Financing Intensive

Aunty Untitled Film

• Haohao Yan, Director
• Guo Guo, Producer

Logline
A coming of golden-age story following a group of amateur dancers, 18 Chinese ladies who immigrated to America in their late 30s, trying to get a shot at the mainstream stage on “America’s Got Talent.”

Haohao Yan, Director
Hailing from Beijing, China, Haohao Yan is an L.A.-based writer/director. Her film THE SPEECH premiered at the 2020 Palm Springs International ShortFest, received the Special Jury Award at the 68th San Sebastian International Film Festival, the “Filmmaker of the Future” Award at the Rhode Island International Film Festival, and was selected for the 2020 CAA Moebius Showcase, L.A. Shorts, AFI Fest, etc. Yan earned her M.F.A. in directing from the American Film Institute Conservatory and graduated with the Schaffner Fellow Award. Growing up in a group setting, Yan’s works aim to explore the emotional needs of the individuals besieged by an ominous collective living situation/experience. She is now working as an Advisor at the Sundance Collab Directing for Actors program.

Guo Guo, Producer
Based in L.A. and holds an M.F.A. in producing at the AFI Conservatory, Guo Guo’s producing credits include BRAINWASHED: SEX-CAMERA-POWER (2022), Sundance and Berlinale official selection feature documentary; AYKA (2018), Palme d’Or nominated and winner of Best Actress at Cannes Film Festival; 12 CITIZENS (2015), best picture at the Rome International Film Festival; MEIDUO (2018), a Shanghai International Film Festival Media Award nominee; Amazon Prime’s SOFT SOUNDS OF PEELING FRUIT that premiered at Tribeca Film Festival; HBO Max’s MASS AVE, winner of DGA Student Film Awards; as well as 44-episode Chinese TV Series BE WITH YOU that has enjoyed over 1 billion views; UN COP26 premiered docu-series FOOD 2050 that shot in 8 different countries. A participant in 2020 BAFTA LA Newcomers program, Women In Film 2020 Mentoring Program and able to communicate fluently in English and Mandarin, Guo Guo currently serves as the Head of Production at Media RED.

Drowned Land

• Colleen Thurston, Director/Producer
• Michelle Lee Svenson, Producer
• Niketa Reed, Impact Producer

Logline
Deep in the Choctaw Nation of rural Oklahoma rages a fight to preserve the Kiamichi River, reckoning with a cycle of land loss for the Indigenous diaspora and the community at large.

Colleen Thurston, Director/Producer
Colleen Thurston is an award-winning media producer and documentary filmmaker from Tulsa, Oklahoma. She is an Assistant Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Oklahoma and teaches documentary studies and film production. As an Indigenous non-fiction storyteller, her films explore the relationships between humans and the natural world and focus on Native stories and perspectives. She holds an M.F.A. from Montana State University’s Science and Natural History Filmmaking program, where she also earned a graduate certificate in American Indian Studies. Her B.A. in Media Arts and Anthropology is from the University of Arizona. Thurston has produced work for the Smithsonian Channel, Vox, illumiNATIVE, and museums, public television stations, and federal and tribal organizations. She produced and directed short documentaries for four seasons of the Cherokee Nation’s series “Osiyo, Voices of the Cherokee People,” earning two Emmy awards for her work on the series. Previous films include CHASING 14,000, SARDIS, and the recently completed ABUNDANCE. Her work has screened at international film festivals, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian’s Native Cinema Showcase, and the the Smithsonian Institution, has been broadcast nationwide, and supported by ITVS, Vision Maker Media, Firelight Media, Nia Tero, the Redford Center, and the Sundance Institute. With a background in film programming, Thurston also curates film and storytelling events independently and in conjunction with partnering organizations, with an emphasis on Indigenous storytelling. Currently a programmer with Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, she previously held positions as the Film Programming Assistant at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian and co-Executive Director of the Fayetteville Film Fest, and was the founding Director of Programming of the Tulsa American Film Festival. Thurston is a Firelight Media Documentary Lab alumna, a 2022 Sundance Indigenous Film Fund Fellow, and a citizen of the Choctaw Nation.

