delgado (she/her) are award-winning producers/writers/directors. The content they create is deeply connected to an awareness and centering of people of color, women, public health, and wellness.
The Golden Thread
SYNOPSIS
Outside Kolkata a few jute mills crank on, virtually unchanged since the industrial revolution. Powered by steam and sweat, work is a dance to the dictate of profit and century-old machines. The Golden Thread follows the weft and warp of jute work, from farm to factories, to discover deeply entwined lives in the vast ecosystem which stands threatened today.
The Golden Thread was supported through Nishtha Jain’s 2020 Chicken & Egg Award.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Nishtha Jain (she/her) is an internationally-recognized filmmaker based in Mumbai best known for Gulabi Gang (2012), Lakshmi and Me (2007) and City of Photos (2004). Her films interrogate lived experience at the intersection of gender, caste and class. They explore the political in the personal and uncover the mechanisms of privilege. Jain is a Chicken & Egg Award winner (2020); Member of the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences (AMPAS); Film Independent Global Media Maker Fellow (2019-20); and Recipient of Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellowship (2019). After postgraduate training at Jamia Mass Communication Research Centre, New Delhi, she pursued Film Direction at the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune, prior to launching a career in independent cinema.
She works across various platforms –documentary, narrative, virtual reality and TV series. Her films have been widely screened at film festivals and art-house cinemas and broadcast on TV and have won over 25 international awards and have been reviewed by print-media and academic journals. Jain has served as a juror at IDFA, ZFF, Cinema Verité and IDSFFK. She’s given lectures and master classes at numerous film festivals and universities internationally, including Stanford, NYU, Wellesley College, UCSB, Northwestern University, UT Austin, Cambridge University, University of London, St. Andrews University, Heidelberg, Danish Film School, FTII Pune, India, Satyajit Ray Film & TV Institute.
ABOUT THE PRODUCER
Irena Taskovski (she/her) is the CEO & founder of Taskovski Films network, a London based world sales & production company with offices across Europe. Irena is currently working as film consultant and expert on marketing, sales, financing and festivals for many film institutions including HBO Europe, TRT world, Asian Cinema Fund, Dok.incubator CZ, Sources Germany, and works as the Head Tutor at Emerging Producers – at Ji.hlava IDFF CZ. Irena is the founder of the training program initiative art of creative producing and distribution, Film Academy for Conscious Creative leaders and film residencies. Irena studied in Prague, graduating from FAMU. She also studied at the Sam Spiegel Film and TV School in Jerusalem and obtained a Master’s degree from the National Film & Television School in London, UK. She also has multiple credits in filmography as the producer of The Golden Thread (2022 documentary), Tales from the Prison Cell (2020 Documentary), as a co- producer on Ukrainian Sheriffs (2015 Documentary) and Surire (2015 Documentary), and executive producer on Who Will Be a Gurkha (2012 Documentary). Before these, she had multiple credits as a producer on All for the Good of the World and Nosovice! (2010 Documentary), Czech Peace (2010 Documentary), Czech Dream (2004 Documentary), and The Guest (2003 Short).
Users
SYNOPSIS
Users begins with a mother’s question–will my children love their perfect machines more than they love me, their imperfect mother? She pushes the button and a smart crib lulls her crying baby to sleep, flawlessly every time. This question guides her inquiry into the intimate relationship we have with technology that is increasingly driving all aspects of our society. We explore the unintended and often dehumanizing consequences of our society’s embedded belief that technological progress will lead to the betterment of humanity. Is technology an expression of our humanity or is technology destroying our humanity?
