We Are Volcanoes
We Are Volcanoes is a 2022 (Egg)celerator Lab Finalist.
ABOUT THE CO-DIRECTORS
Sharon Yeung is an award-winning independent filmmaker who directs documentaries in both traditional form and immersive mediums. Her most recent work includes a VR documentary about an iPhone factory worker in China, MADE: meet me at the end of the assembly line, and an award-winning interactive documentary, Create Your Own–where in each experience, users personalize their own documentary. In 2017, she founded Singing Cicadas; a female led collective that creates immersive non-fiction storytelling around social justice issues. Sharon is also the producer of We Are Volcanoes.
Natalie A. Chao is a filmmaker and cinematographer who studied Film Production at the University of Southern California, in Los Angeles. Born and based in Hong Kong, she is interested in bridging the gap between realism and poetry, in order to tell stories through a more intentional gaze. Natalie was a 2020 Sundance Ignite x Adobe Fellow. Her short documentary, To Know Her, premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. Her work-in-progress has pitched at the Sheffield Meetmarket, Sundance Producers Summit, and IDFA Forum.
There Was, There Was Not
SYNOPSIS
There Was, There Was Not follows four women living in the Republic of Artsakh, an unrecognized country reckoning with the aftermath of one war and while on the precipice of another. In the midst of this uncertainty, four women build a life with the hope of making their home a better place. When war breaks out again, what began as an observational meditation on women’s role after conflict becomes an urgent and intimate record of four women’s lives interrupted once again by war. From taking up arms on the front lines, to fleeing their homes as refugees, we watch each woman’s life change irrevocably. When the war finally ends, most of their homeland has been forcibly taken and the women must find a way to rebuild with the little that remains. In the midst of this struggle for survival in a new reality, each woman sits down to tell the myth of their homeland, which may not exist much longer.
There Was, There Was Not is a 2022 (Egg)celerator Lab finalist.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Emily Mkrtichian is an Armenian-American filmmaker, whose work explores memory, place, and identity. Her work includes the multimedia installation Luys i Luso, an exploration of music’s effect on spaces lost to genocide a century before; as well as the short documentary, Motherland, about women who shake tradition to rid their country of landmines. Emily has been a fellow of the Flaherty Seminar, UnionDocs Summer Lab, Torino Film Lab, and received funding from Locarno Film Festival, Sundance Institute, HotDocs, and Chicken & Egg Pictures.
ABOUT THE PRODUCER
Mara Adina is a creative producer and co-founder of Vernon Films, where her primary focus is to push the boundaries of hybrid filmmaking and collaborate with creative voices that seek to devise new ways of arriving at story. Mara produced Ilinca Calugareanu’s debut feature film Chuck Norris vs Communism, which premiered in competition at Sundance Film Festival 2015. She recently became a Sundance Creative Producing Fellow, and produced Ilinca’s second feature doc A Cops and Robbers Story (Currently playing in US cinemas and will stream on Hulu spring 2022). She is in development on A Private Wild (supported by Sundance Institute), Heisenbug (supported by SFFilms, CNC Romania, Media) and a slate of projects primarily helmed by female creatives.
River of Grass
SYNOPSIS
River of Grass brings audiences on a journey through the past, present, and precarious future of the Florida Everglades, a vast region of wetlands unlike any other on earth. Maligned as “worthless” for hundreds of years, they were drained to half their size and reclaimed for development. The consequences have been enormous. The Everglades supply drinking water to over 8 million Floridians, and are essential to mitigating the Climate Crisis–yet today they are on the verge of collapse. Told through the writings of the late environmentalist Marjory Stoneman Douglas, and those who today call the region home, River of Grass explores the entwinement of past colonial violences and present-day ecological urgency.