Michelle Lee Svenson, Producer
Michelle Lee Svenson is a Korean and Swedish American freelance film programmer, independent producer, and distributor. She studied filmmaking at Boston University’s College of Communications and has since become an advocate for increasing the visibility of minority filmmakers’ voices. She served as festivals producer, programmer, and film consultant for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian from 2000–2010, during which time she produced over fifteen film festivals, consulted on numerous productions such as PBS’ “We Shall Remain” series and productions by filmmakers Albert Maysles, John Sayles, and Donald Ranvaud. She has served on several granting and board committees for Native film initiatives, as well as the Tribeca Film Institute’s All Access program and IFP’s Feature Film project. Since, Svenson has been dedicated to working directly with artists and filmmakers in producing, distributing, and marketing their films such as GOFF, a documentary by Britni Harris, Blackhorse Lowe’s films including his award-winning short SHIMÁSÁNI and recent feature FUKRY (Montreal First Peoples’ Festival Artistic Prize 2020). Svenson also serves as part of the DocLands Film Festival programming team for the California Film Institute and is the Artistic Program Producer at the Tulsa Artist Fellowship.

Niketa Reed, Impact Producer
Niketa Reed is passionate about media representation for diverse audiences. As a journalism and strategic media professor at the University of Arkansas, she specializes in diversity in media. She delivers real-world experiences to her students “to open their eyes to different perspectives to understand how important [DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion)] is, especially in the media landscape.” With that passion, she created Arkansas Soul in 2018, a nonprofit digital media program geared toward Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC). She hopes to get BIPOC students interested in media and journalism, provide opportunities for BIPOC journalists, and increase stories in the media about BIPOC culture. Originally from Peoria, Illinois, Reed graduated with an English degree from the University of Memphis in 2005, and earned a master’s degree in journalism and communication from the University of Arkansas in 2010. Her digital marketing clients include the Memphis Area Transit Authority, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and the National Wildlife Federation. In 2015 she began Branded By Nikki, a small digital marketing boutique firm. Reed’s goal is to build her own media agency.

Little Sallie Walker

• Marta Effinger-Crichlow, Director/Producer
• Jacqueline Olive, Executive Producer

Logline
As Black women from across the generations navigate a less-than-idyllic American landscape, they contemplate how the childhood play that once served as their lifeline might be magical enough to liberate and heal them now.

Marta Effinger-Crichlow, Director/Producer
Marta Effinger-Crichlow is a filmmaker whose interdisciplinary projects in the mediums of film, theater, and literature highlight her mission to fuse social issues, culture, and history. Her first produced collage, THE EVOLUTION OF JAZZ, was commissioned by the late director Vernell Lillie for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Effinger-Crichlow is a past recipient of a Pittsburgh Multicultural Arts Initiative grant for her produced multi-media collage THE KITCHEN IS CLOSED STARTIN’ SUNDAY. For her produced play Whispers Want to Holler, Effinger-Crichlow collaborated with noted jazz saxophonist Billy Harper. She has also worked as a freelance dramaturg for theater productions throughout the U.S. She is the author of Staging Migrations toward an American West: From Ida B. Wells to Rhodessa Jones, published by University Press of Colorado. She has appeared on TEDx at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center and co-curated “400 Years of Inequality” at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute. She was an advisor on the feature documentary CHOCOLATE MILK (2019) and is a dramaturg for the bi-coastal film adaptation of BLACK TERROR (written by Richard Wesley and directed by Richard Lawson).

Effinger-Crichlow’s recognition for LITTLE SALLIE WALKER, her first feature documentary, includes: Women Make Movies Production Assistance Program, NYC Women’s Fund for Media, Music & Theater, WIF/Sundance Financing Intensive, IFP/JustFilms Fellowship, the NY State Council on the Arts grant, Perspective Fund, Cucalorus Works in Progress Lab, DOC NYC’s OINY Program, Athena Works in Progress Lab, DCTV Works-in-Progress Lab, and Working Films Impact Kickstart and Grant. She lives in New York City.