Users was supported through Natalia Almada’s 2018 Chicken & Egg Award.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Recipient of the 2012 MacArthur “Genius” Grant, Natalia Almada (she/her) combines artistic expression with social inquiry to make films that are both personal reflections and critical social commentaries. Her work straddles the boundaries of documentary, fiction, and experimental film. Her most recent film Users premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival where it received the 2021 Documentary Directing Award. Her film Todo lo demás (Everything Else) is a narrative feature starring Academy Award®-nominated Adriana Barraza; it premiered at the New York Film Festival and was nominated for an Ariel Award. El Velador (The Night Watchman) premiered at the 2011 Cannes Directors’ Fortnight and broadcast on the award-winning PBS program POV, along with her other two feature documentaries Al otro lado (To The Other Side) and El General (The General). Almada’s short film All Water Has a Perfect Memory premiered at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival and received the Best Short Documentary award at the Tribeca Film Festival. Almada was the recipient of the 2009 Documentary Directing Award at the Sundance Film Festival and has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, United States Artists, the Herb Alpert Foundation, and The MacDowell Colony. Almada graduated with a Masters of Fine Arts in photography from the Rhode Island School of Design and currently lives between Mexico City and San Francisco.
ABOUT THE PRODUCERS
Josh Penn (he/him) is a producer with the Department of Motion Pictures. He produced Beasts of the Southern Wild, which won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize, the Cannes Caméra d’Or, and was nominated for four Academy Awards (including Best Picture). In addition, Josh was nominated for Outstanding Producer at the 2013 Producers Guild Awards. He has also held producing roles on Monsters and Men (Sundance Special Jury Prize), Patti Cake$, Western (Sundance Special Jury Prize), The Great Invisible (SXSW Grand Jury Prize), and the live documentary A Thousand Thoughts among other films. Josh premiered three films at Sundance 2020: Wendy, Farewell Amor and Bloody Nose Empty Pockets and will premiere three more at Sundance 2021: Philly D.A., Users and 7 Sounds. In 2018, Josh was accepted as a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences. Outside of his work in film, Josh was previously the Michigan New Media Director for President Obama’s 2008 campaign and a Senior Digital Program Manager for the 2012 reelection campaign.
Elizabeth Lodge Stepp (she/her) is an Austin, TX based producer. Elizabeth is a Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program Grantee with her film Users, which premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival and won the US Documentary Directing award. She is also a Sundance Feature Film Creative Producing Fellow with Monsters and Men, which premiered in Sundance’s 2018 Dramatic Competition line-up, and won the festival’s Special Jury Award for Outstanding First Feature. She has produced numerous films, including documentaries Brimstone and Glory, which was named 2017 Top 5 Documentaries by the National Board of Review, and Kerri Walsh Jennings: Gold Within which premiered on NBC in 2016, and co-produced Knight of Cups (2015) and Song to Song (SXSW 2017), both directed by Terrence Malick.
Walk Run Cha-Cha
SYNOPSIS
Paul and Millie Cao fell in love as teenagers in Vietnam but were soon separated by the war. Years later they finally reunited in California. Now, after decades of working hard to build new lives, they are making up for lost time on the dance floor. Shot over a period of six years, Walk Run Cha-Cha is an intimate, beautifully-crafted story about immigration, transformation, and the power of love.
Walk Run Cha-Cha was supported through Laura Nix’s 2018 Chicken & Egg Award.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Laura Nix (she/her) is a director, writer and producer. Her short film, Walk Run Cha-Cha, was nominated for a 2020 Academy Award® for Best Documentary Short Subject, and the New York Times series, From Here to Home, in which the film appears, was nominated for an Emmy®. Her feature documentary Inventing Tomorrow premiered in the U.S. Documentary Competition at Sundance 2018, and won a 2019 Peabody Award. Awarded the 2017 Sundance Institute/Discovery Impact Fellowship, Nix previously directed The Yes Men Are Revolting (Toronto Film Festival 2014, Berlinale 2015), which was released domestically and in multiple international territories. Other feature directing credits include documentary The Light in Her Eyes (IDFA 2011, PBS *POV*), the comedic melodrama The Politics of Fur, which played in over 70 festivals internationally and won multiple awards including the U.S. Grand Jury Prize at Outfest; and Whether You Like It Or Not: The Story of Hedwig. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a film expert for the U.S. State Department’s American Film Showcase, and her nonfiction work has screened at hundreds of film festivals internationally, and on television via HBO, Arte, ZDF, VPRO, CBC, NHK, Canal+, and IFC.
