How the Purple List is boosting the careers of filmmakers including Cathy Yan, Chloe Zhao and Hasan Hedi

When Hasan Hadi’s debut feature The President’s Cake won the Camera d’Or at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival it became the latest ‘Purple List’ film to garner serious industry accolades.

Modelled on the Hollywood’ Black List of the best-liked unproduced feature screenplays, the Purple List is an annual selection of production-ready screenplays from graduate film students and alumni of the New York University (NYU) Tisch School of the Arts, selected by a group of industry figures. (This year the judges included filmmaker and actor James Franco, producer Scott Macaulay and Searchlight Pictures exec Apolline Berty.)

The Purple List was created in 2012 by NYU graduate film alumni Ashim Bhalla and Shandor Garrison. Since then, 19 completed and distributed films have emerged from the programme including Chloe Zhao’s Songs My Brothers Taught Me and Ash Mayfair’s The Third Wife.

The President’s Cake, by the Iraqi-born Hadi was selected in 2023. 

Another alumnus is US filmmaker Cathy Yan who has just been appointed the Purple List’s first president. The director of films including Marvel’s Birds Of Prey starring Margot Robbie and of the forthcoming thriller The Gallerist starring Natalie Portman and Jenna Ortega made the Purple List herself in 2018 with her debut feature Dead Pigs.

“A successful debut feature is a critical milestone in any filmmaker’s career, and the Purple List was an instrumental step in finding support for my first feature, Dead Pigs,” Yan says.

Being on the Purple List enabled her to get her first agent, Christina Chou at CAA.

“It started a relationship with someone who is on my team now at CAA,” she says. “That was immensely helpful because having representation is obviously a huge barrier to entry for so many young filmmakers…sometimes it is not even about trying to get you in the room with the big dog. It is about trying to get you in the room with the right person that believes in you.”

As president, her role will be to amplify the exposure of the Purple List filmmakers, to mentor them and to strengthen their links “with the right industry veterans and the broader marketplace”.

Partners

The Purple List wants to extend its reach in other ways too. Founder Bhalla is taking up an added role as Purple List ‘producer’, aiming to build on successes like The President’s Cake, which was picked up for North America and multiple territories by Sony Pictures Classics following its Cannes premiere last month.

“We want to see more titles succeeding in that way, going into production, securing distribution, securing premieres at top-tier festivals,” says Bhalla. “Now what we are doing is that we are looking for partners and we are looking for funding.”

He may also coproduce some of the Purple List films through the UK-based production company Kwanon Films he runs with Carmen Chaplin.

This year’s four Purple List feature projects were: How I Learned to Die by Manya Glassman, Mandingo by Terrance Daye, Punter by Jason Adam Maselle and Sweetwater by Cassidy Batiz.

“I believe NYU is special because of how international it is,” says Yan. “It is drawing really interesting people with such interesting life experiences.”

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