Bridging the Gap: Film Independent’s New CineBridge Initiative Launches with 2 Fellows and $1.1 Million to Bring New International Voices to Hollywood
Hollywood can feel like its own world, even for American filmmakers, but breaking in can be especially challenging for international filmmakers. Film Independent’s new CineBridge Samuel and Ruth P. Cohen Fellowship aims to change that.
The initiative was created by the Film Independent International team and filmmaker Richard Tanne, best known for the Sundance Grand Jury Prize-nominated Southside with You and Amazon MGM’s Chemical Hearts. Tanne has been mentoring international filmmakers through Film Independent’s programs, leading workshops in places like Saudi Arabia and Lebanon. “CineBridge was built as a literal bridge for international filmmakers into the Hollywood system, not just to develop their work, but to position it to succeed at the highest level,” said Tanne.
That vision found support in the Estate of Samuel and Ruth P. Cohen, whose $1.1 million gift will support up to two Fellowships per year.
“We are excited to collaborate with filmmaker Richard Tanne on this initiative and are grateful to the Samuel and Ruth P. Cohen Estate for this important gift to amplify our work cultivating the careers of filmmakers across borders. It’s an honor to see Richard, who has been involved in our programs as a mentor, be inspired to invest in our mission in such an intentional and committed way,” said María Raquel Bozzi, Senior Director of Education and International Programs.
Starting in April, the two Fellows will be part of a program that starts out virtually and then concludes with a month-long residency in Los Angeles this September. The virtual sessions will be all about strengthening pitches, screenplays and packages, while the residency will bring the Fellows face-to-face with industry experts as they take meetings around town, attend masterclasses, case-studies and the Film Independent Forum, where they’ll pitch live on-stage as part of a Pitch Clinic.
The inaugural CineBridge Fellows were selected from over 100 nominations across 40 countries. They are:
Tomás Fleck
Tomás is a writer/director focused on blending genres and connecting with audiences. His debut feature, You Gotta Have Faith (Minerva Pictures, TVCO), premiered at LABRFF, where it won two awards. He has participated in prestigious programs such as the Academy Award–recognized Cine Qua Non Script Revision Lab with his project My Luminous Shadow, which is being filmed in May 2026, and began developing his story for The Other America as an Oxbelly Fellow. Tomás has written and directed series that were exhibited on Netflix, Globo, and Amazon Prime in Brazil and his films have screened at Oscar-qualifying festivals such as Cinequest, Nashville Film Festival, and the major Brazilian Festival de Gramado.
Project: The Other America
Logline: In the tradition of recent Brazilian Oscar contenders like The Secret Agent and I’m Still Here, The Other America is a romantic espionage thriller about a CIA operative sent to Brazil who falls in love with his fabricated life — and the woman in it. When both governments close in, he must choose between the American he was built to be and the Brazilian he became.
Fisnik Maxville
Fisnik Maxville was born in Kosovo, in the former Yugoslavia. Exiled to Switzerland, he grew up there as a war refugee. After studying International Politics, he began directing in 2015. Since then, he has written and directed four short films, three documentaries and one fiction feature film. His work has been showcased at numerous international film festivals, including Locarno, Tallinn, Clermont-Ferrand, Raindance, Visions du Réel and São Paulo. He is an alumnus of Berlinale Talents and the Ateliers d’Angers. His debut fiction feature, The Land Within, won Best First Feature at the 2022 Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival. Fisnik is currently developing two fiction features.
Project: Reel Skin
Logline: In the lineage of female-driven body horror like The Substance and Titane, Reel Skin follows an undocumented woman who has spent years making herself invisible to survive. When a bite from a genetically engineered snake begins transforming her in terrifying ways, the body the world tried to erase becomes the one thing they can’t stop.
For over 40 years, Film Independent has helped filmmakers get their projects made and seen. The nonprofit organization’s core mission is to champion creative independence in visual storytelling and support a community of artists who embody diversity, innovation and uniqueness of vision.
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Watch: How Disparate Storytelling Styles Can Help Us ‘Always Remember’
Much of the discussion about how to tackle the horrors of the Holocaust through art have been filtered through a declaration by German philosopher Theodore Adorno after World War II: “To write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric, and that corrodes also the knowledge which expresses why it has become impossible to write poetry today.”
Although Adorno later walked back this view, the underlying question remains relevant: can art ever truly do justice to something as terrible as a genocide? Does story have the power to hold and transform that much pain, or will it always be a pointless or “barbaric” endeavor?
Two films currently screening digitally as part of our Always Remember series grapple with just that question. The screenings are free for Film Independent Members.
The Most Precious of Cargoes, directed by Oscar-winner Michel Hazanavicius, and Inked: Our Stories Remarked, by director/producer Dara Bratt take different tacks to explore how, 80 years on, we can understand what happened, and strive for the ever relevant goal, “Never Again.”
In Inked, Bratt explores the idea of the using the profane as a way to process trauma. The documentary is about the phenomenon where third generation decedents of Holocaust survivors choose to remember their ancestors by getting tattoos, often times with the same identification number branded onto their grandparents. Tattoos are traditionally prohibited in the Jewish faith, so the tattoos the Nazis inked into Jewish prisoners were not only dehumanizing, but a callous violation of internees’ religious beliefs.
The grandchildren of survivors the film focuses on want to let their ink be a way to keep the story alive on their own bodies, even if the act went against traditional values or could bring up pain in older generations. Much like how the queer community reclaimed the pink triangle the Nazis used to label them, this generation of Jews is intent on taking back tattoos. “I was really interested in how tattoos have become a language, how moved on from like oral storytelling to written to now a graphic sense of storytelling.” Bratt said in a Q&A at the New Orleans French Film Festival. “I really wanted to explore the idea: ‘how do we preserve legacy?’”
For The Most Precious of Cargoe’s Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist), animation was a way he could process tragedy. “I could not make a live action movie on that topic,”
“Animation does not pretend it’s reality. It’s, it’s obviously, a representation and evocation, a suggestion of, what happened, but it’s not pretending that it’s real,” Hazanavicius said in a Q&A recorded for this series. “It’s impossible for me to ask to extras, for example, to pretend they are being deported in a train for Auschwitz.”
The film is about a couple who find a baby thrown from one of the mysterious trains that pass by their forest home. They realize the child is one of the so-called “heartless” that is demonized by the local population, which leads to conflict and asks who gets to determine who has a heart or not.
“This story was not about the past,” he said. “It was more like a bet on the future. It’s something that you can say to the young generation and to the kids– to bring them heroes that say to them, even when you feel that the world is falling around you, you always have the choice to be a good person.”
Go to our Events page to find out more about these and other Film Independent Presents screenings.
Always Remember is sponsored by the Cayton-Goldrich Family Foundation and the Claims Conference with Vision Media as its Screening Partner.
For over 40 years, Film Independent has helped filmmakers get their projects made and seen. The nonprofit organization’s core mission is to champion creative independence in visual storytelling and support a community of artists who embody diversity, innovation and uniqueness of vision.
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Write Place, Write Time: Meet the 2026 Film Independent Screenwriting Lab Fellows
Why now? If you’ve ever pitched a movie, you’ve heard this question posed before. For anything to happen in the film business, it sometimes feels as if the stars have to align. Luckily for seven screenwriters– Andrés Pérez-Duarte, Emma He, Maddie McCann, Sam Osborn, Rammy Park, Alissa Torvinen and Alejandra Vasquez– the timing just happens to be perfect. They’re ready for their close-up.
Cue the Film Independent Screenwriting Lab.
The intensive, in its twenty-eighth year, is designed to give the Fellows individualized story and career development. The Fellows will work with creative advisors as they dig deep into their screenplays and learn to navigate a career as a writer.
Creative advisors include powerhouses like Linda Yvette Chávez, Phil Hay, Javier Fuentes-León, Matt Manfredi and Robin Swicord. Additional guest speakers and advisors include Ruth Atkinson, Marco Alvarez, Clint Bentley, Tyler Boehm, Mike Downing, Jordan Hart, HIKARI, Greg Kwedar, Marvin Lemus, Justin Lothrop, Amanda Marshall, Ellen Shanman, Lauren Shelton and Kendrick Tan. The writer/director of last year’s Rental Family, HIKARI previously participated in this same lab with 37 Seconds. Her return as a guest speaker is an exciting full-circle moment for the program.
“We’re so excited to support this outstanding cohort of writers who approach their work with nuance and creativity,” said Dea Vazquez, Associate Director of Fiction Programs. “We’re thrilled to be able to further develop both their scripts and careers in the program.”
For the second year in a row, the Climate Entertainment Development Grant, a partnership between Film Independent and Plot Shift Media, is giving a grant to a filmmaker who deals with “the pathways to a just and equitable climate future”. This year’s $25,000 grant goes to Alissa Torvinen for her project Extinction of the Badger Duck.