Jacqueline Olive, Executive Producer
Jacqueline Olive is an independent filmmaker with nearly twenty years of experience in journalism and film. She founded Tell It Media in 2011 to create multimedia projects that tell nuanced stories of the people, places, and cultures that make up our diverse world. Her award-winning debut feature documentary film ALWAYS IN SEASON has received numerous honors including winner of the 2019 Sundance Festival Special Jury Prize for Moral Urgency and the 2020 SIMA Documentary Jury Prize For Ethos, as well as nominations for Best Writing from IDA Documentary Awards 2019 and the Spotlight Award from Cinema Eye Honors 2019. ALWAYS IN SEASON broadcast on PBS on “Independent Lens” in February 2020 and was the highest rated film of the season. Olive directed and produced a virtual reality, role-playing environment called Always in Season Island, which received a 2022 Peabody Award for interactive and digital media. She recently directed and executive produced two episodes of “Lincoln’s Dilemma,” a four-part unscripted series that provides a nuanced look into Abraham Lincoln’s presidency, while exploring the impact of slavery and the times on the man dubbed “The Great Emancipator.” She is currently directing the documentary feature film THE COLOR OF COLA with Academy Award-nominated Stanley Nelson. The project is in collaboration with All Day Every Day, Los Angeles Media Fund, JuVee, and PepsiCo. A 2021 Sundance Momentum Fellow, she remains on the Central Coast of California making films and immersive media projects full-time.

Untitled Marjolaine Grappe Film

• Marjolaine Grappe, Director
• Chelsea Matter, Producer
• Dana Nachman, Producer

Marjolaine Grappe, Director
Marjolaine Grappe is an independent documentary filmmaker, investigative journalist, and a current Logan Non-Fiction fellow. Her work on the financing of the documentary on North Korea’s nuclear weapons, ALL THE DICTATOR’S MEN (which had 28 million online viewers) was awarded the 2018 Albert Londres Prize, the highest French journalistic distinction. Her feature documentary debut THE COLOR OF JUSTICE, about justice in the death of New Yorker Eric Garner, premiered at CPH:DOX in 2019. She started her career in Washington, D.C. as a producer covering the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election, and went on to work in Asia as a foreign correspondent reporting from India (2009–2012) and China (2012–2016). She has directed several award-winning feature-length journalism investigations including GUANTANAMO LIMBO and a series of investigative reports about China’s One-Child Policy. Her work has been supported by the Catapult Film Fund, SFFILM, SFFILM Invest, Field of Vision, the Miller/Packan Documentary Fund, the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, the CNC (Centre National du Cinéma), the PROCIREP, the SCAM Brouillon d’un Rêve Grant, and the Lagardère Foundation.

Chelsea Matter, Producer
Chelsea Matter is a documentary producer whose films have screened at Sundance, Tribeca, SXSW, Full Frame, and IDFA, and received national distribution through outlets such as IFC, RADiUS-TWC, The History Channel, Gravitas Ventures, and OWN. Her most recent films include DEAR SANTA (Heartland premiere/IFC distribution), BLESSED CHILD (DOC-NYC premiere/Topic distribution), BEING EVEL (Sundance premiere, Gravitas/History Films distribution), A LEGO BRICKUMENTARY (Tribeca premiere/ RADiUS-TWC distribution), and THE HUMAN EXPERIMENT (Mill Valley/IDFA premiere). Prior to producing independent documentary films, Matter was a producer on docu-series for networks including History, Discovery, NatGeo, and The Travel Channel. She started her career in television news, working as a news writer and field producer at WGN Chicago, and a production assistant at KNTV, the NBC affiliate station for the San Francisco Bay Area. Matter graduated from Stanford University and is an alumna of the Impact Partners Documentary Producers Fellowship and Tribeca Film Institute’s Tribeca All Access program.

Dana Nachman, Producer
Dana Nachman is an award-winning filmmaker of both fiction and documentary films. Her films can currently be watched on Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max, and Disney+. Nachman specializes in pulling out the emotion in any story, whether a hard-hitting investigative piece or a family-friendly film. The Los Angeles Times writes, “Nachman adroitly focuses on the human stories… structuring narrative for maximum emotional impact.” Nachman is a former journalist; she turned to full-time filmmaking in 2009. Her first film Witch Hunt premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, was Executive Produced and Narrated by Sean Penn, and was purchased by MSNBC Films. She has produced and directed three short films, two series, and six features that have gone on to win dozens of awards. She has won a number of awards over the course of her journalism career as well, including three regional Emmy Awards, The Edward R. Murrow Award, and an Associated Press Award.

