Even though we’ve been doing this for over 40 years, a spark of excitement rushes through us whenever we reveal the fellows for this year’s labs. It might be because these fresh fellows are joining the ranks of Paul Thomas Anderson, Lulu Wang, Sterlin Harjo, the Daniels, Ryan Coogler, Taika Watiti, A.V. Rockwell, Quentin Tarantino, Ira Sachs, and so many more iconic storytellers. The rush this year also might be due to the fact that these profound and indescribable forays into the world of the purely creative are happening right now.
The 2024 spring/summer labs season is kicking off this morning in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with the start of the Native Lab. This is directly followed by the Directors Lab at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, and then the Screenwriters Lab in early June online.
Below get a brief introduction to each of the 2024 fellows, click here for more information about this year’s labs including the creative advisors for each, and stay tuned for more stories from the labs this spring and summer.
The 2024 Native Lab fellows
Don Josephus Raphael Eblahan (Writer-Director) with Hum (Philippines, U.S.A.): Haunted by the six-year absence of her missing husband, Esther, a single mother who works as a tour guide for mountaineers, embarks on her own treacherous journey of searching for him in the jungle where he had retreated to live with the beasts.
Don Josephus Raphael Eblahan is a filmmaker from the Philippines. Eblahan’s works explore themes of trauma, spirituality, and nature, told through the cosmic lens of post-colonial spaces and Indigenous identities. His film The Headhunter’s Daughter was awarded the Short Grand Jury Prize at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.
Ryland Walker Knight (Writer-Director) with The Lip of the World (U.S.A.): When Cassandra discovers a young Indigenous woman washed ashore with no memory, the pair journey into the violent underworld of the Northern California psychedelic culture to uncover her true identity.
Ryland Walker Knight is a Cherokee writer and a filmmaker, and once upon a time he was called a film critic. An avid basketball and audiobook enthusiast, Knight lives and works in Oakland and Los Angeles, California.
Charine Pilar Gonzales (Writer-Director) with NDN Time (U.S.A.): A Tewa college student must master her new dimension-bending abilities to expose the nuclear secrets threatening her Pueblo.
Charine Pilar Gonzales wrote and directed the short films River Bank (Pō-Kehgeh) and Our Quiyo: Maria Martinez. She co-produced the 2024 Sundance Film Festival short doc Winding Path. A Tewa filmmaker from San Ildefonso Pueblo and Santa Fe, New Mexico, she aims to intertwine memories, dreams, and truths through story.
Lindsay McIntyre (Writer-Director) with The Words We Can’t Speak (Canada): A terrible Arctic accident leaves an Inuk interpreter unwelcome in her community. She is forced to weather impossible conditions and hateful prejudices, yet still care for her daughter, when she embarks on a dangerous 1,000-mile journey by dog sled with an inexperienced RCMP constable who fancies her for his wife.
Lindsay McIntyre (Inuit/settler) is a filmmaker whose works explores themes of portraiture, place, and personal histories. After 40+ experimental/documentary films and many festival awards, her recent
At our signature labs this spring, emerging artists will develop original projects under the guidance of accomplished advisors
PARK CITY, UTAH, April 29, 2024 — The nonprofit Sundance Institute announced today the fellows selected for the 2024 Directors, Screenwriters, and Native Labs. The Native Lab in New Mexico will support four fellows and two artists in residence, and the Directors Lab in Colorado will support the development of eight projects with nine fellows, with an additional three fellows also joining for the online Screenwriters Lab held immediately after.
For over four decades, Sundance Institute’s signature labs have provided burgeoning filmmakers a nurturing, immersive environment to develop their projects and refine their artistic voice under the guidance of accomplished creative advisors.
The 2024 Native Lab, taking place in person in Santa Fe, New Mexico, from April 29–May 4, is designed for participants of Native and Indigenous backgrounds and focuses on centering Indigeneity in their storytelling. Fellows will build community and refine their feature film and episodic scripts through one-on-one feedback sections and roundtable discussions with advisors. Four fellows were selected: three who are U.S.-based, and another from Canada. Also attending will be two artists in residence, Fox Maxy (Mesa Grande Band of Mission Indians and Payómkawish) and Shea Vassar (Cherokee), experiencing the lab while in script development. This year’s Native Lab creative advisors are Patrick Brice, Tai Leclaire (Mohawk and Mi’kmaq), Kishori Rajan, and Jon Raymond.
