The Nest at 2022 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival
We are egg-static to see eight supported films, and seven AlumNest films in the 29th Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival line-up. This edition will take place in-cinemas in Toronto and will stream across Canada from Thursday, April 28 to Sunday, May 8.
The festival stated that 49% of the official selections were directed by women, maintaining its commitment to a roughly 50-50 gender split.
World Premiere
Silent Beauty
dir. & prod. Jasmin Lopez
A personal documentary that follows Director Jasmin López as she works to heal from child sexual abuse she endured at the hands of her grandfather, Gilberto, a Baptist minister, almost thirty years ago. In the process of sharing her own trauma with her large family, she learns that generations of children in her family were victims of the same abuse. Told from the director’s perspective, Silent Beauty is a film about confronting and accepting difficult truths while finding beauty in the process.
Silent Beauty is a 2019 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee and is having its World Premiere in the Persister section.
Get your tickets + more info with this link.
Alis
dirs.& prods. Clare Weiskopf, Nicolas van Hemelryck
prods. Radu Stancu, Alexandra Galvis
In a Colombian shelter for teenage girls, filmmakers ask a group of young women to close their eyes and imagine the life story of a fictional classmate named Alis. 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 and is part of Made In Chile: A spotlight on docs from Chile
Get your tickets + more info with this link.
All of Our Heartbeats Are Connected Through Exploding Stars
(previously titled Stories From Debris)
dir. Jennifer Rainsford
prods. Mirjam Gelhorn, David Herdies, Michael Krotkiewski
The 2011 Japan tsunami triggers this staggering essay about loss that connects human and environmental trauma using astonishing juxtapositions. Humans breathe out and the oceans breathe in, so that we are constantly breathing together and becoming our planet. If we admit that our human experiences of pain and the Earth’s are just different versions of the same destruction, will recovery come, be it in ripples or waves?*
All of Our Heartbeats Are Connected Through Exploding Stars is a 2020 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee and is part of the World Showcase section.
Get your tickets + more info with this link.
Boycott
dir & prod. Julia Bacha
prod. Suhad Babaa, Daniel J. Chalfen
When a news publisher in Arkansas, an attorney in Arizona and a speech therapist in Texas are told to choose between their jobs and their political beliefs, they launch legal battles that expose an attack on freedom of speech in 33 states in America.
Boycott was supported through Julia Bacha’s 2019 Chicken & Egg Award, and is a Hot Docs Special Presentation.
Get your tickets + more info with this link.
Eskape
dir. Neary Adeline Hay
prods. Jasmin Basic
The survival story of a mother and her daughter, the filmmaker, through the desperate flight from a crumbling Cambodia after the collapse of the Khmer Rouge regime. Faced with the silence brought by trauma and time, the longing to understand her mother today resonates in an abysmal echo, while reviving the memories as a political refugee in Europe.
Eskape is a 2020 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee and is having its North American premiere in the Hidden Stories section.
Get your tickets + more info with this link.
Midwives
dir. & prod. Snow Hnin Ei Hlaing
prods. Bob Moore, Ulla Lehmann, Mila Aung-Thwin
A tale of the complicated relationship between Rohingya and Buddhists in Myanmar, told over five years through the eyes of two midwives from either side of the divide.
Midwives is a 2020 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee and is having its Canadian premiere as a HotDocs Special Presentation.
Get your tickets + more info with this link.
Mija
dir. & prod. Isabel Castro
prod. Tabs Breese, Yesenia Tlahuel
With Doris’ voice as our guide, Mija uses VHS archive, verité footage, and camcorder vlogging to tell the story of two young women’s coming-of-age journeys as they look for success and belonging. The film is an immensely emotional and intimate portrait honoring the resilience of immigrants and their children.
Mija is a 2021 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee and is part of the Artscapes section.
Get your tickets + more info with this link.
Once Upon a Time in Uganda
dir. Cathryne Czubek, co-dir. Hugo Perez
prods. Gigi Dement, Cathryne Czubek, Matt Porwoll, Hugo Perez, Kyaligamba Ark Martin
Against all odds, former bricklayer and teacher Isaac Nabwana has turned his small home in the slums of Uganda’s capital city into the Wakaliwood action movie studio. After 10 years and 40+ films, Wakaliwood has become an overnight international media sensation, inspiring others around the world to follow in his footsteps. When New York film nerd Alan Hofmanis shows up on his doorstep one day, everything is bound to change.
Once Upon a Time in Uganda is a 2017 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee and is part of the Nightvision section.
Get your tickets + more info with this link.
From the AlumNest
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A Peculiar Silence
prod. Catherine Gund, dir. Cinque Northern -
Angels of Sinjar
dir. & prod. Hanna Polak, prod. Simone Baumann - Don’t Come Searching
prods. Michelle Serieux, Sherien Barsoum, dir. & prod. Andrew Moir - The Martha Mitchell Effect
prods. Beth Levison, Judith Mizrachy, dirs. Anne Alvergue, Debra McClutchy - The Mole Agent
dir. Maite Alberdi, prod. Marcela Santibáñez - TikTok, Boom.
dir. & prod. Shalini Kantayya, prods. Ross Dinerstein, Danni Mynard - To The End
dir. Rachel Lears, prod. Sabrina Schmidt Gordon
Check out the full line-up with this link.
