Rajada Dalka/Nation’s Hope
SYNOPSIS
If doing what you love put your life at risk, would you continue to do it? What if it would also endanger the life of your family and friends? Would you carry on? Or would you quit?
These are the questions the women athletes of Rajada Dalka/Nation’s Hope face every single day as they are met with threats from members of the Al-Shabab militia in Mogadishu. Diving deep inside the Somali National Women’s basketball team’s first season since the civil war, the film follows veteran coach Suad Galow as she shepherds her team of fearless young women, and helps them to overcome the violent threats against them and reclaim their place on the international stage.
Rajada Dalka participated in the 2016 Diversity Fellows Initiative (past program) and the 2017 (Egg)celerator Lab.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Hana Mire is a 27-year-old Somali indie filmmaker based in the United Arab Emirates. She has participated in the New York Film Academy in Abu Dhabi, Chicken & Egg Pictures’ Diversity Fellows Initiative, the Greenhouse Program, and the UnionDocs August Documentary Intensive. Her first mini-doc Silent Art was awarded a prize at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival. Rajada Dalka is Hana’s first feature length documentary. By telling a story about the love of basketball, Hana hopes to portray Somalia through a different lens than the ones commonly used outside of the country.
JOLIN: The Evolution of my Life
SYNOPSIS
Dongguan, simultaneously the manufacturing hub and inadvertent sex capital of China, is home to 1.7 million female factory workers, 300,000 of which are now former factory girls turned sex workers. Since the government crackdown on prostitution in 2014, an increasing number of women seek to flee Dongguan – and the stigma associated with it. It is here that 22-year-old country girl, Jolin, has worked for the past five years, and where her story begins. The documentary focuses on a former factory girl, Jolin, who is the only child of her family and has found work as a stripper in Dongguan. She undergoes risky plastic surgery to look more “sexy” and tries to find her estranged father for reasons that go beyond healing her fractured family. She hopes to leave Dongguan behind and become a famous actress in Shanghai.
JOLIN: The Evolution of my Life participated in the 2016 Diversity Fellows Initiative (past program).
ABOUT THE DIRECTORS
Jolin is co-directed by Siyan Liu & Danni Wang.
Siyan Liu received her MFA in Social Documentary Film from School of Visual Arts in 2015. She used to be a screenwriter for fiction films in China. She has been working as an assistant director in the Documentary Channel of China Central Television (CCTV-9) for two years. She established BANYAN FILM LLC with her partner Danni Wang in New York City.
Danni Wang is a Chinese filmmaker based in New York City who graduated from MFA in Social Documentary Film at School of Visual Arts in 2015. Her college student short documentary Family Story was officially selected by China Independent Film Festival in 2013 and Chinese Documentary Festival in 2013.
Along the Line
SYNOPSIS
When 14-year old Di is tricked by her uncle and trafficked with her mother and sister across the border into China, she is forced to marry as a child bride. When 11-year old PaNa’s mother and sisters go missing, her uncle offers to help find them — but instead sells her to two Chinese men, who take her across the Red River by water taxi. When 15-year old Lien and her friend get caught attempting to escape a brothel, the owner decapitates her friend and forces Lien to spend the night alongside the corpse. These kinds of stories are all too common in Southeast Asia. Of the 45 million humans reported to be trapped in modern-day slavery worldwide today, only two percent will ever return home. Di, PaNa and Lien are three of the lucky ones. They escaped.
Along the Line is a story of grit and resilience born in the depths of great suffering. We follow Di, PaNa, and Lien as they confront their past, wrestle with the present, and struggle to find the strength to believe in a future. It is a story of survival and healing, of forgiveness and hope, that gives voice to the survivors themselves while challenging international audiences to imagine what needs to be done to foster reintegration, acceptance, and healing after trafficking.
Along the Line participated in the 2016 Diversity Fellows Initiative (past program).
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Christina Birkhead’s background in project management and behavior therapy makes for a perfect fit for storytelling and the problem solving skills needed to produce films. Christina has worked on two feature length documentary films as a line producer and has written and directed one short documentary for the non-profit Reach The Children in Uganda. Along the Line is Christina’s first feature length documentary film.
Swimming on Dry Land
SYNOPSIS
Swimming on Dry Land examines the lives of young gay Jamaicans, at a time when the island is debating homosexuality publicly in politics, the press and in churches. The film’s title makes reference to the concept of ‘fish’, a term used in Jamaica to refer to homosexuals, but also references their marginalization, coupled with an equally strong determination by some of the characters to live and love in Jamaica, despite the odds.
Swimming on Dry Land participated in the 2016 Diversity Fellows Initiative (past program).
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Michelle Serieux is an independent filmmaker from St Lucia currently residing in Jamaica. She holds a BA (Hons) in Media and Communication with Minors in Drama and Cultural Studies from the University of the West Indies Mona Jamaica campus, and a MA in Film/Cinema Studies from the Columbia University School of the Arts in New York. In 2013 she became the first Caribbean recipient of the Tribeca Film Institute/World View Latin American Media Arts Grant for her first documentary feature Swimming on Dry Land. Michelle is a cultural activist interested in developing work in video and new media that addresses the social and developmental issues in the Caribbean and connects them to a larger Pan African / Global context. She is a committed art-ivist who is inspired by innovation, excellence and originality. Michelle’s guiding mission is to produce work that challenges the limitations inherent in her geo-political background as a female descendant of enslaved Africans in the Underdeveloped “New” World.
United Skates
SYNOPSIS
When America’s last standing roller rinks are threatened with closure, a community of thousands battle in a racially charged environment to save an underground subculture–-one that has remained undiscovered by the mainstream for generations, yet has given rise to some of the world’s greatest musical talent.
United Skates participated in the 2016 Diversity Fellows Initiative (past program).
ABOUT THE DIRECTORS
Tina Brown is a Vietnamese-Australian filmmaker with a successful career in the film, television and commercial industry. Tina co-produced Dear Mandela, a feature-length documentary set in the slums of Durban which received an “I Believe In You” grant from Chicken & Egg Pictures, as well as support from Sundance Institute and many others. Now predominantly working in sports production, Tina’s work includes features and commercials for Red Bull, Puma, Gatorade, IBM, Levi’s, Schick, Izod, MTV, NBC, ESPN, and Fox Sports; as well as sporting events from figure skating features for the Winter Olympics, to the Super Bowl, Tour de France and US Open Tennis. Prior to moving to New York, Tina created marketing and PR film campaigns for the distribution arm of major and independent studios including Paramount, Universal, MGM, DreamWorks, Miramax, Pixar, Disney, and Village Roadshow.
For over six years, Dyana Winkler worked for both the Sundance Film Institute and Tribeca Film Institute, reviewing and deliberating upon thousands of narrative and documentary grant submissions and honing her skills as filmmaker. Dyana also programmed for the Outfest Film Festival and frequently screens submissions for Chicken & Egg and the Sundance Documentary Film Program. Dyana holds a B.A in political science and economics from Mount Holyoke College and an MFA in screenwriting, directing and production, from EICAR in Paris. Fluent in French and Tibetan, Dyana spent nearly a decade living internationally, where she interviewed then recent refugees from Tibet for local TV stations and directed and produced a short documentary film on South Asian orphanages, which aired on BBC (Bhutanese Broadcasting).
NOW PLAYING
United States premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in 2018, and is now available on HBO.