ABOUT THE PRODUCER
Colette Sandstedt (she/her) was nominated for a 2020 Academy Award® for Best Documentary Short Subject for producing Laura Nix’s Walk Run Cha-Cha, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and won Best Short at Viet Film Fest. Colette also produced Academy Award® nominee Rebecca Cammisa’s short narrative film Sunset Tuxedo and the Oscar®-qualifying animated short Confessions Of A Professional Eulogist. She has written, produced, and directed short documentaries for outlets such as The New Yorker and Facing History, and is currently directing the feature documentary Rocketman. Colette is based in Los Angeles.
9to5: The Story of a Movement
SYNOPSIS
When Dolly Parton sang “9 to 5,” she was doing more than just shining a light on the fate of American working women. Parton was singing the true story of a movement that started with 9to5, a group of Boston secretaries in the early 1970s. Their goals were simple—better pay, more advancement opportunities and an end to sexual harassment—but their unconventional approach attracted the press and shamed their bosses into change. Featuring interviews with 9to5’s founders, as well as actor and activist Jane Fonda, 9to5: The Story of a Movement is the previously untold story of the fight that inspired a hit and changed the American workplace.
9to5: The Story of a Movement was supported through Julia Reichert’s 2016 Chicken & Egg Award.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Julia Reichert (she/her) was an Oscar® and Emmy®-winning independent documentary filmmaker, and a four-time Academy Award® nominee. She lived in a small town in Ohio and has chosen to focus on class, gender, and race in the lives of Americans. Julia’s first film, Growing Up Female, was the first feature documentary of the modern Women’s Movement. It was selected in 2011 for the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. 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, a short which premiered at the Telluride Film Festival and on HBO. Her film A Lion in the House (an ITVS co-production), about kids fighting cancer, premiered at Sundance Film Festival, screened nationally on PBS, and won a Primetime Emmy® for Exceptional Merit in Nonfiction Filmmaking. Julia’s film American Factory 美国工厂,(a co-production with Participant), about the rebirth of a dead Midwestern factory, 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, and is currently available for streaming on Netflix. Julia’s film 9to5: The Story of a Movement, an official selection of SXSW, Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, AFI DOCS Film Festival, and DOC NYC, tells the story of secretaries rising up and organizing to fight for their rights. The film premiered on the PBS series Independent Lens, was nominated for a Peabody Award, and now streams on Netflix. Julia co-founded New Day Films, an independent film distribution co-op. 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 has mentored hundreds of emerging filmmakers. Julia taught for 28 years at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. 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.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR-PRODUCER
Steven Bognar (he/him) is an Academy Award® and Primetime Emmy® winning documentary filmmaker based in southwest Ohio. Bognar’s first 1996 film, Personal Belongings, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was broadcast on the PBS series POV. His short films Picture Day (2000) and Gravel (2003) also premiered at Sundance and screened widely. Bognar’s film A Lion in the House (2006) premiered at Sundance, screened on the PBS series Independent Lens, was nominated for a Best Documentary Spirit Award, and won the Primetime Emmy® for Exceptional Merit in Nonfiction Filmmaking. His film The Last Truck (2009) was nominated for an Academy Award® and screened on HBO. His film Sparkle (2012) won the Audience Award® for Best Short at SilverDocs and screened on PBS. Bognar’s film American Factory (2019) won the Directing Award at the Sundance Film Festival, the Independent Spirit Award, the Gotham Award, the Cinema Eye Honor, and the Academy Award® for Best Documentary Feature. Bognar & Reichert’s latest film, 9to5 – The Story Of A Movement, (2020) was an official selection of the SXSW, AFI DOCS, IDFA, Full Frame, and DOC NYC film festivals in 2021. Bognar has taught documentary extensively, including guest lectures at Harvard, Yale, and Stanford Universities.