If you want proof of the value of the Film Independent Screenwriting Lab, just look at its alumni. Recent projects include Adam Meeks’ Union County, which premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, and Jing Ai Ng’s Forge, which had its world premiere at last year’s SXSW Film Festival and will be released in theaters this Spring by Utopia. Academy Award-winner Chloé Zhao got her start here with her feature debut Songs My Brothers Taught Me. So did Andrew Ahn with his Film Independent Spirit Award-winning debut Spa Night.
Now let’s meet this year’s Fellows:
ANDRÉS PÉREZ-DUARTE
Andrés Pérez-Duarte is a Mexican storyteller based in Nashville, TN, creating work across film, television, games, and immersive media that celebrates queer and BIPOC stories with heart, humor, and a rebellious streak. Pérez-Duarte co-wrote and creative-directed Lili, a screenlife thriller that premiered in competition at Cannes ‘25 (immersive), and co-created Hero, a VR experience earning the AIS Lumiere and Tribeca Storyscapes Awards. His screenplay Jorge in Paradise was featured on the GLAAD List, and won the MACRO x The Black List Screenwriter Incubator. He holds the Sundance Imagination Award, and The Last Supper was part of the ‘25 Gotham Week.
Project: The Last Supper
Logline: In a close-knit and religious Mexican-American community, a closeted baker prays away her homosexuality to secure her place within a prominent local family. But when her prayer for change backfires, a bizarre twist of fate reverses everyone’s sexual orientation overnight, plunging the entire town into bewildering chaos.
EMMA HE
MADDIE McCANN
Maddie McCann is a Baltimore-based writer and filmmaker, as well as a member of the development team at SmartLess Media. In partnership with Emma He, she makes absurdist comedies about ambition. Their short films, I Want To Be You and Musicians Wanted, have screened at festivals across the country. Their first feature script, Superbloom, was a Top 10 Finalist at the Shore Scripts Feature Contest, and is currently in development with the support of the Film Independent Screenwriting Lab.
Project: Superbloom
Logline: In Scottsdale, Arizona’s not-so-wild West, wallflower Callie must transform from outcast to outlaw to affordthe nose job of her dreams.
SAM OSBORN
Sam Osborn is the co-director of the film Going Varsity in Mariachi, which premiered at Sundance 2023 and won the Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award for the U.S. Documentary Competition. It went on to screen at festivals worldwide and is currently streaming on Netflix. Osborn’s first feature-length documentary as a director, Universe, about Wallace Roney, the only protege of Miles Davis, was awarded Best Music Documentary by the International Documentary Association in 2020. His short-format films have been featured on Independent Lens, Topic, LA Times, and the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian.
ALEJANDRA VASQUEZ
Alejandra Vasquez is a Mexican-American filmmaker raised between rural Texas and the San Francisco Bay Area. Her award-winning films spotlight youth, art & culture, and convey a cinematic sense of place in rural and borderland environments. Her feature directorial debut, co-directed with Sam Osborn, Going Varsity in Mariachi, premiered at Sundance 2023, won the Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award in the U.S. Documentary Competition, and is now streaming on Netflix.
Her short films include Folk Frontera (Independent Lens), winner of Best Texas Short at SXSW; Baca (LA Times Short Docs), commissioned by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA); and When It’s Good, It’s Good (POV Shorts), a co-production with Latino Public Broadcasting currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.
Project: Teen Age Riot
Logline: When teenager Emilio Monreal is dragged to Mexico City after his mother’s divorce, he finds a home amongthe city’s emo scene. Little does he know that he’ll play a pivotal role in the stranger-than-fiction punk vs. emo riots of 2008, battling in the streets for his right to exist.
RAMMY PARK
Rammy Park is a writer, director and producer. Her television credits include Amazon’s The Wheel of Time, HBO’s The Nevers, and Quantum Leap on NBC. She is currently working on Life is Strange, a new series from Amazon Prime and LuckyChap.
A lifelong lover of fantasy, science-fiction and satire, she is an impassioned world-builder whose work explores genre through an intimate, character-driven lens. A former journalist, Park earned her MFA in Directing from Columbia University’s School of the Arts. She completed the Sony Showrunner Training Program in 2022 and is an HBO Directing Fellow and a Film Independent Fellow.
Project: Seasonal
Logline: Untethered by the loss of her mother after a long period of caretaking, Nara Lee seeks refuge on a remote Danish island. There, the seasons guide her through a cycle of loss and love, bringing her back to the one home she will always have: herself.
ALISSA TORVINEN
Alissa “TORV” Torvinen is a director known for bold, stylized visuals and performance-driven storytelling. Her projects span music, commercial, and narrative.
Her work has screened internationally, gone viral online, and streamed globally across major platforms. She has collaborated with actors and artists including Phoebe Bridgers, P!nk, Black Eyed Peas, Liev Schreiber, and Zooey Deschanel, and directed national broadcast and digital campaigns for brands such as Johnson&Johnson, HP, and Spectrum.
In 2019, she co-directed a feature-length musical with popstar Melanie Martinez that holds a 90% Rotten Tomatoes score. Her Phoebe Bridgers video was named IndieWire’s Best Video of the Year.
Project: Extinction of the Badger Duck
Logline: Extinction of the Badger Duck follows the rediscovery of a mythic bird and the viral mania it inspires.
For over 40 years, Film Independent has helped filmmakers get their projects made and seen. The nonprofit organization’s core mission is to champion creative independence in visual storytelling and support a community of artists who embody diversity, innovation and uniqueness of vision.
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Fiscal Sponsorship Update: Star Power, Big Premieres and Next Steps
Welcome to Fiscal Spotlight, a special monthly round up of projects—at all stages of production—working their way through Film Independent’s Fiscal Sponsorship pipeline. Enjoy!
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Film Independent’s Fiscal Sponsorship program has supported a wide variety of projects: shorts, features, both narrative and nonfiction. Not to mention the occasional new media project, special event or advocacy initiative. Each month’s Fiscal Spotlight column announces three new projects taking part in the program.
But maybe you’re curious how some of those prior subjects have turned out. Well hey, you’re in luck! Once again it’s time for another Fiscal Update highlighting the recent achievements of previous Fiscal Spotlight subjects.
This month we have exciting news from three films, one making its premiere at Berlin, another adding a Spirit Award nominee as an EP, and another locking in key creatives as it readies for production. Read on to see what the future has in store for these three Fiscal Sponsorship success stories.
TRACES
Project type: Nonfiction Feature
Project status: Engagement/Outreach
Producer: Natalia Libet
Producer: Olha Bregman
About the Project: Despite deep traces of trauma from sexual violence and torture as a result of Russian aggression, Ukrainian women survivors are uniting to break the stigma and silence together, turning their testimonies into a reverse powerful weapon.
Filmmaker Update: We are proud to share that Traces had its world premiere at the 76th Berlin International Film Festival in the Panorama Dokumente section, where it won the Panorama Audience Award, marking the first time a Ukrainian film has received this award in the program’s history.
Traces brings together testimonies of Ukrainian women who survived conflict-related sexual violence and torture, creating a collective portrait of resilience and the struggle for justice. Following its premiere, we are continuing the film’s international festival run and global impact campaign. We are working with partners and advocacy organizations to amplify the voices of survivors and support global awareness around conflict-related sexual violence and Russia’s use of sexual violence and torture as a weapon of war in Ukraine.
SCHLITZIE: ONE OF US
Project type: Nonfiction Feature
Project status: Post-Production
Director/Producer/Writer/Editor: Steve Belgard
About the Project: A love letter to Schlitzie, the 4-foot-tall performer with microcephaly who found fame in the 1932 classic Freaks—and left an enduring legacy that continues to inspire acceptance, inclusion, and compassion.
Filmmaker Update: After our nearly 11-year “Fitzcarraldo-light” journey, we truly believed that all interviews were completed, and we had a fine cut presented to the Lawyers. But as it turned out, this very long delay brought us two new beautiful interviews.
Adam Pearson is a British actor (A Different Man) and disability rights activist, who has Neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1), a rare genetic disorder that causes non-cancerous tumors, often resulting in significant facial disfigurement. He could have hidden away, ashamed by his appearance, but Adam embraced it in a (entirely paraphrased) “scew it, I’m gonna live my life” attitude. And he really is. Listening to him makes us believe the human spirit is still very much alive. We’ve made Adam an Executive Producer, on Schlitzie; and he will soon be in production with a different take on The Elephant Man, portraying Joseph Merrick, produced by Rhino Films.
We met author, film critic and disability activist Kristen Lopez at a Silver Lake screening of Tod Browning’s Freaks. Kristen was signing her new book “Popcorn Disabilities: The Highs and Lows of Disabled Representation In the Movies.” After reading her book, we knew she’d be a great interview, and she didn’t not disappoint.
