Announcing four new grantees of our recently reimagined Project: Hatched program!

“This unprecedented moment requires us to innovate as an organization and to reimagine the way our programs support filmmakers. Peer mentorship is an instrumental part of our programs, and we know that filmmakers need each other’s support in order to navigate this changed industry. Each member of this Project: Hatched cohort is a director seeking to forge new models in the documentary world, engage with their audiences in new ways, and increase the social impact of their films in the digital space.” — Program Director, Lucila Moctezuma 

How we are shifting the Project: Hatched program:

Project: Hatched, announced in January 2020 as our new completion fund, was originally designed to support directors with finishing funds and mentorship as they prepared for the world premiere of a feature-length documentary film. The first Project: Hatched participants (The Fight, Coded Bias, and Once Upon a Time in Venezuela) premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. Since the inaugural cohort and due to COVID-19, we have worked to reshape the program to better fit filmmakers’ needs in the current documentary film landscape.

Today we are announcing, via a Women & Hollywood exclusive, the four new Project: Hatched grantees—filmmakers whose premieres have been affected by festival changes—who will receive a $10,000 to $20,000 cash grant for their impact and audience engagement campaign, join a cohort for peer-to-peer mentorship calls with visiting experts, and set career goals with and receive mentorship from members of Chicken & Egg Pictures’ senior creative team. Additionally, two grantees from the original Project: Hatched cohort—Coded Bias, directed by Shalini Kantayya, and Once Upon a Time in Venezuela, directed by Anabel Rodríguez Ríos—will also join in on the new peer-to-peer mentorship model. 

Read about the four new supported films:

Belly of the Beast
Director: Erika Cohn (UNITED STATES) 
When an unlikely duo discovers a pattern of illegal sterilizations in women’s prisons, they wage a near-impossible battle against the Department of Corrections.

Landfall
Director: Cecilia Aldarondo (UNITED STATES) 
Through shard-like glimpses of everyday life in post-Hurricane María Puerto Rico, Landfall examines a ruined world at the brink of transformation, spinning a cautionary tale for our times.

The Dilemma of Desire
Director: Maria Finitzo (UNITED STATES) 
An exploration of “cliteracy,” and the clash between the gender politics and the imperatives of female sexual desire.

Picture A Scientist
Directors: Sharon Shattuck, Ian Cheney (UNITED STATES) 
Picture A Scientist chronicles the groundswell of researchers who are writing a new chapter for women scientists.

Read more about Project: Hatched on our Programs webpage here.

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