The Sundance Institute has revealed the eight filmmakers who will make up the third class of the Momentum Fellowship.
The Fellowship is the Institute’s full-year programme of creative and professional support for mid-career fiction and documentary writers and directors from under-represented communities.
The fellowships will provide unrestricted grant funding, industry mentorship, professional coaching, writing workshops, industry meetings in the spring of next year and bespoke year-round support from Sundance Institute staff.
The 2021 Fellows are: Cristina Costantini, whose documentary Mucho Mucho Amor premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was released on Netflix; Natalie Erika James, a Japanese-Australian writer/director based in Australia whose debut feature, Relic, premiered at Sundance and screened at the SXSW, London and Sitges festivals; Shalini Kantayya, whose feature documentary Coded Bias premiered at Sundance and was nominated for a Critics’ Choice Award; Loira Limbal, an Afro-Dominican filmmaker whose feature documentary Through the Night was selected for world premiere at this year’s Tribeca festival; Ekwa Msangi, whose feature Farewell Amor won the Sundance Amazon Producer’s Award at Sundance and was bought by IFC Films, MUBI and Netflix; Edson Oda, a Japanese-Brazilian writer/director based in Los Angeles whose film Nine Days won Sundance’s Walt Salt Screenwriting Award; Jacqueline Olive, whose Always In Season took the festival’s Special Jury Prize for Moral Urgency; and Angel Kristi Williams, whose directing debut Really Love won the Special Jury Recognition for Acting at SXSW for co-stars Kofi Siriboe and Yootha Wong-Loi-Sing.
Karim Ahmad, the Sundance Institute’s director, outreach and inclusion, commented: “We are thrilled to bring back the Momentum Fellowship for a third year, to support these visionary artists at such a critical moment both in their careers and in our culture at large.”
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