THE FOOT LONGING
Project type: Fiction Feature
Project status: Development
Producer/Writer/Actor: Chris McNeany
Producer/Director: Stephen Koncelik
About the Project: When a closeted foot-fetishist loses both his husband and his longtime job as a shoe salesman, he plunges into hilariously awkward ‘foot longing’ dates and a wild Palm Springs adventure—only to discover that true acceptance (and love) can come from embracing every part of who he is.
Filmmaker Update: Things are heating up in pre-production for The Foot Longing! We are beyond thrilled to welcome Matt Lynn as our Director of Photography. Represented by UTA and Zero Gravity Management, Matt brings a level of craft and professional vision that is going to take this film’s aesthetic to the next level.
In other news, we are officially in the thick of our crowdfunding campaign. While we are currently on pace to reach our funding goal, we haven’t crossed the finish line just yet. We could still use any support to keep this momentum steady and ensure we have every resource needed to bring this story to life. We’ve been to several in person events getting the word out with our cast and it has been a fantastic response.
Learn more about Fiscal Sponsorship, including its benefits and eligibility requirements by visiting our website. See which projects are currently being supported via our Sponsored Projects page.
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Disc Jockeys: Music, Coffee & Movies at Hamden’s Best Video
‘Disc Jockeys’ is a column featuring video stores across the country that provide their communities with access to DVDs, Blu-Rays and VHS (that often can’t be found anywhere else), in which we explore what it takes to survive as a physical media store in the age of streaming.
When running a smaller market video store like Best Video in Hamden, Connecticut, one thing that’s crucial is being a community hub. There are many ways to do that beyond providing films for the local cinephile population. Yes, there are screenings and meetups, but Best Video brings the energy and community by also running a coffee shop inside the store and having live music nights. There’s even a Kids Room where children from the nearby elementary school have a safe after-school space. It really does take a village.
Rob Harmon is the Video Archive Director at the non-profit video store, and he spoke with us about creating a space that, according to some residents, is one of the reasons people wanted to live in Hamden in the first place.
Can you give us a little background on Best Video?
Best Video was a video store in Hamden, Connecticut, just outside of New Haven, that became a non-profit in 2015. I started working here in 2010, and the writing was on the wall: our traditional model just wasn’t cutting it. Year after year, things got quieter. The first couple of Christmases I worked, in 2010 and 2011, we had huge lines of people right up through Christmas Eve. By 2012 and 2013, people were staying away, mainly because of streaming.
Around that time, we started hearing about video stores elsewhere going non-profit. Vidiots was the first one I remember. Concerned customers rallied around the idea, a board was formed in 2013 or 2014, they met with lawyers, filled out the paperwork, and we were approved as a non-profit in November 2015.
What steps did you take to build the community back up and make Best Video an appealing destination again?
It’s been a multi-faceted effort. A lot of people say that one of the reasons to live around here is Best Video, and they mean it. Before we became a non-profit, we started doing live music, which drew in a completely different demographic. We opened our own café — originally there was an independent coffee shop here, but they moved in 2011 or 2012, and our original owner opened his own. That’s added a lot of the energy you’d notice if you walked in.
We also started doing regular screenings, which we should have been doing all along. We have a nice projector, and while it’s not the biggest space, it’s a lovely intimate setting.
We now have elementary school kids who walk over after school and hang out in the kids’ room. It would have come to nothing if concerned parties hadn’t come together during those dark days of 2012–2013. We also introduced a membership model, which has been hugely important. We now have somewhere between 600 and 800 paying members. I’d worked at the Film Forum in New York City, so I’d seen firsthand how a membership model can create a solid financial base for a nonprofit.
What do you love most about Best Video?
I love having a place where all of these movies live. I tell people to think of Best Video as a crowdsourced movie collection. If you came to my house, you’d see a decent but modest collection and think, ‘Oh, Rob likes movies’ — but truthfully, most of my collection is right here. And once a film is on these shelves, it’s somewhat permanent. That permanence matters to me deeply, especially now. Best Video is the antidote to the narcotic experience being sold to us, and I feel proud of that.
Tell me about the collection — how many titles do you have, and what do you look for when adding new ones?
My official title is Video Archive Director. I deal with the movies, which is great because it’s what I’m cut out to do. We don’t have an exact count, but it’s at least 40,000 — probably closer to 45,000 or 50,000. An updated database would give us a precise number, but the one we’re currently running was built in the 1980s.
For new releases, we generally try to get one DVD and one Blu-ray of anything major, and more copies of titles we expect high demand for.
I also maintain wish lists based on member requests, and we have a system where I note who’s asked for something and follow up with them when it comes in. People donate titles too, which helps. We try to encourage members to return in-demand movies quickly — when David Lynch died, for instance, we reached out asking people to get his films back so others could watch them.
How does Best Video fit into the local Connecticut film scene?
There are film schools at Yale and Wesleyan in Middletown, and we get people who come to film here. We’ve hosted short films and documentaries, and people screen their work here. We’ve been involved in local film festivals and have worked with film students before the pandemic — something we’d like to do again. Local filmmakers often donate a copy of their film to us, and we have a Connecticut section in the store where we’ll place it. We get regular requests from people looking to screen their movies here, and it really is a nice, intimate setting for it.
Why are video stores still important?
Physical media is crucial to any sense of permanence — an idea that’s being pushed aside for so many reasons. I genuinely feel that owning and lending physical media is becoming a kind of political act. The ability to hand a friend a movie and say, ‘You really need to see this,’ and have them pass it on — that’s powerful. These are records. A disc is compact, it can move from house to house, and it’s not going anywhere. If it breaks, you can replace it. We’re being sold a lie that paying $10 or $20 a month to streaming services gives you access to something, when really your money is just going out the door and you’re getting nothing permanent in return. It’s a bait and switch, and Best Video is the antidote to that.
For over 40 years, Film Independent has helped filmmakers get their projects made and seen. The nonprofit organization’s core mission is to champion creative independence in visual storytelling and support a community of artists who embody diversity, innovation and uniqueness of vision.
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How Two Filmmakers Made a Festival Hit for Under $27,000
The old low-budget mantra is “Beg, borrow, [REDACTED].” That’s all fine and good, but what do you really need to borrow, and how exactly do you get people to care about your film when it feels like you have to beg for people’s attention these days?
At a live edition of Film Independent’s Filmmaker Tuesdays titled “NanoWave: The Microbudget Film (r)evolution”, presented in partnership with HieronyVision, writer-director Joe Burke and co-writer/star Oliver Cooper sat down with moderator Felix Werner to break down exactly how they made their feature, Burt, for $27,000.
The origin of Burt begins with a real person— Burt Berger. Burke and Cooper had known Burt for years, spotting him playing music at an open mic, and after casting him in a short film, they knew they had something. “Everyone who saw this short film was like, who is that guy? He’s amazing,” Cooper recalled. From there, the question became: how do we build a movie around his life? When Burt was later diagnosed with Parkinson’s, around the same time Burke’s own father received the same diagnosis, the filmmakers knew they had to act.
Knowing they had a limited budget, Burke and Cooper went for a location they knew they could get cheap: Burt’s actual house, where he lived with his real-life roommate, Steve, who also ended up in the film. “I have location first, story second,” Burke explained. “I always say, if you have access to location, and you can control the location, you can accomplish anything.”
Cooper put it even more directly: “I got $7,000. Let’s make something.”
The $7,000 Film (Plus $20,000 in Post)
That $7,000 was raised from Cooper’s mother, sister, and self, and covered seven days of shooting. The pair didn’t pay themselves. The sound recordist got $250 a day. The DP, Daniel Kenji Levin, a film school friend of Burke’s, worked for $50 a day in gas money, taking back-end points instead. Steve, Burt’s roommate, was paid $100 a day for use of his house. Two Canon cameras were borrowed from friends. There was minimal lighting and craft service was served out of the trunk of Burke’s car.
To make things easier on the production, the film was shot entirely in chronological order. “If you’re shooting in order, you can write, if you have to, along the way,” Burke said. This also made continuity easer, because without a script supervisor, the team had to rely on each other to make sure things were accurate from shot-to-shot and scene-to-scene.
Burke didn’t write a traditional script. Instead, he created a detailed 15-page outline with every beat mapped out — giving Burt and Steve room to speak in their own voices without memorizing dialogue. “It didn’t look pretty” Burke said, “[but] we knew what we needed. No one saw [the outline] but me, Oliver, and our DP Kenji.”
After picture lock, Burke and Cooper raised an additional $20,000 from a family friend in Ohio to cover post-production: a composer, sound design, festival fees, and a poster. Total cost, all-in: $27,000.
