Eight Nest-supported Films Receive Emmy® Nominations!
Chicken & Egg Pictures sends massive congratulations to the eight Nest-supported films that received a nomination for the 43rd Annual News and Documentary Emmy® Awards. The honors will be presented live in two ceremonies, with Documentary Categories taking place on Thursday, September 29, 2022, at 7:30 pm EDT.
“Through our mission to advance gender equity in the documentary film industry, Chicken & Egg Pictures is proud to support women and nonbinary filmmakers whose work expands our collective consciousness. We congratulate all Nest-supported filmmakers for their tremendous achievements, and for crafting stories that advance social change.” -Jenni Wolfson, Executive Director of Chicken & Egg Pictures.
Check out each nomination below and celebrate the filmmakers and their teams with us:
A Thousand Cuts
dir. & prod. Ramona S. Diaz
prods. Christopher Clements, Julie Goldman, Carolyn Hepburn, Leah Marino

Nominated for:
- Outstanding Social Issue Documentary
- Best Documentary
Supported through Ramona’s 2018 Chicken & Egg Award
Coded Bias
dir. & prod. Shalini Kantayya

Nominated for:
- Outstanding Science and Technology Documentary
Coded Bias was a Project: Hatched 2020 grantee
Picture a Scientist
dirs. & prods. Sharon Shattuck & Ian Cheney
prod. Manette Pottle

Nominated for:
- Outstanding Science and Technology Documentary
Picture a Scientist was a Project: Hatched 2020 grantee
Pray Away
dir. & prod. Kristine Stolakis
prod. Jessica Devaney and Anya Rous

Nominated for:
- Outstanding Social Issue Documentary
Pray Away was a 2019 (Egg)celerator Lab grantee
Simple As Water
dirs. & prod. Megan Mylan
prod. Robin Hessman

Nominated for:
- Outstanding Direction: Documentary
Simple As Water was a 2018 Nest-supported project
Storm Lake
dirs. Beth Levison & Jerry Risius
prod. Beth Levison

Nominated for:
- Outstanding Business and Economic Documentary
Storm Lake was a Project: Hatched 2021 grantee
Takeover
dir. Emma Francis-Snyder
prod. Tony Gerber

Nominated for:
- Outstanding Short Documentary
Takeover is a Project: Hatched 2022 grantee
The Changing Same: An American Pilgrimage
dirs. Michèle Stephenson, Joe Brewster
prods. Scatter, Rada Studio

Nominated for:
- Outstanding Interactive Media: Innovation
The Changing Same: An American Pilgrimage was supported through the 2017 Impact and Innovation Grant
From the AlumNest
- In the Same Breath
dir. Nanfu Wang
prods. Jialing Zhang, Carolyn Hepburn, Sara Rodriguez, Julie Goldman, and Christopher Clements
Nominated for: Outstanding Current Affairs Documentary, Best Documentary - Through Our Eyes: Apart
dirs. Geeta Gandbhir, Rudy Valdez
prods. Beth Miranda Botshon, Jessica Devaney, Lisa Diamond, Anya Rous
Nominated for: Best Short Documentary
Check out the full nominations list with this link.
Nest-supported Filmmakers Nom’d for the NAACP Image Awards!
We were honored to see five Nest-supported filmmakers on the recently announced nominations list for the 52nd annual NAACP Image Awards, which are known for “celebrating outstanding achievement in the areas of film, TV, music and literature—from an African American perspective.”*
Coded Bias — Outstanding Documentary (Film)

Coded Bias, directed by Shalini Kantayya, explores the fallout of MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini’s startling discovery that facial recognition does not see dark-skinned faces accurately, and her subsequent journey to push for the first-ever US legislation to govern against bias in artificial intelligence. The documentary aims to shine a light on the threat artificial intelligence poses to civil rights and democracy. The film participated in Project: Hatched 2020.
Through the Night — Outstanding Breakthrough Creative (Motion Picture)

