A significant UK cohort featuring Yesterday and The Odyssey star Himesh Patel and novelist Nikesh Shukla has been selected for this summer’s Sundance Institute Directors Lab and Screenwriters Lab.
The Directors Lab running June 9-24 at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, supports the development of eight projects and fellows and entails hands-on sessions addressing rehearsals, the shoot, and editing.
The Screenwriters Lab will support an additional two projects and four fellows and takes place online with emphasis on script refinement through individual story sessions and group sessions on the art and craft of screenwriting.
This year’s fellows and projects include:
Brown Baby (UK-USA), which will only participate in the Screenwriters Lab and centres on the strains on a mixed-race marriage after their daughter’s reaction to a doll exposes the truths the couple spent years avoiding. Smriti Mundhra will direct from a screenplay co-written by Shukla, the British screenwriter of Spider-Man India and Two Dosas and editor of essay anthology The Good Immigrant, and Patel, who will next be seen this summer in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey and contributed to The Good Immigrant.
Black Harvest (Pal-Fr-UK-Jor-Nor-It-Saudi-Qat) hails from Palestinian-British writer-director Said Zagha, whose short Coyotes premiered at 2025 Venice Film Festival and won the best short film award at BFI London Film Festival. The story follows a Palestinian man whose pursuit of vengeance after his son is killed drags him into a spiral of crime and corruption.
Baobao (UK) from UK-based Chinese American director and animator Renee Zhan tells of a strange new arrival in the household of a family after China revokes its one-child policy. The project is in development with BBC Films.
The other selections are: Electric Homies (USA) from writer-director Roberto Fatal; Rounds (USA) from writer-director Taylor Sanghyun Lee; The Terrible Child (Can) from writer-director Bec Pecaut; Attachment (a.k.a. Bluey Is the Warmest Color) (USA) from writer-director Joanna Rothkopf; Dance Monkey Dance (USA) from writer-director Philip Thompson; yellowwood (USA) from writer-director George Watsky; and Liberation (USA) from writer-director Bess Wohl.
Gyula Gazdag leads the Directors Lab and advisors include Colman Domingo, Ava DuVernay, Nisha Ganatra, Lesli Linka Glatter, Catherine Hardwicke, Ed Harris, and Christopher McQuarrie. Howard Rodman leads the Screenwriters Lab, where the advisror cohort includes Haifaa Al Mansour, John August, Ryan Fleck, Jenny Lumet, and Robin Swicord.
Michelle Satter, Sundance Institute founding senior director of artist programmes, and Ilyse McKimmie, Sundance Institute deputy director of the Feature Film Program, oversee the labs.
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