American Factory 美国工厂
SYNOPSIS
In 2014, a Chinese billionaire opened a Fuyao factory in a shuttered General Motors plant in Dayton, Ohio. For thousands of locals, the arrival of this multinational car-glass manufacturer meant regaining their jobs–and dignity–after the recession left them high and dry. American Factory takes us inside the facility to observe what happens when workers from profoundly different cultures collide.
At first, the culture clash is humorous. Transplanted Chinese workers attend trainings on dealing with their peculiarly casual and “chatty” American counterparts. However tensions escalate as poor safety standards and meager wages ignite serious doubts among the American rank and file. Low productivity and talk of unionization trigger a cascade of controls from Chinese management. Meanwhile, the specter of job loss due to automation looms ominously.
American Factory was supported through Julia Reichert’s 2016 Chicken & Egg Award.
ABOUT THE DIRECTORS
Julia Reichert (she/her) was an Oscar® and Emmy®-winning independent documentary filmmaker, and a four-time Academy Award® nominee. She lived in a small town in Ohio and has chosen to focus on class, gender, and race in the lives of Americans. Julia’s first film, Growing Up Female, was the first feature documentary of the modern Women’s Movement. It was selected in 2011 for the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. 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, a short which premiered at the Telluride Film Festival and on HBO. Her film A Lion in the House (an ITVS co-production), about kids fighting cancer, premiered at Sundance Film Festival, screened nationally on PBS, and won a Primetime Emmy® for Exceptional Merit in Nonfiction Filmmaking. Julia’s film American Factory 美国工厂,(a co-production with Participant), about the rebirth of a dead Midwestern factory, 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, and is currently available for streaming on Netflix. Julia’s film 9to5: The Story of a Movement, an official selection of SXSW, Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, AFI DOCS Film Festival, and DOC NYC, tells the story of secretaries rising up and organizing to fight for their rights. The film premiered on the PBS series Independent Lens, was nominated for a Peabody Award, and now streams on Netflix. Julia co-founded New Day Films, an independent film distribution co-op. 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 has mentored hundreds of emerging filmmakers. Julia taught for 28 years at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. 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.
Steven Bognar (he/him) is an Academy Award® and Primetime Emmy® winning documentary filmmaker based in southwest Ohio. Bognar’s first 1996 film, Personal Belongings, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was broadcast on the PBS series POV. His short films Picture Day (2000) and Gravel (2003) also premiered at Sundance and screened widely. Bognar’s film A Lion in the House (2006) premiered at Sundance, screened on the PBS series Independent Lens, was nominated for a Best Documentary Spirit Award, and won the Primetime Emmy® for Exceptional Merit in Nonfiction Filmmaking. His film The Last Truck (2009) was nominated for an Academy Award® and screened on HBO. His film Sparkle (2012) won the Audience Award® for Best Short at SilverDocs and screened on PBS. Bognar’s film American Factory (2019) won the Directing Award at the Sundance Film Festival, the Independent Spirit Award, the Gotham Award, the Cinema Eye Honor, and the Academy Award® for Best Documentary Feature. Bognar & Reichert’s latest film, 9to5 – The Story Of A Movement, (2020) was an official selection of the SXSW, AFI DOCS, IDFA, Full Frame, and DOC NYC film festivals in 2021. Bognar has taught documentary extensively, including guest lectures at Harvard, Yale, and Stanford Universities.
ABOUT THE PRODUCERS
Julie Parker Benello (she/her) is the Founder of Secret Sauce Media, her latest venture to produce and invest in surprising and timeless film projects. Julie co-founded Chicken & Egg Pictures in 2005 with a shared belief that diverse women nonfiction storytellers have the power to catalyze change at home and around the globe. She produced Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert’s Academy Award®, Emmy®, Gotham and Independent Spirit winning feature documentary American Factory, streaming on Netflix in partnership with Higher Ground Productions and Participant Media. Most recently, she produced Sarah Jones’ directorial debut, Sell Buy Date, premiering at SXSW 2022 and Bonni Cohen & Jon Shenk’s Netflix Originals documentary, Athlete A. Julie lives in San Francisco and serves on the Board of SFFILM and is a member of the Producers Guild of America and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences Documentary Branch.