“Our Indigenous Program team looks forward to returning to Santa Fe to spend a week supporting some of the best and brightest Indigenous artists working today,” said Adam Piron, Director of Indigenous Program. “This group is diverse in the work they are bringing to develop and in how their Indigeneity shapes it — their differences are their strengths. We can’t wait to see what those combined strengths help them add to each other’s projects as they collaborate with each other and with our creative advisors.”
The 2024 Directors Lab will take place May 7–22 in person at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, which is hosting a Sundance Institute program for the very first time with support from the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade (OEDIT). During the Directors Lab, filmmakers will rehearse, shoot, and edit selected scenes from their work-in-progress original screenplays in a workshop environment with support from experienced creative advisors. Directors focus on core elements of filmmaking, including directing actors, workshopping their scripts, and defining their visual language. Led by Artistic Director Gyula Gazdag, the Directors Lab advisor cohort includes Miguel Arteta, Joan Darling, Rick Famuyiwa, Stephen Goldblatt, Keith Gordon, Reinaldo Marcus Green, Andrew Haigh, Randa Haines, Ed Harris, Siân Heder, André Holland, Karyn Kusama, Pam Martin, Estes Tarver, and Dylan Tichenor.
The 2024 Screenwriters Lab will be held online from June 4–7, where fellows will refine their scripts through individual story sessions with screenwriter advisors and group sessions on the art and craft of screenwriting. Led by Artistic Director Howard Rodman, the Screenwriters Lab advisor cohort includes John August, Scott Z. Burns, Reggie Rock Bythewood, Scott Frank, Susannah Grant, Tamara Jenkins, Meg LeFauve, Jenny Lumet, Josh Marston
Work on the documentary ISRAELISM started in late 2015 and was completed at the end of 2022. The film was released in February 2023 and offers a challenging interpretation of the contemporary meaning of Jewish identity in the United States against the background of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
Axelman and Eilertsen, first-time Jewish filmmakers, provide a cogent and objective analysis of the forces shaping the modern Jewish-American identity and the growing discrepancy between the definition offered by the politics of Israel and her American followers and the more traditional understanding of what it means to be Jewish without linking it to the existence of Israel. In this discussion the directors and the principal protagonists Zimmerman and Eitan explore some obvious current issues such as the links between Judaism and Israel, Zionism, settlements in the areas occupied by Israel, and the rise of antisemitism. What also transpires through the comments by Zimmerman and Eitan are their insights about being raised in US Jewish families and school settings ; the bonding with their faith and the strong link with Israel as well as their experience in Israel and eventual conversion to a critical perspective.
As revealed in the documentary, these insights include the settler movement on the West Bank now exceeding more than half a million, compared to the more than 2.7 million Palestinians living there, perspectives which are also new for most Israelis who rarely have direct contact with the Palestinians living on the West Bank. In that context it should be noted that even before Irael-Hamas Gaza war prompted by the Hamas invasion and killings, a survey revealed that 25% of the US Jewish population considered Israel an “apartheid state” and 22% held the view of Israel was committing Genocide (The New Republic, April 2024, p. 37). As Abraham Foxman points out in Israelism, we failed to educate them “When we talk about ‘We are loosing the kids’...we lost them”.
ISRAELISM clarifies the growing generation specific gap in Jewish communities and congregations in the perspectives about Israel. Younger Jews in the US are more likely to be sympathetic of Palestinians and critical of Israel. Given the ready access to information they tend to be better informed about the Gaza war and West Bank developments than young people living in Israel whose access to current and past information about the history of their country is censored. Ironically, similar attempts to control information about Israel can be observed in Germany* where any criticism of Israel is identified as anti-Semitic, also common in the United States. Both countries are probably the only firm remaining friends of Israel and face a strange situation. They try to ameliorate the food and famine crisis in the Gaza strip while its residents, including Hamas and affiliated groups, continue to be killed by weapons both countries provide. The latest estimates for the Gaza strip death toll as of mid-April 2024 are 35,000 dead of which at least two thirds are civilians and overall one third are children and the elderly. Since the Hamas attacks, more than 400 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank area by Israeli forces and settlers. For historic reasons, current German funding amounts to $352 million, 10 times higher than in 2022. Germany is the second biggest exporter of arms to Israel with a 30% of all sales. The US share amounted to an estimated $3.8 billion 2023, not including the value of US arms stockpiled in Israel. Arms export from other countries is minimal.