River of Grass is a 2022 (Egg)celerator Lab Finalist.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Sasha Wortzel is an artist and filmmaker working between Miami, Florida, and Brooklyn, New York. Wortzel’s films have screened at MoMA DocFortnight, True/False, DOC NYC, BAMCinemaFest, Blackstar Film Festival, New Orleans Film Festival, and Berlinale. Their work has been exhibited at the New Museum, Brooklyn Museum, The Kitchen, Krannert Art Museum, and SALTS Birsfelden. Wortzel has been supported by the Sundance Institute, Ford Foundation, Doc Society, and through the 2018 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship, and Points North Fellowship. Wortzel has participated in residencies including the Smack Mellon Artist Studio Residency, LMCC Workspace Program, Abrons Arts Center, The Watermill Center, New York; Artists in Residence in the Everglades (AIRIE), and Oolite Arts in Miami Beach. Wortzel’s film This is an Address (2020) is distributed by Field of Vision. Happy Birthday, Marsha! (2018; co-director Tourmaline) won a special mention at Outfest and is distributed by Frameline. Their work is in the permanent collections of the Miami-Dade County’s Art in Public Places, Brooklyn Museum, Leslie Lohman Museum of Art, and Studio Museum of Harlem. Wortzel has been featured in publications including The New York Times, Artforum, and Art in America.
ABOUT THE PRODUCER
Danielle Varga is a producer based in New York. She recently produced Bulletproof directed by Todd Chandler, who won the Hot Docs Emerging International Filmmaker Award. She produced Brett Story’s critically acclaimed documentary The Hottest August, and co-produced Kirsten Johnson’s award-winning, and Oscar® shortlisted film Cameraperson. Danielle was listed on DOC NYC’s inaugural list of 40 Under 40 filmmakers to watch. She was a Sundance Creative Producing Fellow.
ABOUT THE CO-PRODUCER
Houston Cypress is a Two-Spirit Poet, Artist, Producer, and Environmentalist from the Otter Clan of the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida. Cypress serves as the head of Love The Everglades Movement, an organization devoted to the development of platforms and initiatives for environmental protection, and cultural preservation. Cypress acts as a cultural ambassador, fostering meaningful exchanges between his society of native clans and the global community. He presented at ICA Miami a lecture titled Decolonizing Gender, Land, and Spirit (2017) and contributed to their Digital Commissions series with his short film … what endures … (2021). He co-created Every Step Is A Prayer (2021), a short film, executive produced by Superblue and NOWNESS. His recent artist residencies include the Heat Exchange by Bas Fisher Invitational and Rogaland Kunstsenter, and the Thread Residency by the Musagetes Foundation. He invites you to join him in creating portals between worlds.
Light of the Setting Sun
SYNOPSIS
A Taiwanese-American filmmaker confronts her family’s silence around the cycles of violence that have persisted since the Chinese Communist Revolution of 1949. Light of the Setting Sun is a poetic family portrait of enduring resilience, and the courage it takes to create one’s self.
Light of a Setting Sun is a 2022 (Egg)celerator Lab Finalist.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Vicky Du is a queer, Taiwanese-American filmmaker based in New York. Her short documentary Gaysians screened at film festivals internationally, and was broadcast on KQED (PBS). Vicky also directed an hour-long broadcast documentary for the PBS series Art in the Twenty-First Century, and she was the Associate Producer of the Academy Award® winner, Free Solo. Light of the Setting Sun is Vicky’s first feature film. She has participated in fellowships with BAVC, CAAM and Points North Institute.
ABOUT THE PRODUCER
Danielle Varga is a producer based in New York. She recently produced Bulletproof directed by Todd Chandler, who won the Hot Docs Emerging International Filmmaker Award. She produced Brett Story’s critically acclaimed documentary The Hottest August, and co-produced Kirsten Johnson’s award-winning, and Oscar® shortlisted film Cameraperson. Danielle was listed on DOC NYC’s inaugural list of 40 Under 40 filmmakers to watch. She was a Sundance Creative Producing Fellow.
Hummingbirds
SYNOPSIS
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.
Hummingbirds is a 2022 (Egg)celerator Lab Finalist.
ABOUT THE DIRECTORS
Silvia Castaños is an activist, poet, and filmmaker born and raised in Laredo, Texas. Her activism and art are both grounded in community, justice, and self-determination. At the age of 17, Silvia’s short film Ocean, a visual poem depicting a queer love story of a trans man and a cis woman, won a jury prize for documentary at the Laredo International Media & Film Festival.
Estefanía “Beba” Contreras is a musician, visual artist, and first-time filmmaker based in Laredo, Texas. Beba is a graduate of the Vidal M. Treviño School of Communication and Fine Arts, where she studied piano. She is also a self-taught guitarist and singer-songwriter working on her first album. As a visual artist her work spans many mediums including portrait photography, drawing, and tattoos. Beba was born in Mexico and dreams of living in space. Hummingbirds is her first film, both in front of and behind the camera.
