Film Independent Producing Labs Go Off Script with New Documentary & Fiction Fellows. Bonus: $30,000 Sloan Grant Awarded!
We at Film Independent have always been proud of our producing lab fellows. They’ve gone on to make some big hits and some big careers. But that was all in the world of scripted.
So Film Independent has created the Documentary Producing Lab, an evolution of our long-running Documentary Lab. Each lab selected six producers to help develop their projects, and we’re thrilled to announce the next generation of Producing Lab Fellows right here!
“Producers are the backbone behind every great film and supporting their work in these turbulent times is all the more vital.” said Angela C. Lee, Director of Artist Development. “We couldn’t be more thrilled to expand our programming to include documentary Producers and welcome this incredibly talented and tenacious cohort of fiction and non-fiction Producers in this year’s Producing Labs.”
In its 24th year, the Producing Labs have a strong track record of pushing exciting talent and diverse (and award winning) stories. The Film Independent Producing Lab has supported films such as In the Summersproduced by Daniel Tantalean which was awarded the 2024 Sundance Grand Jury Prize, The Inspection,produced by Chester Algernal Gordon, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and the New York Film Festival and was released by A24; Cannes Un Certain Regard and Spirit Award Winner Joyland, produced by Apoorva Charan; Spirit Award-nominated Songs My Brothers Taught Me, produced by Angela C. Lee and Mollye Asher; Spirit Award Winning director Monica Sorelle’s Mountains, produced by Robert Colom, which premiered at Tribeca and was awarded U.S. Narrative Feature Special Jury Mention. In addition, the Producing Lab has supported some of the film industry’s most exciting independent talent, including Lizzie Shapiro (Shiva Baby), Lena Vurma (Adventures of a Mathematician) and Avril Speaks (Jinn).
Though the Documentary Producing Lab is new, the Documentary Lab has supported such notable documentary producers as Diane Quon with the Academy Award-nominated and Spirit Award-winning film Minding the Gap; Jessica Kingdon’s Academy Award-nominated Ascension; Academy Award-winner Shane Boris with The Seer & The Unseen; Emmy Award-winner Alysa Nahmias with A Decent Home; Dyana Winkler and Tina Brown’s Emmy-nominated United Skates; and multi-Emmy award nominee Smriti Mundhra with A Suitable Girl.
Now let’s take a look at this year’s projects and Fellows:
Documentary Producing Lab
Divia
Producer: Glib Lukianets
Stage: Post-Production
Logline: A visually and sound-driven immersive journey that portrays Ukrainian landscape across three distinct periods: a period of harmony, the unsettling rupture caused by Russian aggression, and the gradual process of its regeneration.
Letters From Home (working title)
Producer: Nicole Tsien
Stage: Development
Logline: Letters From Home (working title) is a coming-of-adult-age documentary that chronicles a Chaoshan family of three generations experiencing the rise and fall of the Chinese dream in Shenzhen, China’s Silicon Valley.
Nine
Producer: Rajal Pitroda
Stage: Production
After being sent to prison for life at 18, Gerald—also known as “Nine”—met Henry, who raised him into the man he is today. Using the lessons Henry taught him, Gerald organized his way out of prison. Now, Gerald is on a mission to bring his 83-year-old “Pops” home while there’s still time.
Shifted Landscapes
Producer: Annie Marr
Stage: Production
Shifted Landscapes is a feature documentary examining the pervasive effects of the climate crisis on the environmental, cultural and psychological landscapes of California. Weaving together a series of observational vignettes, the film visually articulates a larger system of climate change within the state.
A Texas Son
Producer: Chelsea Moore
Stage: Production
A Texas Son is the ten-year journey of a father and son as they rediscover each other as their lives intersect with mental health, identity, and masculinity—all set against the backdrop of Texas.
Watch the Circus Burn
Producer: Kat Nguyen
Stage: Development
In Watch the Circus Burn, we unload an eclectic clown car into the dusty and sparkling landscape of the American West. The cast of clowns step out of the vehicle and into the spotlight to joyously and publicly celebrate their failure while navigating the great wager of Nevada.