ISRAELISM pres 
MIPTVCOOLIE First Look photo - credit Paloma Alegria
Should I stay or should I go?
MipTV belongs to Cannes and when you look up MipTV in Wikipedia first thing you read about MipTV is „MIPTV(French: Marché International des Programmes de Télévision) is an event which takes place annually in Cannes, France, using the facilities and infrastructure which the town has developed over the years to host other important events such as the Cannes Film Festival amongst other events.
MipTV and Canneseries have always been connected, from the very beginning of Canneseries in 2018. So far so good. Now it's all changing, as MipTV says goodby to Cannes as a venue and moves on to London.
It has been the talk since Berlinale Series in February, and it continued at the London TV Screenings and later in March at Séries Mania. And now the announcement of MipTV organizers Reed Exhibition/RE: MipTV is leaving Cannes and moving to London as a venue and will be connected to London TV Screenings.
Why this sudden Move?
MIPTV gathers, in the entertainment industry's global deal-making hub of Cannes, together producers, distributors, and buyers to connect, commission and discover new series and projects for all genres and screens. This did work well in the past, but lately the relationship between RE and the town hall of Cannes is been deteriorating with high demands from the town hall of Cannes, imposing to RE subcontractors. So far the rumours.
The Hollywood Reporter's explanation
The Hollywood Reporter explaines the Move to London in the following way: „Facing declining attendance and a rapidly shifting global TV industry, MIPTV is pulling up stakes in the sunny South of France and will shift to rainy old England next year, sidling up alongside the popular London Screenings, which in just four years has grown to become the most important small screen event in Europe in the first half of the year.
One or the other, the MOVE now beeing confirmed, everybody exhited to discover new series and projects for all genres and screens and make the best deals one last time under the sun of the French Riviera, one last time running from one 5 star hotel to the other 5 star venue on the Croisette by the sea, one last time meeting business partners on the beach before moving in 2025 to freezing, crowded London.
And now the MipTV highlights
MIPTV (8-10 April) is a vital and productive international television market for finished programme sales and acquisitions, content discovery, development and co-productions across all genres.
MIPTV is preceded by the biggest weekend in unscripted (6-7 April) with MIPDOC & MIPFORMATS.
Our regular monthly update featuring the latest news and opportunities for your cinema, festival or film society.
ICO News
- We’re hiring! We’re looking for a Senior Manager to join our Film Hub South East team. They will have overall responsibility for all Film Hub South East activity including BFI NETWORK, Film Academy Plus, and our Young Film Network. Full details and apply.
- Thanks to everyone who joined us for this year’s Spring Screening Days – whether online or in person at BFI Southbank. We’ll be announcing details of the next Screening Days events very soon, so make sure that you’re subscribed to our mailing list if you want to stay up to date!
- We were proud to announce the second round of beneficiaries of our Miles Ketley Memorial Fund this month. Set up in 2022 in memory of the producer and trustee of the ICO, the fund provides bursaries to emerging filmmakers to help further their careers. See the list of this year’s recipients.
- 27 April 2024 marks the 30th anniversary of Freedom Day, when the first non-racialised democratic elections took place in South Africa. In celebration of this milestone, we’ve partnered with Cinema Africa! and Maona Art to bring a 4K restoration of Mapantsula to UK cinemas. Last week, Mosa Mpetha of Cinema Africa! wrote on our blog about their aims for the release, the journey to get to this point, and their vision of making Black and African stories more regularly seen on the big screen.