The Festival Run: Big Wins After Going 0-for-28
They finished the film in December 2023 and submitted to every major 2024 festival — Sundance, SXSW, Tribeca etc. They proceeded to go 0-for-28. Not a single acceptance. “My mom was like, ‘You gotta move back to Ohio, sleep in the basement,'” Burke said.
Then in March 2025, they got into Cinequest. They won Best Comedy Feature. Two weeks later at a Phoenix festival: Best Picture. Two weeks after that in Florida: a Special Jury Award. “In six weeks we go from zero for 28 festivals to our first three film festivals. In 2025, we won all three,” Burke said. “Something changed. Something shifted.”
From there, Burke stopped paying festival submission fees entirely. He emailed festivals directly, attached their trailer, explained the personal nature of the film, and asked for fee waivers. Many said yes. And instead of rushing to streaming, he cold-emailed independent arthouse theaters across the country, offering a 50/50 revenue split. To his surprise, many programmed the film. “I emailed every independent arthouse theater in the country,” Burke said. “To my surprise, a lot of them said yes.”
But How Did They Really Do It?
When it came to advice for the audience and any other potential filmmakers, the team had a few points they wanted to get across.
Always shoot two cameras: Burke’s setup meant he could film both sides of a conversation simultaneously, giving him maximum flexibility in the edit with non-professional actors. “I’ll do that probably for almost every movie I shoot now,” he said. “I loved that freedom as an editor, especially with non-actors, to actually have the conversations on both sides being filmed.”
Know how to edit… or know someone who does: “If you’re a filmmaker, you have to know how to edit, or your best friend’s got to be an editor,” said Cooper. Burke cut the film himself, and because he was editing as well as directing, he knew when he had enough coverage for a scene and could move on after only a couple of takes.
Find something that only you can make: “If you’re going to do micro-budget, find something personal that it’s only something that you can do,” said Burke. Cooper emphasized how important drive is for a project that turned out to be a multi-year journey: “You have to find the passion in it.”
This was part one of NanoWave: The Microbudget Film (r)evolution. There will be six sessions throughout the year continuing the conversation on micro-budget filmmaking. The next session will be virtual and will be on April 14th. Check the Events page for more info soon.
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Sculpting the Emotional Scaffolding of Generational Trauma with ‘Sentimental Value’ Editor Olivier Bugge Coutté
Most recently scoring the international film trophy at the BAFTA Awards, Sentimental Value is Danish editor — and Spirit Awards alum for The Apprentice — Olivier Bugge Coutté’s sixth collaboration with director Joachim Trier. The filmmakers have previously worked on The Worst Person in the World (which also stars Renate Reinsve from Presumed Innocent) and Oslo, August 31st. The Norwegian-English family drama from Trier follows actress Nora (Reinsve), who resents her father and once-successful director, Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgård from Dune and Chernobyl), for abandoning the family after divorcing their mother many years ago. Along with sister Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), Nora has to deal with him again when he returns following their mother’s passing. In a desperate attempt to revive his career, Gustav offers the lead role in his next movie to Nora. But when she refuses it, he turns the project into an English-language film so that the role could be inhabited by American actress, Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning, Spirit Award alum for the Hulu series, The Great).
After 30 years of friendship and cinematic collaborations, newly-minted Oscar-nominee, Coutté, is in sync with Trier after working together for so many years. “We’ve done six films together. Joachim and I have very similar taste in films, music for films, art, and literature. We are fascinated by the same things. And we are so in tune with what moments we like in the acting, the rhythm of the scenes, how to use music, when to hold back or give information, the playfulness of montages, etc.,” he shares, adding that: “When I see material from Joachim, I often feel “I know what you thought here, I know why you did this shot. Of course we have a lot things to solve in the edit, and it takes a lot of work but we are artistically 100% on the same page.”
What is Joachim like as a collaborator and what is the shorthand that you’ve developed over the years?
We play this game, where I let a shot run and put a marker where I would cut out. Without looking at my marker, Joachim does the same. We always hit within the same 12 frames. We are in sync. On the one hand, it’s very challenging to cut Joachim’s films because of their complexity in storytelling, but it’s also very easy because I just need to ask myself: “Does this work for me? If yes, then there’s a 98% chance it will also work for Joachim.”
My favorite part in this film is the artistic play with the bilingual element in the film-within-a-film, where Rachel first reads a very emotional section of Gustav’s script in English early in the story, and towards the end, Nora reads the same in Norwegian. It highlights the fact that translations, no matter how well-done, sometimes simply cannot fully capture a moment or feeling, which is best left to its original language. How did you tackle both sequences?
Rachel’s delivery is very strong and very emotional. She proves to Gustav and everyone at that moment that she is very good actress. But also, just an actress. To me, it’s not so much her convincing acting that hits me, it’s Gustav’s reaction. He leans back and smiles, but what is that smile about? It takes a while before he smiles. Is he convinced that Rachel is right for the part, or is he forcing himself to be convinced?
When Nora reads the scene, it becomes personal. She recognizes it from her own life and finally understands that this script is not about Gustav’s mother [but about Nora instead]. There was one long tracking shot from the side as she reads. It was supposed to be kept in one, but it was not nearly as strong as this handheld shot, which puts you right in the feeling with Nora. It doesn’t need the tracks to tell you that “this is an important moment.” It also made it possible to cut to Agnes on the same axes as she watches her sister. That for me is the strongest part, even more intense than Nora’s read. With her hands on her face, crying, Agnes feels Nora’s pain, but I can also see hope in her eyes, because this finally allows Nora to understand their father. All three actresses — Elle, Inga, and Renate — are so incredible. What a privilege it is to cut scenes like this.
A beautiful Dragestil (or “dragon style”) house, the Borg family home is a crucial part of the story. How did you convey the tension, love, and grief that has transpired in that house?
The opening montage is what sets the house as a center stage for the story to unfold: it has witnessed several generations of the Borg family. We would cut to an empty room or view thru the windows, let the people enter and exit the frame to leave it empty again. We would also see empty rooms and hear activities outside the frame. In one shot, a window is closing and you hear the outside world from an open and closed window’s perspective. With Nora’s voiceover, it gave a strong sense of the house just being there, not moving and witnessing the world passing by. The windows became the eyes, the rooms became the stomach, etc.
That’s fascinating! Even though the story deals with heavy topics like depression, suicide, and abandonment, how did you keep some levity for the audience?
We believe very much in humor to bring people in and engage the audience even in stories that involve death and pain. You become more receptive when you are allowed to laugh. If it’s only painful, you will shut down and protect your feelings. That’s why you often see both in our montages about the house. In the second montage, Gustav’s mum is closing the door before her suicide while teenage Gustav peeks at his aunt’s girlfriend’s naked breasts. Life is complex. You can both cry and laugh at the same event, and still be normal.
The montage where the faces of Gustav, Nora, and Agnes morph into each other on rotation is very emotional. What was that meant to symbolize?
The sequence was created in-camera by the DP Kasper Tuxen, by exposing one face, rewinding the film, and exposing on top of it again. It’s not CGI. It wasn’t written in the script. He also did the same for The Worst Person in The World, but we never found a place to use it. I can’t tell you what it symbolizes. It’s one of those open-ended lyrical abstractions that anyone can put their own meaning to. When you know the story of these three characters and their “psychological knot,” it can mean everything from an image of pain to forgiveness. It comes right after Nora’s breakdown and before Agnes’ fight with Gustav and the sisters’ reunification. From this point on, things will have to change; the status quo is no longer an option. Is it a warning? Is it about forgiveness? I don’t know.
What was the most challenging, unexpected, or rewarding sequence to cut on this film?
One of my favorite parts is the little jazzy montage around Nora, when she was with her co-worker in the bed, before it ends at Agnes’ house. I just love the playfulness of that style of editing.
After Nora finally reads her father’s script, the emotional scene with Agnes and Nora hugging and crying is very moving. How did you accentuate this pivotal moment?
In the original script, this was meant to be earlier in the film, even before Nora and Rachel meet at the theatre. But the scene was so strong between the sisters: once Nora understands that it’s about a character similar to herself (maybe herself), they come together in a mutual understanding of what they experienced during their childhood. It felt like the highest peak in the story. After that, everything was secondary conflicts and you could feel the film was getting a life on its own and starting to close in on itself. When Nora and Agnes hug each other on the bed, it was shot with many small improvised moments. As an editor, it’s all about carefully going thru the material over and over again. Agnes saying “I love you”, and Nora replying “me too” was improvised on only one of the takes. Imagine if we had missed that.
Let’s talk about the final sequence where Nora is acting in Gustav’s movie on the soundstage.
