Hello community, we hope this email finds you soaking up end-of-summer rays and spending precious time with loved ones ahead of what's sure to be a jam-packed autumn. We're taking one big exhale before we know our filmmakers will be lighting up the fall festival season, deep in the awards campaign hustle, and beyond. We'll be by their side, rooting for their success and amplifying their journeys as best we can.
In the meantime, read on to learn about our EL 2026 cohort's verdant retreat, read a brand new blog by COO Sarah Anderson about an exciting board engagement pilot, and more. Thanks for being here!
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2026 (Egg)celerator Lab summer retreat in Canada
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Top L to R: Anu Czerwinski, Sarah Anderson, Mia Harvey, Gabriella García-Pardo, Violet Du Feng, Sara Chishti, Carla Gutierrez, Fiona Otway, Devon Blackwell, Alyse Shorland, and Tereza Simikova. Bottom L to R: Veronica Cook, Kiyoko McCrae, Brit Fryer, Noah Schamus, Manisha Halai, and Chris McNabb.
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Our (Egg)celerator Lab cohort recently wrapped their second retreat together in Canada. The focus this round: story and structure. Filmmakers tackled the hard work of how to tell their stories.
Mentorship sessions were led by Program Director Kiyoko McCrae and program consultants Violet Du Feng and Tereza Simikova, with editing sessions led by Carla Gutierrez, Chris McNabb, and Fiona Otway. The cohort dug into workshops like "Drawing the Essence of Your Film," sequenced their projects using index cards, picked the editors' brains at an Ask Me Anything, and learned to push through plateaus in the aptly named "Maintaining Your Momentum."
Hard work also needs hard rest, and our grantees had time to connect and relax with nightly group dinners, access to a pool and hot tub, and a bonfire complete with games and s'mores. 🔥🍫
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Still from Argonauts at the End of History
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The 22nd Camden International Film Festival (Sep 17–20) just dropped its initial lineup and we couldn't be prouder to see five C&E-supported filmmakers in the mix. Sierra Pettengill's Argonauts at the End of History will have its World Premiere, screening alongside Efraín Mojica and Rebecca Zweig’s Jaripeo and Biljana Tutorov and Petar Glomazić’s To Hold a Mountain. Three AlumNest filmmakers will also premiere new work: Emily Cohen Ibañez's River, Lydia Cornett's Test Track, and Laura Poitras and Rachel Lauren Mueller's They're Here.
Program team members Kiyoko McCrae, Iva Dimitrova, and Veronica Cook will be there to cheer everyone on and meet new filmmakers. If you're headed to the festival, come say hi!
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What we learned from bringing our board to CPH:DOX
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Top L to R: Sarah Anderson, Jenni Wolfson, David Lee, Patty Quillin, and Susan Margolin. Bottom L to R: Nekisa Cooper, Félix Endara, Alex Simon, Julie Parker Benello, Wendy Ettinger, and Darley Tom.
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This spring, we tried something new. We brought our board to CPH:DOX timed to coincide with our 2025 Chicken & Egg Award cohort’s closing retreat. The goals for our board were immersion and connection––we facilitated access to not only the global doc ecosystem but also our filmmakers and their journeys. Head trip organizer and board ambassador Sarah Anderson, C&E COO, breaks down why it mattered, what it took to pull off, and what she’d tell other organizations thinking about doing the same in a fresh-off-the-presses blog post.
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“In an era when conversations about trauma often focus on diagnosis and recovery, Matininó proposes something more expansive: the possibility of collective reinvention.” —Ouch! Magazine
Congratulations are in order: Matininó just won Best Documentary Feature at the Puerto Rico Film Festival! Through richly imagined magical-realist vignettes, this film explores the intergenerational healing of the Villanueva-Rodriguez women. By unpacking cycles of abuse caused by the men in their lives with stunning imagination and creativity, they are able to take back their power. It turns out, trauma is not the only thing that passes down generations—courage and resilience do too.
The film had its world premiere at the Tribeca Festival this year. For future screenings, follow Matininó here.
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July–August community highlights
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Still from Llamarse Olimpia
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✦ Indira Cato’s Llamarse Olimpia was nominated for Best Documentary at the Ariel Awards, Mexico's top film honor.
✦ Rita Baghdadi’s Stallions is one of the 65 projects participating in the upcoming Gap-Financing Market at the Venice Film Festival.
✦ Resita Cox, Sara Chishti, Beth Aala, and Jessica Kingdon will participate in Gotham Week this fall.
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✦ The Rise of Documentary Storytelling in Journalism Schools features AlumNest filmmaker Yoruba Richen, founding director of the Documentary Program at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, sharing why the marriage of journalism skills and artistic filmmaking gives her hope in challenging times.
✦ In The Evolving Role of the Producer, Rebecca Green catalogs the ever-expanding list of skills, hats, and survival strategies the role now demands.
✦ Botagoz Koilybayeva examines ethnographic filmmaking's colonial legacy alongside a new generation of films renegotiating the relationship between makers and the communities they work alongside in Looking Back.
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