ABOUT THE TEAM
Leslie Benavides (Producer) was born and raised in southeast Houston. She has a BA from Brown University in Urban Public Policy. Her work, both policy-based and artistic, explores her upbringing in a mixed-status family, Indigenous rights, the War on Drugs in Latin America, and restorative justice. Hummingbirds is the first film she has worked on.
Miguel Drake-McLaughlin (Producer, Co-Director) is a director, cinematographer, producer, and a founder of the social impact-driven production company Cowboy Bear Ninja. Miguel co-directed Sky Line (DOC NYC 2015), a documentary about scientists building an elevator to outer space, and he shot The Problem With Apu (DOC NYC 2017) and Valedictorian (IFFR 2015), as well as numerous commercials, short films, and TV series including GZA’s Liquid Science, and Shade: Queens of NYC.
Diane Ng (Co-Director) is a filmmaker from Hong Kong, with a sharp cinematographer’s eye and a penchant for playful experimentation. Her creative work also involves producing, writing, photography, and the occasional stick & poke tattoo. Her thesis web series Not Sorry is a comedic exploration of Asian immigrants’ experience in very white spaces, and was chosen as part of the 2019 NYC Web Fest Official Selection. Throughout her work, Diane explores autobiographical film-making, particularly mining personal trauma for humor and absurdity, as a means to heal and reclaim truth.
Ana Rodriguez-Falco (Producer, Co-Director) is a Mexican-born, Houston-raised filmmaker, and bartender based in New York. Ana started to work with Jillian on the seedling of a project that became Hummingbirds in early 2017, after losing her financial aid at NYU due to issues with her immigration status. In general, Ana’s creative work pushes genre boundaries and emphasizes representation of immigrant identity and queer experience. Hummingbirds is her first film.
Jillian Schlesinger (Producer, Co-Director) is an independent producer whose collaborative filmmaking work explores stories of youth through the eyes of those living it. Her debut film, Maidentrip (SXSW 2013 Visions Audience Award) is an intimate first-person chronicle of Laura Dekker’s controversial quest to become the youngest person to sail alone around the world. Jillian’s forthcoming second feature, Silvia Castaños & Estefanía Contreras’s Hummingbirds, captures a summer in the lives of inseparable friends coming of age in a Texas border town. Hummingbirds is currently in post-production and supported by Sundance Documentary Fund, Field of Vision, Ford Foundation/JustFilms, Threshold Fund, SFFILM, Chicken & Egg Pictures, Arts2Work, Frameline, and NBCU Original Voices Fellowship.
How to Build a Library
SYNOPSIS
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.
How to Build a Library is a 2022 (Egg)celerator Lab Finalist.
ABOUT THE CO-DIRECTORS & PRODUCERS
Maia Lekow is an award-winning Kenyan musician, and filmmaker. Her debut feature-documentary The Letter, was Kenya’s Official selection for the 93rd Academy Awards®, and premiered at IDFA 2019. Currently performing with her band Maia & the Big Sky on international stages, Maia fuses her music with a fascination for people and culture. She has worked as a documentary director, producer, composer & sound recordist. She was named a Goodwill Ambassador for the UNHCR on 2013 World Refugee Day, and has received an African Movie Academy Award for her song Uko Wapi.
Christopher King is an award-winning filmmaker based in Nairobi, Kenya. Originally from Australia, he has lived and worked in Kenya since 2007. In 200,9 he founded Circle & Square Productions with his wife Maia Lekow–and their co-directing debut feature The Letter, was Kenya’s Official selection for the 93rd Academy Awards®. A fluent Swahili speaker, Chris has been on the bleeding-edge of Kenya’s creative sector for 14 years, working as a freelance cinematographer, editor, director/producer, and video artist.
Eat Bitter
SYNOPSIS
Eat Bitter is a character-driven vérité film, set in the Central African Republic. This is one of the poorest areas in the world that is rising from the ashes. In the Central African Republic’s capital, Bangui, construction is flourishing. As in other African countries, skilled migrants from China drive this modernization. But behind this so-called progress, workers sacrifice their dignity, abuse their bodies, and spoil the environment to extract sand, an essential construction material. And this disappearing sand impels them to take ever more risks to obtain it. Through the parallel stories of Chinese immigrants and locals, the film captures the journeys of two opposed communities, cultures, and men. It chronicles how they learn to work together with the same goal in mind: to build a bank, a symbol of power and money.