I get very emotional every time I see this ending shot. I know it’s a film-within-a-film and Nora is an actress, and I can see the blue screen outside the windows. But every time I want to stop her from going behind that door and scream “Nora please, don’t do it, let me help you.” Originally, Gustav gives stage direction to Nora, but we took it away. Without it, the scene is much stronger and you identify with her and with Gustav’s story about his mum and his daughter much more this way. It makes you think of the whole film that you’ve just watched. It’s a catharsis. After Gustav says “cut” and they look at each other, you see the admiration and love they have for each other. All of their problems are far from being solved, but the love and respect is back between father and daughter. They have finally found a way to communicate. The power of art has healed the void between them, and hopefully, set them on a path to communicate better as father and daughter.
Earning nine Oscar nominations, Sentimental Value is playing in select theaters for a post-nomination run and available on PVOD.
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Featured Image: Stellan Skarsgård and Elle Fanning in ‘Sentimental Value.’ Courtesy NEON
Don’t-Miss Indies: What to Watch in March
This month at the movies we draw your attention to three compelling documentaries on the future of AI, the historic trailblazing courage of a female astronaut, and the inescapable present of colon health. Mix that up with some hockey, nursing, social commentary, neurotic romance and truly spooky fare for your Friday the 13th, for one wild storytelling ride.
YOUNGBLOOD
When You Can Watch: March 6
Where You Can Watch: Theaters
Director: Hubert Davis
Cast: Ashton James, Blair Underwood, Shawn Doyle
Why We’re Excited: It’s a reimagining of the 1986 hockey movie starring Rob Lowe. Detroit prodigy Dean Youngblood (Ashton James, Boxcutter) joins a Canadian hockey team in order to show off, really. With his father’s voice in his head (Blair Underwood, Deep Impact) and coach Murray (Shawn Doyle, Star Trek: Discovery) in his face, Dean must decide for himself what it means to be a Black man – on or off the ice. Directed by Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker Hubert Davis (Black Ice) after Charles Officer (Akilla’s Escape) helped write it and then passed away, Davis honored Officer’s vision to invert 80’s narratives of masculinity: learn to fight, beat up the bully, get the girl. “For me,” he told Alt A Review, “it was about taking my own personal experiences—my relationship with my dad, my relationship with my sons now—and infusing that into the story to make it feel true.” Film Independent member Allison Sokol is an Associate Producer on Youngblood.
HEEL
When You Can Watch: March 6
Where You Can Watch: Theaters
Director: Jan Komasa
Cast: Stephen Graham, Andrea Riseborough, Anson Boon
Why We’re Excited: This psychological thriller stars Spirit Award winner Stephen Graham (Adolescence) and nominee Andrea Riseborough (To Leslie) as a dysfunctional couple trying to rehabilitate a 19-year-old criminal named Tommy (Anson Boon, Pistol). They do this by chaining him up like a dog and attempting to train him accordingly. As the training unfolds, Tommy’s resistance cracks with an occasional show of obedience, but is it just an act to get away? Embracing dystopian allegory and dark comedy, Heel is the latest from Polish Oscar nominee Jan Komasa (Corpus Christi), whose body of work reflects psychological intensity. “It became a kind of thought experiment,” he told TPM. “Everything I’d done before was rooted in realism, so this was about opening new doors.” Film Independent member Naomi Despres is an Executive Producer.
ANDRÉ IS AN IDIOT
When You Can Watch: March 6
Where You Can Watch: Theaters
Director: Tony Benna
Cast: André Ricciardi
Why We’re Excited: Spirit Award nominee Tony Benna documents the last days of a San Francisco advertising professional with a quirky lifestyle, a sarcastic wit and stage four colon cancer. Why is André an idiot? Because he could have caught it with a colonoscopy. Following Andre’s last days through chemo, indulging in his curious hobbies, and reflecting on his irreverent life choices is more entertaining than it might seem. Along the way we also meet his wife and two teenage daughters, his best friend, his therapist and many of his colleagues. Not a commercial for how to die, André aims to present his version of the experience – and potentially inspire more colonoscopies along the way. Film Independent member Joshua Altman is a Producer.
UNDERTONE
When You Can Watch: March 13
Where You Can Watch: Theaters
Writer/Director: Ian Tuason
Cast: Nina Kiri, Adam DiMarco, Michèle Duquet
Why We’re Excited: First-timer Ian Tuason initially imagined this found footage horror film as a podcast, focusing attention on sound. Podcast host Evy (Nina Kiri, The Handmaid’s Tale) listens to these sounds while creating content for her paranormal podcast. Living with and looking after her dying mother in a house full of memories, Evy’s creepy recorded sounds merge with the creepy world she’s living in, haunting her with a parallel experience to the podcast story. Evy’s denial only drags her deeper into an inevitable confrontation with the source of it all – an ancient demon that Tuason claims also visited him. “But I saged my house, and it’s fine now.”
LATE SHIFT
When You Can Watch: March 20
Where You Can Watch: Theaters
Writer/Director: Petra Biondina Volpe
Cast: Leonie Benesch, Sonja Riesen, Alireza Bayram
Why We’re Excited: Swiss-Italian filmmaker Petra Volpe (Dreamland) consulted with dozens of nurses for this workplace thriller following Floria (Leonie Benesch, September 5) through one shift at the hospital. There’s no supernatural twist to this drama, it’s simply the riveting profile of an ordinary surgical nurse on any given day – a tense, urgent race against the clock. Volpe’s love letter to nurses prioritizes the critical frontlines of patient care, the person most likely to notice any change or be called upon to meet any need. But with one colleague absent from an already understaffed ward, it’s Floria against the laws of physics as she meets each stressful situation with humane attentiveness and professionalism – until she makes a fatal mistake.
RICKY
When You Can Watch: March 20
Where You Can Watch: Theaters
Director: Rashad Frett
Cast: Titus Welliver, Stephan James, Sheryl Lee Ralph
Why We’re Excited: Thrust back into a world he doesn’t trust and hasn’t seen in fifteen years, Ricardo Smith (Stephan James, Spirit Award-winner If Beale Street Could Talk) is making the effort to be a law-abiding citizen. At the age of 30, he’s spent half his life behind bars and is still growing up. But challenges to his freedom arise, such as gainful employment – a condition of his parole overseen by Joanne (Sheryl Lee Ralph, Abbott Elementary) – and making choices that could just as easily land him in danger as not. It’s a razor’s edge of justice, and Ricky’s journey is inspired by filmmaker Rashad Frett’s documentary work with the criminal justice system in Connecticut. Film Independent members Robina Riccitiello is an Executive Producer and Marci Wiseman is Co-Executive Producer.
SPACEWOMAN
When You Can Watch: March 20
Where You Can Watch: Theaters
Director: Hannah Berryman
Cast: Eileen Collins
Why We’re Excited: This documentary from Hannah Berryman (Rockfield: the Studio on the Farm) explores human risk-taking through the eyes of the first woman to pilot and command a spacecraft, Eileen Collins. From her difficult growing up years to breaking through layers of glass ceilings, Collins copes with fear in increasingly dangerous space shuttle missions. “Piloting was such a testosterone-driven arena in the 1970s and ’80s, the world of Top Gun,” Berryman told Variety. “With Eileen, I was interested in how her difficult background had, in a way, helped her to conquer fear more easily, a skill she’d had to develop as a child.”
FANTASY LIFE
When You Can Watch: March 27
Where You Can Watch: Theaters
Writer/Director: Matthew Shear
Cast: Amanda Peet, Matthew Shear, Bob Balaban
Why We’re Excited: First-time director Matthew Shear also stars (Mistress America) as Sam, who becomes the ‘manny’ for Dianne (Amanda Peet, Spirit Award-winning Please Give) who is an actor married to a musician, living a well-to-do but creatively frustrated New York life. What ensues is a quirky comedy of backward romance, as Sam falls for Dianne with an attentive devotion that turns her head. When Sam accompanies the whole family on vacation with all four grandparents (one of whom is Sam’s therapist), the fantasy meets real life with wry honesty. Film Independent members David Bernon, Emily McCann Lesser, and Sam Slater are Producers.
THE AI DOC: OR HOW I BECAME AN APOCALOPTIMIST
When You Can Watch: March 27
Where You Can Watch: Theaters
Directors: Daniel Roher, Charlie Tyrell
Cast: Sam Altman, Daniela Amodei, Dario Amodei
Why We’re Excited: Apart from coining a new word (Apocaloptimist is fun to say), Oscar-winning documentarian Daniel Roher (Navalny) teams up with fellow dad-to-be Charlie Tyrell (My Dead Dad’s Porno Tapes) to find out what AI really means for the future. Rather than draw definite conclusions, the filmmakers elicit perspectives from tech giants and dozens of experts as well as Roher and his partner, filmmaker Caroline Lindy (Your Monster) in animated vignettes. Indulging curiosity in the face of such potential (for better and worse), the filmmakers present a compelling conversation starter on the future of human jobs, development and life in general – with hope and dread right alongside. Film Independent members Diane Becker is a Producer and EJ Lykes is an Associate Producer.