Jeff Reichert (he/him) is an Academy Award-winning filmmaker who lives in Brooklyn. His films as a director include the feature documentaries Gerrymandering (Tribeca Film Festival 2010), Remote Area Medical (Full Frame 2013), This Time Next Year (Tribeca Film Festival 2014), and the fiction-documentary hybrid Feast of the Epiphany (BAMcinemaFest 2018), and the shorts Kombit (Sundance 2014), Nobody Loves Me (Camden 2017), American Carnage (Field of Vision 2017) and To Be Queen (Tribeca Film Festival 2019). He also produced Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert’s American Factory (Sundance Film Festival 2019). His work has been awarded the Film Independent Spirit Award, Gotham Award, and Cinema Eye Honor (all for Best Documentary). He is a Peabody Award Nominee. He is also the co–founder and editor of the online film journal Reverse Shot (est. 2003), now a publication of the Museum of the Moving Image, and has written for Film Comment, Filmmaker, Huffington Post, and Indiewire.
The Hamlet Syndrome
SYNOPSIS
The war in Ukraine has profoundly affected the young generation since 2014. A few months prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, five young women and men participated in a unique stage production that likened their war experiences to Hamlet’s dilemma.
For each of them, the stage is a platform on which they can pour out their grievances and troubles through Hamlet’s question, “to be or not to be,” reflecting a dilemma that applies to their own lives.
The Hamlet Syndrome evolves as a documentary portraying a vibrant young generation trying to put their lives back in order while being compelled in the complex process to digest their trauma-inducing experiences.
The Hamlet Syndrome was supported through Elwira Niewiera’s 2021 Chicken & Egg Award.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Elwira Niewiera (she/her) is a Polish-German director and screenwriter based in Berlin. In her artistic work, she focuses primarily on social and cultural transformations in Eastern Europe.
She is a recipient of fellowships from Robert Bosch Stiftung, DEFA-Foundation in Berlin, and Nipkow Programm. Her feature documentary Domino Effect (2014) was shown worldwide at more than 50 festivals, including Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival and MoMa Doc Fortnight, and won many awards, including the Golden Dove at DOK Leipzig and Golden Horn at the Krakow Film Festival. The film received a nomination for the Polish Academy Award for Best Documentary.
Her last documentary before beginning production on The Hamlet Syndrome, The Prince and the Dybbuk, premiered at the 74th Venice International Film Festival, where it won Best Documentary on Cinema. In 2019, the film won the Polish Academy Award for Best Documentary. Elwira recently received the Young German Cinema Award by DEFA Foundation in Berlin. She is a member of the European Film Academy.
ABOUT THE PRODUCERS
Piotr Rosolowski (he/him) is a Polish director, screenwriter, and cinematographer based in Berlin. After graduating from Katowice Film School, he was awarded an Academy of Media Arts scholarship in Cologne. Rosolowski is the co-author of the documentary Rabbit à la Berlin, and most recently co-directed Academy Award®-nominated short documentary film, Domino Effect, with Elwira Niewiera. Their documentary film, The Prince and the Dybbuk won the Golden Lion Award for Best Documentary on Cinema at the 74th Venice Film Festival. Piotr also works as a director of photography, and has shot many award-winning feature and short films; among them are Academy Award®-nominated On the line and The wall of Shadows which won the annual prize of the Polish Society of Cinematographers.
Magdalena Kamińska (she/her) runs a production company called Balapolis, and has produced multiple feature films, documentaries, and TV series. In 2015, Kamińska was a finalist in the Biennale College Cinema Awards for producing Baby Bump with director Kuba Czekaj. In 2017, she participated in the EAVE Producers Workshop, before going on to produce Adrian Panek’s Werewolf, which was EFA shortlisted in 2019. Kamińska recently co-produced Hunter’s Son by Ricky Rijneke, White Courage by Marcin Koszałka, and a TV Series Strange Angels.