Now that we know a bit about their films, let’s meet our 2024 Documentary Producing Lab Fellows:
GLIB LUKIANETS
Glib Lukianets is Ukrainian-Polish film producer, the founder of Gogol Foundation — emerging facilitator of East European projects with production companies in Poland and Ukraine Glib is currently making his debut with four feature films, comprising three documentaries and one fiction piece. These works have already garnered recognition from the documentary community and have received multiple awards at events such as IDFA Forum, DOK Leipzig, FIPADOC, Sunny Side of the Doc and East Doc Platform.
NICOLE TSIEN
Nicole Tsien (she/her) is an independent producer based in Queens, New York. She is most passionate about uplifting BIPOC filmmakers and supporting creative documentaries. She previously worked in television for over a decade; most recently as the Director of Program Development at CNN Films. Nicole is on the Steering Committee for the Asian American Documentary Network (A-Doc) and serves as a board member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia.
RAJAL PITRODA
Rajal Pitroda is a producer of fiction and non-fiction films. She is a Women at Sundance Fellow, an Impact Partners Producers Fellow, a Sundance Creative Producing Fellow and a Firelight Media Impact Producing Fellow. Rajal most recently produced Down a Dark Stairwell, a feature documentary that premiered at the 2020 True/False Film Festival and was broadcast on Independent Lens.
ANNIE MARR
Annie Marr is a San Francisco-based documentary filmmaker and a 2024 SFFILM FilmHouse resident. Her produced and directed works have screened at IDFA, Tribeca, SXSW, AFI Fest, Camden, Big Sky, the United Nations, and on the New York Times Op-Docs channel. Recently, Annie produced and co-edited not even for a moment do things stand still, which won special jury recognition at SXSW 2022 and was acquired by the New York Times.
CHELSEA MOORE
Chelsea Moore (they/she) is a filmmaker and producer who strives to cultivate healing work and relationships with creators, participants, and audiences. Their productions have screened at over 50 festivals internationally, including Tribeca, New Orleans Film Festival, Outfest, NewFest, Inside Out, and BFI Flare. Chelsea is a Sundance-supported artist with the 2023-2024 Producers Intensive.
KAT NGUYEN
Kat Nguyen is a documentary producer based out of Los Angeles. She produced the award-winning documentary short, When the LAPD Blows Up Your Neighborhood; the HBO Max docu-series Not So Pretty; co-produced documentary feature Diane Warren: Relentless, and is currently producing a documentary feature about the internet famous cat account, @GonzoIsACat.
During the Lab, filmmakers worked with Lead Producing Advisors Diane Quon (Minding the Gap), Megan Gilbride (Dear Mr. Brody) and Christine O’Malley (Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields). Distribution Advisors were Caitlin Boyle (Distribution Strategist) and Orly Ravid (The Film Collaborative).
Guest Speakers included Robert Bahar (The Silence of Others), Diane Becker (Navalny), Julia Nelson (2AM – Film Finance & Sales), Alysa Nahmias (Wildcat), Christy Denes (Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal), Kathy Susca (The Film Collaborative), Leah de Leon (Documentary Producers Alliance) and Dale Cohen & Loralee Sundra (UCLA Documentary Law Clinic).
Fiction Feature Producing Lab
Eternal Recurrence
Producer: Nancy Degnan
Stage: Development
Logline: A tech magnate and her husband flee to their remote estate when her leaked beta A.I. invention plunges the world and their marriage into turmoil.
Forge
Producers: Liz Daering-Glass
Stage: Post-Production
Logline: Siblings Raymond and Coco Zhang run an art forgery ring. When Miami millionaire Holden coerces them into faking masterpieces, they encounter a web of deceit.
Know Me
Producers: Ronald Baez
Stage: Post-Production
Logline: A grief-stricken Kenson battles a national media frenzy to protect his late brother’s memory, tarnished by the monstrous moniker: “The Miami Zombie.”
Ripe!
Producers: Cookie Walukas
Stage: Development
Logline: Nothing says “it’s complicated” like breaking your crush’s arm.
The Gold Bug Variations
Producers: Namir Khaliq
Stage: Development
Logline: A young scientist sets out to crack the genetic code but is sidetracked when he falls in love with a member of his research team.