Programmer’s Pick: SLANTED
When You Can Watch: March 13
Where You Can Watch: Theaters
Writer/Director: Amy Wang
Cast: Shirley Chen, Mckenna Grace, Elaine Hendrix
Why We’re Excited: From Film Independent Lead Programmer Jenn Wilson:
Film Independent member B. Quinn Curry is Executive Producer.
KEY
Film Independent Fellow or Member
Film Independent Presents Screening, Q&A
Microbudget
Filmmaker or Lead Characters of Color
Film Independent Spirit Award Winner or Nominee
Female Filmmaker
LGBT Filmmaker or Lead LGBT Characters
First-time Filmmaker
LA Film Fest Winner or Nominee
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Building Tomorrow’s Television Directors: Announcing the 2026 Film Independent Episodic Intensive Fellows
In an industry where connections and insider knowledge can be the difference between landing your first directing gig and watching opportunities pass you by, programs like the Film Independent Episodic Directing Intensive are invaluable. They democratize access to mentorship and insights that typically come from years of hustle and luck.
The Episodic Directing Intensive, supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, connects an exciting cohort of talented filmmakers with the greater television industry. This year’s program, which ran February 18-20, brought together six Fellows with some outstanding mentors.
This year’s guest speakers included some seriously impressive names: Andrew Ahn, Robert Baltazar, Thembi Banks, Adam Bernstein, Ante Cheng, Ben Eisenberg, Gloria Fan, Hilarie Holt, Liz Kelly, Shari Page, Julio C. Perez, Jeremy Podeswa, Beth Schacter, Brian Tee, and Daniel Willis.
According to Dea Vazquez, Associate Director of Fiction Programs at Film Independent, the program was built to set up the Fellows for future success. “We are thrilled to support this incredibly talented cohort of directors as they work to build careers directing television,” she explained. “With this program, we equipped them with the knowledge necessary to move into the space with confidence.”
The curriculum went deep, addressing practical and strategic topics. “We spoke to episodic directors, showrunners, editors, actors, cinematographers and executives about collaboration, prepping for episodes and career planning,” Vazquez said. “The Fellows were prepared for each session and engaged with guest speakers with incisive questions.”
If you want to know whether a program like this actually moves the needle, just ask the Fellows themselves. According to Chelsea Christer, “I feel like the mystery of breaking into television has been completely dispelled and I now have a better understanding of how to navigate the next steps in my career as an episodic director. Connecting with my cohort was another major highlight.”
Another Fellow, Jacob Combs, echoed the sentiment: “The Episodic Directing Intensive was inspiring, eye-opening and incredibly informative. A true 360-degree perspective on the state of TV directing and how to move toward landing that elusive first episode.”
We have a feeling this cohort will be directing their first episodes, and many more, very soon.
Speaking of this year’s Fellows, let’s go ahead and meet the cohort:
Alex Heller
Alex Heller is a writer/director working between Los Angeles, Chicago and Norway. Her debut feature film The Year Between, an autobiographical comedy about bipolar disorder that stars J. Smith-Cameron and Steve Buscemi, premiered at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival. It then sold to Peacock and received praise from The New York Times, Variety, RogerEbert.com and NPR. Heller’s recent short film Debaters (starring J. Smith-Cameron and Kenneth Lonergan) premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, was selected for the Sundance Short Film Tour and is a proof-of-concept for an upcoming feature film of the same title.
Chelsea Christer
Originally from a horse ranch in Colorado, Chelsea Christer began her filmmaking career in San Francisco. Her work centers on character-driven narratives, often exploring themes of human connection, ambition and identity. Her feature-length debut, the award-winning music documentary Bleeding Audio (2020), released to critical acclaim and screened at nearly 20 film festivals, including Slamdance. Her most recent film, the short dark comedy Out for Delivery (2025) premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and screened at SXSW. She also directed the unscripted comedy series Nobody Asked (2024) for Dropout. She now resides in Los Angeles with her husband and their dog.
Christopher Nataanii Cegielski
Christopher Nataanii Cegielski is a Navajo director, writer and DGA member. He recently developed and co-directed the 10-part docu-series People of the West with Boardwalk Pictures and Pechanga Creative Studios, telling California’s history from a Native perspective. He made his television debut co-directing the History Channel docu-series Sitting Bull from executive producer Leonardo DiCaprio. Through his commercial work, he has partnered with clients including the FDA, ABC, United Airlines and Google. His narrative work has screened at festivals such as the Berlinale, SXSW and imagineNATIVE, and he is an alumnus of Sundance Native Lab and Film Independent’s Project Involve.
J.M. Harper
J.M. Harper is a Brooklyn-based director and father of two. His debut feature, As We Speak (Paramount+), premiered in the U.S. Documentary Competition at the Sundance Film Festival in 2024, and his sophomore documentary Soul Patrol premiered there in 2026 and was awarded The Directing Award: U.S. Documentary. A multi-hyphenate documentarian, Harper has edited four feature films, including the Emmy-nominated series jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogyand received a Peabody Award as an executive producer on Daughters. In 2024, he was named to DOC NYC’s “40 Under 40” list and is a recipient of the 2025 Concordia Fellowship and Film Independent Amplifier Fellowship.
Jacob Combs
Jacob Combs is a Los Angeles-based director, writer and producer whose work blends humor and heart to explore characters bridging conflicting worlds. He was a 2025 Film Independent Project Involve Fellow and Cayton-Goldrich Family Foundation Fellowship recipient, directing the satirical, dark comedy short Tradwife as part of the program. His previous film, the intergenerational queer short The Orange at the Seder, screened at the Seattle International Film Festival, BFI Flare London LGBTQ+ Film Festival, HollyShorts and the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. Combs’s previous episodic projects include Netflix’s comedy Blockbuster, as well as Pixar’s Dream Productions and the Emmy-nominated series Inside Pixar.
Stefon Bristol
Stefon Bristol hails from New York with a distinctive voice in independent cinema. Inspired by his Guyanese heritage, his work blends genre storytelling with humanistic social commentary and cultural specificity. Bristol co-wrote and directed the time-travel movie See You Yesterday, produced by Spike Lee, which premiered at Tribeca before launching on Netflix to critical acclaim. The film earned Certified Fresh and won Best First Feature Screenplay at the Film Independent Spirit Awards. His latest dystopian thriller, Breathe, stars Jennifer Hudson, Milla Jovovich, Common and Sam Worthington. Bristol graduated from Morehouse College and earned his MFA in Film from New York University.
For over 40 years, Film Independent has helped filmmakers get their projects made and seen. The nonprofit organization’s core mission is to champion creative independence in visual storytelling and support a community of artists who embody diversity, innovation and uniqueness of vision.
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How Science Can Make Your Film Better: Sloan Salon Recap
Art and science are simpatico. Both are studies of nature, joining the physical world of science with the social realm of story and humanity. Deep scientific understanding enriches a film with detail and realism. Film Independent and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation work together in providing grant opportunities for storytellers and scientists to display their work in narrative form. The 2026 Sloan Salon: Discovering the Story in the Science moderated by Ashley Flores, Manager of Film Independent Fiction Programs, included an array of filmmakers and scientists alike – Liz Neeley, Latif Nasser, Dr. Neil Garg, Sara Seager, Sara Crow, David Rafailedes, Ioana Uricaru, and Dr. Katie Biberdorf. They discussed the crossover of story and science along with methods of bringing these narratives to light before turning to the future of the scientific community and its representation in our culture.
Liz Neeley, a science communicator and former marine biologist, spoke to the fundamental spark of curiosity as catalyst for both researchers and the audience of any science-based narrative. Host of Radiolab podcast Latif Nasser referred to creating a “vacuum in the listener” so they may become “infected with a question” answered later in the story. Characters are the constructed vessels that steer our curiosity through a narrative, across what Neeley calls the “curiosity gap” to an answer.
In regards to the film Shitoshi depicting a fictional Bitcoin origin story, co-writer/director Sara Crow discussed how they chose to “weave the technological problem into our character’s personal life.” Breakthroughs were connected to the main character’s growth in this “problem of how to solve Bitcoin and the blockchain.” Co-writer/producer David Rafailades added: “The dramatic pressures in her life are driving why she wants to make this scientific breakthrough. In a fun way, we tried to make those scientific breakthroughs, where you see the most science, be everyday moments in this girl’s life.”
While there still remains “Eureka! moments” along the way (Nasser), answers may only show themselves across vast time scales in science. A duality exists between the everyday and the extraordinary, of scientists “miles deep in the ocean, out in the field, and touching people’s brains” (Neeley) and the less glamorous work taking place in a lab day by day. MIT Professor of Exoplanet Astronomy Sara Seager and UCLA Professor of Organic Chemistry Dr. Neil Garg both touched on the paradox of capturing excitement over long research periods in a high-stakes narrative. Seager, whose work has played out over several decades, now focuses on the mysteries of Venus: “Could there be life floating around there in the atmosphere?” In presenting her work to the public and even to get funding, she stressed how it “has to have a narrative that can flow, to hang it together from start to finish.”