- This month, we partnered with Conic and 104films to present a roundtable conversation on The Cinema of Ideas with filmmakers Ella Glendining, Jessi Gutch, Justin Edgar and Ted Evans. Hosted by film and culture writer Lillian Crawford, the discussion touched on the participants’ experiences as disabled and deaf people forging a career in the film industry, the barriers that still persist, and what needs to happen next. You can catch up with the recording on our YouTube channel.
- Several members of the ICO team were in Berlin last month for this year’s Berlinale. On our blog they highlighted a few of the films that they’re most excited to see reach UK audiences over the coming year, including new work by Mati Diop, Levan Akin and Jane Schoenbrun.
Opportunities & Resources
- Save the date! The BFI Film Audience Network conference, BFI FAN CON, will take place at Queen’s Film Theatre, Belfast, from 11–13 September 2024. This conference is for FAN members across the UK to meet, celebrate the work they do, share their experiences, and consider new approaches to wider industry issues. Ahead of the event, BFI FAN would like to find out what an ideal conference would look like for attendees. Please share your thoughts here.
- B
Canneseries season 7 - great actors, series and a pink carpet - all in Cannes and still with MipTV
Indeed this series festival takes place in Cannes, where else, nomen est omen. And it gets into competition with an the other majour festival dedicated to series. I'm talking about Series Mania from Lille. Both festivals are taking place in spring, one just finished and the other one, Canneseries to take place 05-10.04.
But while Series Mania is dedicated uniquely to television series in Europe Canneseries brings also worldwide premieres in collaboration with majour studios from the United States. International series are premiered in Cannes and on the big screen of the Palais giving its audience 6 days of pink carpet, discoveries and masterclasses with some of the most renowned personalities in the series world.
Should I stay or should I go now?
The success story of Canneseries has been made possible due to the collaboration with a global event which also takes place in Cannes and most important at the same time. MipTV and Canneseries has always been connected, from the very beginning in 2018. So far so good. Now its all changing, as MipTV says goodby to Cannes as a venue and moves on to London. It has been the talk since Berlinale Series in February, and it continued at the London TV Screenings and later in March at Séries Mania.
MIPTV gathers, in the entertainment industry's global deal-making hub of Cannes, together producers, distributors, and buyers to connect, commission and discover new series and projects for all genres and screens. And these synergies have been profitable for Canneseries. We will see what the future brings, some rumours are even saying that Canneseries might be moved to October in order to connect with MipCom, an even bigger market than MipTV.
Other rumours are saying it might even take place during the Festival de Cannes, but this would be quite absurd, not even the colours are matching, Canneseries is all about pink even the red carpet is not red but pink.
But coming back to the current edition „This year, we went big“ the organizers are announcing on their website, and indeed : great stars on the pink carpet such as Daniel Brühl, Kyle MacLachlan, Birgitte Hjort Sørensen, Michael Douglas, Pierre Niney, Ludivine Sagnier, Ella Purnell or Jamel Debbouze have been announced.
CANAL+ is once again CANNESERIES’ official partner and it will exclusively broadcast the Opening Ceremony of its Season 7 on Friday, April 5 th at 8:30 p.m. It will be presented in the Grand Auditorium Louis Lumière of the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès by French author and comedian Bertrand Usclat.
And now let's have a closer look at the series presented at Canneseries. Some run in competion others out of competitions. This last category is the most anticipated one with Becoming Karl Lagerfeld, Fallout, Franklin and Maxima.
Terminal
There are big expectations at Canneseries for this premiere with 3 episodes 4, 7 & 11 in French screened, and subtitled in English. The French 12 episodes Terminal is opening Canneseries on 04.04 with a „sitcom made in Jamel“. Everybody in France knows who is meant by Jamel. Jamel Debbouze is the most popular French comedian, and he is very known abroad too. I once attended the „Marrakesch du Rire“ international comedy festival in Marrakesch, and Jamel was of course the moderator and the show was great
And here some quotes:
„Welcome aboard Flywings, the lowest of all low-cost airlines!