*Language courtesy of Hot Docs.
A Full Nest at Sundance at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival
The Sundance Film Festival features line-up was announced today, Wednesday December 4, and we are egg-static for the following women filmmakers, who will be premiering their films at the festival in Park City, Utah from Thursday, January 23 to Sunday, February 2, 2020.
Coded Bias
Directed by Shalini Kantayya (Project: Hatched 2020)
Exploring the fallout of MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini’s startling discovery that facial recognition does not see dark-skinned faces accurately, and her journey to push for the first-ever legislation in the US to govern against bias in the algorithms that impact us all.
Once Upon a Time in Venezuela
Directed by Anabel Rodríguez (Project: Hatched 2020)
Once, the village of Congo Mirador was prosperous. Now it is decaying and disintegrating—a prophetic reflection of Venezuela itself.
The Fight
Elyse Steinberg, Josh Kriegman, Eli Despres (Project: Hatched 2020)
Inside the ACLU, a team of scrappy lawyers battle Trump’s historic assault on civil liberties.
A Thousand Cuts
Directed by Ramona Diaz (2018 Chicken & Egg Award recipient)*
Nowhere is the worldwide erosion of democracy, fueled by social media disinformation campaigns, more starkly evident than in the authoritarian regime of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. Journalist Maria Ressa places the tools of the free press—and her freedom—on the line in defense of truth and democracy.
Dick Johnson Is Dead
Directed by Recipient Kirsten Johnson (2017 Chicken & Egg Award recipient)*
With this inventive portrait, a cameraperson seeks a way to keep her 86-year-old father alive forever. Utilizing moviemaking magic and her family’s dark humor, she celebrates Dr. Dick Johnson’s last years by staging fantasies of death and beyond. Together, dad and daughter confront the great inevitability awaiting us all.
*These films were in development during the filmmaker’s Chicken & Egg Award year.
In addition to these directly supported films, our AlumNest filmmakers (the 300+ talented, diverse women nonfiction directors that we have supported throughout our fifteen years as an organization) are also premiering their films at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival:
Aggie
Directed by Catherine Gund (Born to Fly, Dispatches from Cleveland, and What’s on Your Plate?)
The Last Thing He Wanted
Directed by Dee Rees (Eventual Salvation)
Taylor Swift: Miss Americana
Directed by Lana Wilson (2019 Chicken & Egg Award recipient)
Untitled Kirby Dick/Amy Ziering Film
Directed by Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering (The Invisible War)
The Mole Agent
Directed by Maite Alberdi (2020 Chicken & Egg Award recipient)
Congratulations to these incredible women filmmakers on their Sundance-bound films. We’ll see you in Park City!
Nest Co-Founders, Filmmakers, and Friends Join the Academy
We’re proud to announce that Chicken & Egg Pictures Co-Founders and Board members Julie Parker Benello and Wendy Ettinger are now members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences!
The Academy announced a record-setting 928 invited members, 49 percent of whom are women and 38 percent people of color. Nine branches, including the Producers, Film Editors, and Documentary branches invited more women than men. At Chicken & Egg Pictures, we applaud the Academy’s efforts to double the number of women and diverse members, a goal announced in 2016 and hoped to be completed by 2020.
This announcement marked a huge step in diversifying one of the most prestigious institutions in the field, bringing the overall Academy membership to 31% women. We couldn’t be more thrilled. You might have even caught Wendy talk about it on live TV, on BBC News when the announcement was made public. Julie and Wendy will join fellow Co-Founder (and Senior Creative Consultant) Judith Helfand, with all three Chicken & Egg Pictures Co-Founders now members of the Academy!
This year, Chicken & Egg-supported filmmakers invited to the Academy include Yance Ford (Oscar®-nominee Strong Island), Catherine Gund (Born to Fly), Sari Gilman (Kings Point, editor on Trapped), Lana Wilson (The Departure and After Tiller), Laura Nix (2018 Breakthrough Award Recipient), and Nanfu Wang (2018 Breakthrough Award Recipient, 2017 Accelerator Lab Grantee for Born In China).
New members also include Paco de Onís, editor of Nest-supported Granito: How to Nail a Dictator, as well as Toby Shimin, editor of Nest-supported 32 Pills: My Sister’s Suicide. Congratulations to all!
Post by 2018 Communications Intern Morgan Lee Hulquist.
Three Chicken & Egg Pictures grantees recognized with Emmy nominations
We were thrilled to see that three Chicken & Egg Pictures grantees have been recognized with News & Documentary Emmy nominations:
Born to Fly
Directed by Catherine Gund
Nominated for Outstanding Arts & Culture Programming
Elizabeth Streb and the STREB Extreme Action Company form a motley troupe of flyers and crashers. Propelled by Streb’s edict that “anything too safe is not action,” these daredevils challenge the assumptions of art, aging, injury, gender, and human possibility. Revealing the passions behindthe dancers’ bruises and broken noses, Born to Fly offers a breathtaking tale about the necessity of art, inspiring audiences hungry for a more tactile and fierce existence.
Directed by Anne de Mare and Kirsten Kelly
A courageous young woman, Marianna, takes the boldest step imaginable to confront her risk of having inherited the fatal, incurable Huntington’s Disease.