Ioana Uricaru – writer/director, former molecular biologist, and multiple-time Sloan collaborator – joined in on storytelling: “When science is in the mix, I find that the most compelling type of questions that scientists might be confronted with are conscious, moral questions – when they get to a point in their journey as scientists where they suddenly have to choose between what they discover and what that’s going to do to the world, standing by what they found and risking their reputation, or even their life.” Uricaru’s work in historical/period scientific narratives where a wealth of source material is available led her to emphasize “culling” as vital to picking elements most propulsive to the story.
Dr. Kate Bibendorf, an inorganic chemist and educator familiarly known as Kate the Chemist (@katethechemist), added that the only way out of the “jargon jungle” was through narrative: “If you are trying to actually teach something, if you are trying to get one scientific principle across, using a story is the best way to get that across. We do that in general chemistry all the time.”
All the panelists agreed that science ought to be accessible to everyone regardless of education or expertise, encouraging anyone interested to reach out and take advantage of this like-minded community. They cited current work of inspired scientists and filmmakers, harkening back to the tremendous importance of research in developing any story or breaking new ground. As the conversation drew to a close, Dr. Neil Garg stressed: “It’s really important. The scientific community currently feels, if I can say, a little bit under attack if you will, and there are all these innovations that happen as a result of scientific research. Sometimes there are things that are very clearly going to be impactful. Sometimes it takes decades of research for something that’s transformative for humanity for the science to evolve, to be figured out to that level. Overall I would just encourage folks who are interested in this to get involved because the world needs you right now. Not just the scientists now, but I think thirty, forty, fifty years from now, if we’re not pursuing science, understanding science, prioritizing science and communicating it, what does that look like for humanity?”
In a final inspirational cue, Latif Nasser decreed: “Science is for everyone. Even you!”
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Big Ideas, Bold Voices: Meet the 2026 Amplifier Fellows PLUS $180K in Grants
Film Independent has announced the six filmmakers selected for the fifth annual Amplifier Fellowship — and with $180,000 in unrestricted grants on the table, this year’s cohort is poised to make serious waves.
Each Fellow will receive a $30,000 grant along with a year-long program of creative and strategic support, customized mentorship from industry advisors and a Film Independent Board member, professional coaching in partnership with Renee Freedman & Co, and financial and business advisement in partnership with The Jill James.
The 2026 Fellowship is supported by Founding Sponsor Netflix and its Fund for Creative Equity, continuing a five-year partnership dedicated to championing bold storytelling across fiction and nonfiction.
As Angela C. Lee, Film Independent’s Director of Artist Development, put it, “We are thrilled to partner with Netflix for a fifth year to support this incredibly talented cohort of filmmakers across fiction and non-fiction in our 2026 Amplifier Fellowship and provide the crucial granting, resources and community for these artists to thrive as both artists and entrepreneurs.”
That balance — artistry and entrepreneurship — defines the Amplifier Fellowship. It’s not just about finishing a film, it’s about equipping filmmakers with the infrastructure, strategy and confidence to navigate a rapidly evolving industry.
And to show what a potent combination those traits end up being, just look to our past Fellows. They include J.M. Harper, whose Amplifier supported Soul Patrol won the U.S. Documentary Directing Award at Sundance; Contessa Gayles, whose Songs from the Hole, also Amplifier supported, won the Cinema Eye Honors Heterodox Award and is now available on Netflix; and David Fortune, whose Colorbook premiered at Tribeca and earned a NAACP Image Award nomination after he was named one of Variety’s Top 10 Directors to Watch.
The 2026 Amplifier Fellows and their projects are:
AKIL RASHAD ANDERSON Writer/Director
Akil Rashad Anderson is a Haitian American screenwriter and director from Miami. Months after receiving his MFA in Screenwriting from USC as a George Lucas Scholar, Anderson was hired as a staff writer on Beacon 23. He is a 2026 Film Independent Amplifier Fellow and an inaugural alumni of Rideback RISE. His proof of concept for Mr. Negro had its world premiere at Fantasia International Film Festival 2025. The son of a rap artist and grandson of a preacher, Anderson’s work often centers on ambition, the underworld and the surreal. Outside of film, he’s a beatmaker, birdwatcher and trombonist.
Project: Mr. Negro (Fiction Feature)
Logline: An elderly man discovers his deadbeat son transformed into an otherworldly creature, triggering a nightmarish odyssey in search of a cure for his ghastly baby boy.
AURORA BRACHMAN Director/Producer
Aurora Brachman is an Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent. Her film, Hold Me Close, premiered at Sundance 2025. Her shorts When the Revolution Doesn’t Come, Club Quarantine, Joychild and Still Waters were acquired by The New YorkTimes, The New Yorker, The Guardian and POV. She co-produced Apple TV+’s Girls State (Sundance 2024) and A24’s Stephen Curry: Underrated (Sundance 2023). Brachman is supported by The Sundance Institute, Firelight Media, Film Independent, Chicken & Egg, The Gotham and is one of Vimeo’s Breakout Creators. She holds an MFA in Documentary Film from Stanford University.
Project: Dear You (Nonfiction Feature)
Logline: After escaping an abusive marriage and fleeing to the US, Grace James finds herself trapped in the US asylum system for 10 years.
CLAIRE BROOKS Producer
Claire Brooks is an independent film producer whose work sits at the intersection of storytelling, creative infrastructure and cultural policy. She served as Head of Production at Stephanie Allain’s Homegrown Pictures, overseeing independent features including Exhibiting Forgiveness, the debut film by Titus Kaphar, which premiered in competition at Sundance. Brooks also established Netflix’s Emerging Filmmaker Initiative, producing studio-level short films helmed by emerging voices. She is a 2025–2026 Women In Film Producing Fellow, holds an MFA in Creative Producing from Columbia University and a BA from NYU Gallatin and is the Executive Director of the Association of Film Commissioners International.
Project: The Presser (Fiction Feature)
Logline: When a small-town business owner rents his store to a local politician, he lands himself and his employees at the center of a media circus.
A. SAYEEDA MORENO Writer/Director
A. Sayeeda Moreno is a director/screenwriter whose films draw from the mythology of the NYC metropolis where she was born and the bohemian cast of characters from her childhood home who shaped her worldview. Her character-driven body of work, filtered through her own body, boldly explores our humanity, resilience and love. Moreno is a Film Independent, Sundance Women in Finance and Tribeca All Access Fellow and SFFilm Society Hearst Grant recipient. She is developing the coming-of-age romance Out in the Dunes and memoir-based essay film An Ambivalent Daughter. Moreno earned her MFA from NYU Tisch and teaches at Bard College.
Project: Out in the Dunes (Fiction Feature)
Logline: Provincetown/1992: In this summer romance, Soledad, a heartbroken romantic, starts a passionate affair with Jules, a butch lesbian artist who challenges her belief in love.
PHILIP THOMPSON Writer/Director
Philip Thompson is a Brooklyn-based filmmaker named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film in 2023 and a Sundance Ignite x Adobe and NYFF Artists Academy Fellow in 2024. His work explores popular media’s influence on culture, focusing on the emotional impact of media consumption and the one-sided relationship between viewers and image subjects. His films, Living Reality and I’m At Home, have screened at festivals such as Palm Springs, Atlanta, Indie Memphis, New Orleans and Chicago Critics, amongst others. His debut feature, Dance Monkey Dance, was recently selected for the Sundance Screenwriters Lab.
Project: Dance Monkey Dance (Fiction Feature)
Logline: A fictional found-footage documentary tracing a Black comedian whose success catering to white audiences erodes his identity and reveals fame as a form of control.
THANH TRAN Director/Producer
Thanh Tran is an Amerasian Vietnamese and Black filmmaker, music artist and community organizer. He co-founded Uncuffed, an award-winning podcast amplifying incarcerated voices, and ForwardThis Productions, one of the first film collectives led entirely by incarcerated people. He is co-founder of New Krma Media, a worker-owned social enterprise supporting system-impacted artists through music, film and activism. He directs Finding Má, a feature-length documentary following his family’s search for their unhoused mother after decades of separation. He also serves as Program Manager for the Returning Filmmaker Fellowship and Board Member of the Andrus Family Foundation.
Project: Finding Má (Nonfiction Feature)
Logline: After decades apart, an Amerasian Vietnamese and Black family separated by foster care and prison reunite to heal, beginning with searching for their unhoused mother.
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Healing Through Art and Reconstructing Shakespeare’s Globe Theater with ‘Hamnet’ Set Decorator Alice Felton
For more on Hamnet, join us this Thursday, February 26, for an intimate conversation with the director in “An Evening With …. Chloé Zhao.”