Eat Bitter is a 2022 (Egg)celerator Lab Finalist.
ABOUT THE DIRECTORS
A Chinese national, Ningyi Sun (she/her) is a film director, writer, and producer. She has lived and worked on three continents and speaks English, French, and Portuguese. In 2023, she co-directed her first feature documentary, Eat Bitter. Currently based in New York, she is directing and producing her short documentary Act Before You Think about the Meisner acting technique, while co-writing a feature screenplay based on real events in the life of an immigrant sex worker in Queens, New York. In 2022, she produced, wrote, and acted in her first narrative short film, Intimate, which won Best Romantic Short at the Independent Shorts Awards. Before diving into the filmmaking world, she earned a master’s degree from Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and worked for the United Nations peace operation in the Central African Republic.
Pascale Appora-Gnekindy (she/her) hails from the Central African Republic (CAR) and is the owner of Kea-Kwis Production, a video production company in Bangui, CAR. In 2023, she co-directed her first feature documentary, Eat Bitter. In 2017, she directed My Eyes To Hear, a documentary short about a boy overcoming his disability in a land where the disabled are marginalized. The film was an official selection of The International Film Festival of Kinshasa and Festival Africlap. In 2019, she directed Two Sisters, about the journey of two sisters who struggle to find the right balance between their studies, their life at home, and their femininity. Pascale came to film production through the IT world. She started studying films in 2016 after being selected to participate in documentary filmmaking workshops organized by the French Alliance of Bangui and the Ateliers Varan.
ABOUT THE PRODUCER
Mathieu Faure (he/him) is a producer, editor, and independent filmmaker. He won the 2018 Student Academy Awards in the Domestic Documentary category for his personal film, An Edited Life. In 2018, he graduated from the News and Documentary Masters program at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at NYU.
Mathieu has worked for the CNN Documentary unit and Don Lemon’s team on his show, CNN Tonight. He also served as a field producer and worked on a series of documentaries for CNN + and Fareed Zakaria. Before moving to the US, Mathieu worked a reporter inside a breaking newsroom in Paris, France. He produced articles and video reports for M6 television. Mathieu graduated Magna Cum Laude from La Sorbonne University in Paris where he obtained his Master’s degree in Political Science.
Currently, Mathieu is a field producer at Apple.
Alis
SYNOPSIS
How do you build a “new life” when you are born without opportunities? Can you leave despair behind and project another destiny? Through a creative act, teenage girls who lived in the streets of Bogota give life to a fictional classmate. 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.
ABOUT THE DIRECTORS & PRODUCERS
Clare Weiskopf, a filmmaker and journalist, has spent more than twenty years working on social issues ranging from the armed conflict in Colombia and sexual violence as a weapon of war, to the global spread of cumbia music. Her debut Amazona premiered at IDFA, was distributed in 11 countries, and was nominated for the Goya Awards. Her second film Alis won the Crystal Bear for the Best Film in Generation 14plus competition and the Teddy Award at Berlinale. She was twice a winner of the Colombian National Journalism Award. Her projects have been supported by Ibermedia, Sundance Institute, Catapult, IDFA Bertha Fund, Tribeca Film Institute, the Colombian Film Fund, and Chicken & Egg Pictures. She is a founding member of Casatarantula.
Nicolas van Hemelryck is a filmmaker, architect, and photographer. He is a Co-founder of Casatarantula and DOC:CO Distribution and Promotion Agency. His debut film Amazona premiered at IDFA and his second film Alis won the Crystal Bear for the Best Film in Generation 14plus competition and the Teddy Award at Berlinale. Nicolas has co-produced with Romania, France, Scotland, Chile, Brazil, and the US. His films have competed at Berlinale, IDFA, Cinema du Reel, Dok.Leipzig, Sheffield DocFest, and DOC NYC. He has been selected for Dok.Incubator, EAVE, IDFAcademy, GoodPitch, Tribeca Network, Campus Latino, and IFP. Nicolas is a member of the Colombian Film Academy, Global Impact Producers, and Cinema 23. As a photographer his work has been exhibited in America, Europe, and Asia.