When the River Split Open
Producers: Petrus van Staden
Stage: Development
Logline: On a visit to their industrializing ancestral land, Rain risks their tense relationship with their mother to find the truth about their estranged father.
And here are the talented producers that are our 2024 Fiction Feature Producing Lab Fellows:
NANCY DEGNAN
Nancy Degnan is a co-founder of filmmaker collective and production company Autotelic Pictures. Her debut feature, Buck Run, premiered at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, receiving several Best Feature awards during its international festival tour, and was distributed by Freestyle Digital Media in 2021. Degnan’s second feature, Silent Notes, which will have its festival premiere at the 2024 Austin Film Festival.
LIZ DAERING-GLASS
Liz Daering-Glass is a writer and producer based outside of Columbus, Ohio. She is in post-production on her debut feature, Forge. Previously, she worked at the Sundance Institute on the Collab and Festival team. She was a digital marketing producer at The Walt Disney Company. She worked in feature development at DreamWorks Animation, and during that time served as a judge for ScreenCraft’s Animation Competition.
RONALD BAEZ
Ronald Baez is an Afro-Latino creative producer, writer and director from Miami, FL. His work have been exhibited in film festivals, galleries and museums around the world including the Tribeca Film Festival, the Slamdance Film festival, the BlackStar Film Festival, the Hot Docs Canadian Documentary Festival, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Norton Museum of Art, and the New World Symphony, to name some.
COOKIE WALUKAS
Cookie Walukas is a queer filmmaker driven by obsession with cinema, art, photography and pop culture. Harking from alma mater University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, they live, laugh, love and work in Los Angeles and New York City sometimes. They currently work as Senior Producer at Liquid Death.
NAMIR KHALIQ
Namir Khaliq is the founder of Protostellar Media, a production company built specifically to help scientists establish themselves as part of the creative process for film and television. Prior to Protostellar, Namir worked in feature film and scripted television development at Imagine Entertainment, the multi-Academy and Emmy Award winning production company of director Ron Howard and producer Brian Grazer.
PETRUS VAN STADEN
Petrus van Staden is a South African filmmaker who co-founded Vanishing Elephant, driven by a desire to tell meaningful stories. His shorts have screened at Locarno, SXSW, NDNF, and NYFF, being distributed to spaces such as Mubi, Topic, and Canal +. He has worked between South Africa, Tanzania and the USA – producing independent work and an episode for Netflix’s African Folktales Reimagined Anthology.
This year’s Creative Advisors were Maria Altamirano (All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt), Andrew Carlberg (Sun Dogs), Sarah Kim (I Was a Simple Man), Amanda Marshall (Swiss Army Man), Jordana Mollick (The Idea of You) and Jim Young (The Words). Guest speakers include Chad Burris (Frybread Face and Me) Apoorva Charan (Joyland), Cathy Schulman (The Woman King), Anne-Elisa Schaffer (Rightscenter), Annalisa Shoemaker (Independent Distributor), Anita Surendran (Attorney, Partner, Granderson Des Rochers, LLP), Lena Vurma (Adventures of a Mathematician) and Maria Zuckerman (Theater Camp).
For Namir Khaliq, it got even better. His project The Gold Bug Variations was awarded the Sloan Producers Grant from Film Independent, a $30,000 grant—to “an outstanding project whose screenplay integrates science or technology themes and characters into dramatic stories,” per the ongoing mission of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
“We are pleased to join with our amazing partners at Film Independent to support Namir Khaliq’s The Gold Bug Variations, written by Mark Levinson and based on the Richard Powers novel about the double helix of two love stories spiraling across 25 years,” said Doron Weber, Vice President and Program Director at the Sloan Foundation. “We are proud to have previously supported this project through the Sloan Film Independent Fast Track Award and Sloan Sundance Lab Fellowship.”
With support from the Harnisch Foundation. the Fellows also received professional coaching by Renee Freedman & Company to further empower their work.
The labs concluded with each Fellow pitching and meeting with executives from companies including A24, CAA, Cinetic and Submarine.
Congratulations to all the Fellows!
The 2024 Producing Lab is supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. It is also supported in part by The Harnisch Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Rightscenter provided the Producing Lab Fellows with complimentary access to their product, an unrivaled database and concierge research service for film and television rights information to books and other literary IP.
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