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A cinematic meditation in grief, loss, and healing through art, Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet is based on Maggie O’Farrell’s novel by the same name. The period drama reimagines William Shakespeare’s (Paul Mescal) stage play Hamlet as being inspired by the death of his son, Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe). The Shakespeare household’s life is told through the lens of his wife and herbalist, Agnes (in an agonizing and powerful performance by Jessie Buckley), as they move from courtship and marriage to unspeakable grief when Hamnet dies.
Zhao, a Spirit Award winner and Screenwriting Lab Fellow, co-wrote the screenplay with O’Farrell and entrusted the set dressing to one of two set decorators, Alice Felton (along with Niamh Cunningham), who is part of the production design team under Fiona Crombie. Throughout the film, Felton’s set dressing evolves to chart the family’s emotional spiral as they wrestle with love and loss.
Days after scoring her second Oscar nomination for Hamnet as part of Crombie’s team (following 2019’s period dark comedy, The Favourite), Felton spoke with Film Independent about her work on the film, which has nabbed eight Oscar nominations.
Congratulations on your second Oscar nomination!
Thank you! We’re so happy, especially for a small artistic film like this. It’s amazing to be recognized in this way.
How big was your team and how long did you work on this film?
Because Fiona and I know each other really well, I often know about projects very early and start thinking about it before working on it. I normally have about 12 weeks of prep. Most of my 2024 was on Hamnet.
What was your first impression when you first read the script?
It was pitch perfect from the beginning. Very similar to when I read The Favourite, I also couldn’t stop turning the pages of Hamnet, I finished it in one go. From a set design perspective, the world was completely contained, which is so exciting because you realize the potential for ideas.
What do you mean by a “contained” world?
Even something like Cruella where I dressed 120 sets, its visual world was very tight. Similar to this, there’s a visual storyline that runs through the spaces. Other scripts may run through different worlds and planets. But when it’s so contained, it can be very precise. In Hamnet, because we experience Shakespeare and Agnes’ life through her eyes, we move through her life in a very contained way. We’re not in the streets with thousands of people or running through markets with lots of stunts. It’s a very contained and thoughtful, emotional story. My first thought was, this really hangs on those twins — if we don’t believe in these children and their domestic world, then we’re not going to care about anything else. Even though the love story between Will and Agnes is really beautiful, we need to care about the family. So, creating the family home and that domestic world was very important to bringing context to their world.
What were the texture and tone that you had in mind as the story unravels?
That contained world and palette restriction is really exciting in the design process. The Henley house, Shakespeare’s family home, was drained of color. Until Agnes arrives, the only color there is the blue on Will’s costumes — they are blue because his head is in the clouds. So, in the set design, we add hints of blue wherever he was. But if he doesn’t dominate a space, we’d go for very tonal browns, creams, and little threads of color. Will had his writing area, which Paul wanted to be messy, with ink all over the desk. When Agnes arrives, red and green start coming in because she brings the outside world into his life. The red of her dresses spilled into the A-frame set in the attic of the Henley house. Agnes’ mother, Rowan (Louisa Harland), was much freer and had color and nature in the flashbacks. But as Agnes gets older, her stepmother, Joan (Justine Mitchell), strips the colors out. So, her safe place was the apple shed, which brings nature inside.
The color palette here reminds me of the evolution in Agnes’ costumes as the story goes from love and hope to grief and loss. How closely did your team work with Malgosia Turzanska’s costume department?
Each character had a palette, as time moved on, it would change with them. We worked very closely with costume, so our set dressing changes with what Agnes wears. As she went into grief, her dress went to dark gray, purple, dark brown, so the bed drapes also change from the washed-out burnt orange to a grayish blue. You can really see it in the film. Even if someone’s not registering them [visually], you can feel the mood in the room shift. We worked with Malgosia and Chloé, who talked about the “rose period” and the “blue period.” The palette was very intentional.
What changes were made once the children were born?
Once Agnes and Will get married, they move upstairs into the A-frame. As the children were born, color seeped into the bed drapes. Both the Henley house and the A-frame were set builds. Each baby had a baby blanket that Agnes made, which we aged it throughout their life so it has different colors for each child.
Let’s talk about dressing the attic with the twins’ beds, where mournful scenes take place later in the story.
We had a dressing plan for each time period. We wanted that attic space to be very playful for the children, they had little nooks where they kept their things, the beds, and washing and dressing areas. At one point, there’s a little play tent made of sticks and their bed spreads. They never make their beds because Agnes is very free, she just wants to like be in nature. So, their beds are always unmade, there’s a looseness to it. After Hamnet dies, one of the beds is removed; that’s when joy leaves the space. His bed would have been burnt — it was filmed but lost in the edit — anyone who died of the plague, you would burn all of their bedding, everything. So, in the garden, Agnes’ brother Bartholomew (Joe Alwyn), burnt Hamnet’s bed, his baby blanket, everything that was associated with him. A lot of people have said they noticed the change in that room. The A-frame has Will and Agnes’ marital bed and the twins’ beds, we made all of them. When Hamnet dies, one of the beds is gone, so the space dramatically changes, the drapes change, and we stripped out quite a lot of the playful dressing. The atmosphere in the house was changed.
I loved the details surrounding Agnes’ apothecary instruments, the herbs, flowers, treatments, and ointments. Can you talk about that?
Maggie O’Farrell had done so much research, so the book was full of details. That all stems back to Shakespeare’s writing, which is full of botanicals, herbs and plants, and the reference to the flowers and herbs that Ophelia has in Hamlet. We grew an herb garden in Elstree Studio, so we had the real herbs that we bought from a historical herb place called Jekka’s. We also had an onset herbalist advisor, Kim Walker [a consultant at the Economic Botany Collection and the Antonelli Lab at the Royal Botanic Gardens], who teaches herbalism. She advised us on how to lay the herbs out and mix them. Everything that Jesse did on set was actually the correct herbs to make what she was talking about [in the scene]. Jesse even went foraging with Kim. There was a lot of research, thought and care that went into everything we see on the screen.
What went into building Agnes’ herb garden?
Very early in the process, we bought a lot of herbs, grew and dried them. My florist, Amanda Willgrave, helped us plant three big beds of herbs. We’d cut the flowers, which were all historically accurate. We cut herbs for the garden, they got quite leggy and big and bees and would visit them. Kim worked with the initial scripted herbs that were being mixed and helped us plant our garden with Amanda’s help. Kim also worked with Jesse in foraging and showing her how to pick and strip the herbs correctly.
In the cathartic and gut-wrenching final sequence, Agnes finally comes to terms with the grief of her son’s death, when she watches the stage debut of Hamlet at Shakespeare’s Globe Theater. What went into constructing that set?
Chloé and Fiona went to see the original Globe Theater, but there were a lot of problems: it’s the middle of summer and that’s their biggest season for plays. Chloé really wanted it to be more intimate, so the decision was made to build it. She wanted it to feel like the inside of a tree. So, that Globe stage was constructed with reclaimed wood — our art director knew someone that was taking a barn down in France. Our amazing construction company reconstructed the huge beams to make the circular wooden Globe — you felt like you were inside of a tree, since a lot of aging was already in the wood.
Where was this set built?
We were in Elstree Studio. Henley house was built angled for the sun to come through the windows. We didn’t use greenscreen, it was real greenery and real sky behind it. The Globe was right next to it and both attics were there as well. They were all built simultaneously.
The sequence hinges on Agnes’ reactions as she watches the play, so a significant portion of it is the Hamlet stage play unfolding on-stage, with Will playing the ghost.
The amazing thing was we got to do the whole backstage of the Globe. Chloé ran the play like you would for real, so the players were Shakespearean players, we had all the props and everything was period-accurate. Even the standbys were in full costume with the props, armor, lantern, and swords. In Will’s makeup area, we used oyster shells, which were commonly eaten and thrown on the street, as a dish to mix the paints in; that comes from a reference of how Rembrandt would mix his paints. It wasn’t just Hamlet that was playing, there was other plays. So, we had nice details like the flags outside: if it was a comedy, it would be one color, and a tragedy would be a black flag. They’d have food, so we had sellers outside the Globe selling dried fruits. It was muddy. It was a very visceral experience, it really felt like we were in a play instead of on a set. It felt like we had built a theater. It was an amazing construction and decoration collaboration.
Hamnet is playing in select theaters for a post-nomination run and available on PVOD.
To learn more about the film, please join us this Thursday, February 26, for an intimate conversation with writer-director, Chloé Zhao, in “An Evening With …. Chloé Zhao.”
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Featured Image: Jessie Buckley stars as Agnes Shakespeare in ‘Hamnet.’ Photo Credit: Agata Grzybowska / © 2025 FOCUS FEATURES LLC