Loira Limbal and her work on Through the Night are nominated for Outstanding Breakthrough Creative (Motion Picture). Through the Night is a verité documentary that explores the personal cost of our modern economy through the stories of two working mothers and a child care provider, whose lives intersect at a 24-hour daycare center in New Rochelle, NY. The film participated in the 2018 (Egg)celerator Lab.
AlumNest filmmakers nominated include Chicken & Egg Award Recipients Yoruba Richen, Dawn Porter, and Grace Lee:
The Sit-In: Harry Belafonte Hosts the Tonight Show by Yoruba Richen — Outstanding Directing in a Documentary (Television or Motion Picture) and Outstanding Writing in a Documentary (Television or Motion Picture)
And She Could Be Next by Grace Lee and Chicken & Egg Pictures Board Member Marjan Safinia — Outstanding Documentary (Television)
John Lewis: Good Trouble by Dawn Porter — Outstanding Documentary (Film)
Congratulations to all the nominees! We will be watching the awards ceremony from our Nest on Saturday, March 27th at 8 pm ET.
*Language courtesy of NAACP Image Awards.
Shalini Kantayya: Dozen Days of Filmmakers — Day 9
Chicken & Egg Pictures is celebrating the holiday season and saying farewell to 2020 by featuring a dozen Nest-supported women and gender nonconforming filmmakers. For more Dozen Days of Filmmakers, see here.
“This moment is asking us to drop into a deeper place in our humanity to lead. I’m so grateful to the people in my film who have shown me how to do this. There has never been more clarity that the people who have been systematically missing from the conversation have the most to share with us about the way forward.” — Shalini Kantayya, Letters from the AlumNest
Shalini Kantayya’s newest film, Coded Bias, explores the fallout of MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini’s startling discovery that facial recognition does not see dark-skinned faces accurately, and her subsequent journey to push for the first-ever US legislation to govern against bias in artificial intelligence. The documentary aims to shine a light on the threat artificial intelligence poses to civil rights and democracy. Coded Bias participated in our 2020 Project: Hatched program; was an Official Selection at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival; and was featured in The New York Times, Democracy Now!, and Hollywood Reporter. The film is now playing at 70+ virtual cinemas across the US. Support a local movie theater and stream from home: codedbias.com/virtualcinema.

Shalini’s other credits include directing the season finale episode for the National Geographic television series Breakthrough, a series profiling trailblazing scientists transforming the future, executive produced by Ron Howard, broadcast globally in June 2017. Her debut feature film Catching the Sun, about the race for a clean energy future, premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival and was named a New York Times Critics’ Pick. Catching the Sun released globally on Netflix on Earth Day 2016 with Executive Producer Leonardo DiCaprio and was nominated for the Environmental Media Association Award for Best Documentary.
Kantayya is a TED Fellow, a William J. Fulbright Scholar, and a finalist for the ABC Disney DGA Directing Program. She is an Associate of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.
Announcing Project: Hatched 2020 Participants!
Chicken & Egg Pictures is proud to announce the first-ever participants of our newest program Project: Hatched, a completion fund which provides a $20,000 grant to selected directors in the lead up to their film premiere. $15,000 of the grant is for finishing funds and $5,000 is earmarked for impact strategy development. Participants also receive ten hours of mentorship focusing on festival premiere support, impact and distribution strategy, and professional development.
We also partnered with our friends at The Fledgling Fund for the
Chicken & Egg Pictures/Fledgling Fund Impact Grant, which provides an additional $20,000 to a Project: Hatched film whose campaign strategy has the ability to shape national and international conversations around the world’s most pressing issues. Congratulations to Coded Bias, directed by Shalini Kantayya, for being the first recipient of the Chicken & Egg Pictures/Fledgling Fund Impact Grant!

Coded Bias (Chicken & Egg Pictures/Fledgling Fund Impact Grant recipient), directed by Shalini Kantayya, explores the fallout of MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini’s startling discovery that facial recognition does not see dark-skinned faces accurately, and her subsequent journey to push for the first-ever US legislation to govern against bias in artificial intelligence.*
The Fight, co-directed by Elyse Steinberg, Josh Kriegman, and
Eli Despres, documents a team of scrappy ACLU lawyers battling Trump’s historic assault on civil liberties.*
Once Upon a Time in Venezuela, directed by Anabel Rodríguez, follows residents of a small fishing village as they prepare for parliamentary election. Once the village of Congo Mirador was prosperous. Now it is decaying and disintegrating—a prophetic reflection of Venezuela itself.*
*Premiering at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.