ABOUT THE PRODUCERS
Alexandra Galvis is a producer, distributor, cultural manager and teacher. She has been executive producer of: Human Tower (Cano Rojas), Bikes vs. Cars and Push (Fredrik Gertten), and La Cordillera de los Sueños (Patricio Guzmán, Golden Eye at Cannes’19-Official Selection). She has also worked as a producer for the BBC, BBC World and Canal 13. As a distributor, she has run Market Chile since 2012, a platform that seeks to spread Chilean cinema in commercial and cultural circuits. In this context, she also runs the program Efecto Cine, a mobile cinema tour that takes cinema to places where there are no theaters (remote regions, hospitals, prisons) and Efecto Pedal, a professional platform of itinerant cinema that works with the energy of bicycles. Alexandra has led the distribution strategy for more than 150 Chilean films and some international films, such as the documentary hits Tea Time and The Grown-Ups (Maite Alberdi), El Botón de Nácar (P. Guzman), and Human Flow (Ai WeiWei). She has worked for 13 years on the development of the audiovisual industry in Chile through several programs. She has been a teacher on various universities and film festivals, and is regularly invited to evaluate national and international film funds.
Radu Stancu is a Romanian film producer, owner of independent production company deFilm. He studied film production, film editing and sound design at the University of Theatre and Film ”I.L. Caragiale”, Bucharest (UNATC) and is an alumni of Making Waves, EAVE Producer’s Workshop, EAVE Ties That Bind, EAVE Marketing Workshop. He has engaged in an array of cinematic productions, ranging from short to feature-length, fiction, animation, and documentary– including various approaches and styles. His work has been awarded in international film festivals such as Cannes, Locarno, IDFA, Karlovy Vary, Sarajevo or AFI.
Acts of Reparation
SYNOPSIS
Selina Lewis Davidson and Macky Alston—friends and filmmaking partners for 25 years, Black and white—set out to explore the possibility for reparations in the United States. Together they discover and follow grassroots initiatives intended to heal the historic harm of slavery and Native American genocide—all the while asking each other tough questions about what is possible—in families, communities, and our nation.
Acts of Reparation is a participant of the 2021 (Egg)celerator Lab.
ABOUT THE DIRECTORS
Selina Lewis Davidson (co-director) co-founded GreenHouse Pictures with producer Nancy Roth, a documentary production company that has produced more than 15 nationally broadcast documentaries including the 2009 Emmy- nominated Hard Road Home (directed by Macky Alston); Occupation: Dreamland (directed by Garrett Scott and Ian Olds), which was released theatrically and won the 2006 Independent Spirit Truer than Fiction Award; and George Ratliff’s critically acclaimed Hell House, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival followed by theatrical release.
Macky Alston (co-director/co-producer) is an Emmy-nominated and Sundance award-winning documentary filmmaker. His films include Love Free or Die (PBS), Hard Road Home (PBS), The Killer Within (Discovery), Questioning Faith (HBO), and Family Name (PBS). He has appeared widely in the press, including The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Today Show, and The New York Times. Founder of Auburn Media, he media trained over 10,000 faith and justice leaders, including many of today’s most influential prophetic voices.
Is There Anybody Out There?
SYNOPSIS
Is There Anybody Out There? follows Ella Glendining’s search for others with the same rare disability as her, never having seen anyone with a body like hers before. The film also documents her unexpected pregnancy, exploring the experience of being disabled and pregnant and the emotional process of becoming a mother. Made up of video diary entries, hospital appointments, interviews, and home video footage from when Ella was a child, Is There Anybody Out There? is a window into the soul of a young woman in the midst of the most bewildering yet amazing period of her life so far.
Is There Anybody Out There? is a participant of the 2021 (Egg)celerator Lab.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR
Ella Glendining has directed several short films dedicated to the disabled voice. Power to the Mini Beasts won Best Experimental Short at the BFI Future Film Festival 2016. In 2017, she made a film for Channel Four’s Random Acts called Like Sunday. In 2018, Ella completed a 20-minute documentary called Born. Since then, she has been working on her first feature documentary, Is There Anybody Out There? Ella was named one of Screen International’s Screen Stars of Tomorrow 2020.