What We Carry / Lo Que Llevamos

• Cady M Voge, Director/Producer/DP
• Laura Pilloni, Producer
• Laura Tatham, Producer

Logline
WHAT WE CARRY / LO QUE LLEVAMOS follows a young Honduran family as they flee persecution—migrating in cargo trains across Mexico, claiming asylum at the U.S. border, and enduring separation in detention before being released in Seattle. There, a local synagogue sponsors the family for two years while they await the decision of their asylum case. As the family tries to settle into their new home, the trauma they experienced emerges and we witness their fight to move forward.

Cady M Voge, Director/Producer/DP
Cady M Voge is a filmmaker and freelance journalist covering immigration from Latin America all the way up to Seattle, USA. She has shot, produced, and directed short documentaries for NBC, The New Humanitarian, and independent production companies across the Americas. Voge met subjects Magdiel, Mirna, and Joshua while covering the migrant caravan in Mexico in 2018. She contributes to outlets including The BBC, The Guardian, Al Jazeera and WIRED, among others. Before becoming a journalist, Voge directed an international education nonprofit in Washington, D.C. called One World Youth Project.

Laura Pilloni, Producer
Laura Pilloni is a filmmaker who works towards the representation of marginalized stories. She was the associate producer for the women and human rights documentary HOME TRUTH, which premiered at the 2017 Human Rights Watch Film Festival and was broadcast on PBS the following year. She went on to associate produce CHAVELA (Berlinale, Hot Docs 2017) and DISPATCHES FROM CLEVELAND (Cleveland International Film Festival 2017 and FSTV broadcast). Keeping in line with her work on these impactful films, she was most recently a producer on Elle Moxley’s short documentary BLACK BEAUTY (Cinema Columbus Film Festival, Inside Out Film Festival 2022) and a co-producer on the feature documentary LIFT (2nd Place Audience Award Winner at Tribeca Film Festival 2022). She is currently producing WHAT WE CARRY, a feature documentary about a Honduran family seeking asylum in the U.S.

Laura Tatham, Producer
Laura Tatham is a creative producer committed to telling stories that highlight urgent social justice issues. She is currently producing WHAT WE CARRY, having recently completed the feature-length documentary MAMA BEARS (2022 SXSW, ITVS) and the short documentary BLACK BEAUTY. In the past six years she’s worked on numerous award-winning films—as associate producer on the feature-length documentaries CHAVELA (2017 Berlinale) and DISPATCHES FROM CLEVELAND (2017 CIFF) and as the NYC production office manager for “America,” a series of silent, narrative shorts (2019 Sundance). She was a 2020 Film Independent Documentary Lab and WIF/ Sundance Institute Financing Intensive fellow as a producer on the upcoming feature documentary LIFT. She is currently a producer for WHAT WE CARRY, a feature documentary about a Honduran family seeking asylum in the U.S.

You Lucky You Got a Mama

• Brittany Ferrell, Director
• Shannon Sun-Higginson, Producer

Logline
Directed by nurse and activist Brittany Ferrell, YOU LUCKY YOU GOT A MAMA is a visual love letter that tells the intimate human stories of Black pregnant people from across the United States who differ in background, socioeconomic status, and gender identity, but all have one thing in common: they intend to not only survive, but thrive.

Brittany Ferrell, Director
Brittany Ferrell began her journey as an organizer after the murder of Michael Brown, which is chronicled in the documentary WHOSE STREETS?. Her passion for fighting for the health, wellness, and dignity of Black people has led her to her current work in maternal-infant health and reproductive justice. Ferrell is an academic and researcher, with a focus on race and gender health disparities in pregnancy and the deleterious effects of chronic stress on physical health.

Shannon Sun-Higginson, Producer
Shannon Sun-Higginson is a New York-based documentary filmmaker whose work has screened at Sundance and SXSW, and on PBS, Discovery Channel, Travel Channel, and CNN. Most recently, she directed two episodes of the HBO Max docuseries “Take Out,” and participated in the 2021 Sundance Institute Producers Fellowship.