Greeting you today is your pilot, Jack, who handles his personal life as inadequately as he does his airplanes. Alongside is co-pilot Mar 26, 2024: Berlinale Meets Fußball: Successful Premiere Combines Film and Football for the UEFA EURO 2024 As part of the cultural programme for the EURO 2024, the 74th Berlin International Film Festival was able to create a unique event that put the spotlight on young football talent from all over Germany: Berlinale Meets Fußball [...]
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> SXSW IN FOCUS March 8 - 16 Interview With Producers Ken Kao and Josh Rosenbaum of Waypoint Entertainment for CUCKOO (2024) @ SXSW
Ken Kao is CEO and Producer of Waypoint Entertainment and Josh Rosenbaum serves as Head Executive and Executive Producer for Waypoint, which is a full-service film production and financing company best known for Yorgos Lanthimos’ Academy Award-winning THE FAVOURITE (2018). They have also been behind such films as MID-90s, SONG TO SONG (2017), KNIGHT OF CUPS (2015), THE NICE GUYS (2016), and more. Josh and Ken's latest film, CUCKOO starring Hunter Schafer and
And the SXSW winners are:
The SXSW Film & TV Festival announces winners across various categories, including Narrative Feature Competition, Documentary Feature Competition, Design Awards, and Special Awards during the annual Film & TV Awards ceremony. Short Film Program winners, eligible for Jury Awards, and
The eye of the storm: a resolutely current selection for 2024, in tune with the present
Visions du Réel unveils the programme for its 55th edition (12 – 21 April 2024). A bold and well-rounded official selection of 165 films from 50 different countries, with gender parity for the second year running. With 88 world premieres and 14 international premieres amongst the 128 new films being shown, Visions du Réel reaffirms its position as Switzerland’s second most important festival in terms of launching new films, and as an unmissable international event for non-fiction cinema. In addition to the three previously announced guests – Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke, American author-director John Wilson, and French director Alice Diop – the Festival will, over the course of ten days, have the honour of welcoming key figures from the world of contemporary cinema such as Carlo Chatrian, Martín Rejtman, Carmen Jaquier, Eduardo Williams, and the author Christine Angot. The 55th edition will open with the Danish film As the Tide Comes In by Juan Palacios (co-directed by Sofie Husum Johannesen).
"The 128 new films selected this year once again offer our audience the opportunity to immerse themselves in the most contemporary of cinema, through a rich and varied range of forms, approaches, devices and subjective viewpoints, and an array of excerpts from real stories and narratives. The program, which is largely composed of films discovered from the 3300 films that were submitted – representing an increase in submissions of more than10% this year – reaffirms the ambition of Visions du Réel to help support the emergence of new talents. For instance, the International Feature Film Competition alone includes ten debuts in its selection of fifteen films. Lastly, we are continuing to relentlessly strive towards gender parity, which, as was the case in 2023, we have once again achieved this year" – Emilie Bujès, Artistic Director of the Festival.
In terms of national output, the programme attests to the strength of Swiss production. The 55th edition includes a total of 25 Swiss (co)productions, with a very strong representation of German-speaking talent. For the second year running, the International Feature Film Competition sees three Swiss (co)productions in contention, two of which were made by German-speaking filmmakers, and the Burning Lights Competition features two Swiss productions, both also made by filmmakers from the eastern part of the country. Visions du Réel asserts its crucial role as a national and international springboard.
International Feature Film Competition
The Jury for the International Feature Film Competition, comprising the outgoing artistic director of the Berlinale Carlo Chatrian, Swiss filmmaker Carmen Jaquier (director of Thunder, which premiered at TIFF and San Sebastian International Film Festival 2022 before becoming Switzerland’s pick for the 2023 Oscars) and producer Dora Bouchoucha (whose films include Hedi and Dear Son by Mohamed Ben Attia, and Foreign Body by Raja Amari), will award the competition prizes from a shortlist of fifteen films, which include fourteen world premieres and one international premiere.
Including seven films directed by women, the International Feature Film Competition welcomes ten first feature films, several of which by directors who will be returning to Nyon following selections of their previous shorts or participation in the VdR-Industry activities in past editions. Amongst these are Fragments of Ice by Maria Stoianova (VdR–Rough Cut Lab 2022) which intersperses archive footage from both the filmmaker
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