Chicken & Egg Pictures has selected the recipients of the 2022 Chicken & Egg Award, which offers unrestricted funding to advanced women and gender nonconforming documentary filmmakers. Women and Hollywood can exclusively announce that Petra Costa (“The Edge of Democracy”), Tracy Heather Strain (“Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart”), Beverley Ditsie (“Lesbians Free Everyone”), Anayansi Prado (“The Unafraid”), Margreth Olin (“Self Portrait”), and Brett Story (“The Hottest August”) will each be honored with $50,000 as well as career coaching and mentorship as they develop new projects.
These upcoming projects include Strain’s “Survival Floating,” a hybrid doc exploring African-descended peoples’ relationships with swimming, and Olin’s “Songs of Earth,” a Norway-set nature film led by the filmmaker’s 84-year-old father.
Chicken & Egg Award finalists Sonia Kennebeck (“Enemies of the State”) and Ditsi Carolino (“Life on the Tracks”) will receive the inaugural Finalist Development Grant. The filmmakers will be presented $15,000 each in recognition of their strong award applications, their filmmaking acumen, and the “daring new projects” they have in development.
“The Chicken & Egg Award makes bold investments in the personal and professional wellbeing of visionary women and gender nonconforming documentary makers. Over the past seven years, we have given unrestricted cash grants totaling $1.9 million US dollars to 38 change-making directors,” said Program Director Lucila Moctezuma. “Because filmmakers — especially those affected by roadblocks tied to their gender, race, class, and location — deserve financial freedom while they create new projects.”
Tatiana Huezo (“Prayers for the Stolen”), Loira Limbal (“Through the Night”), and Jialing Zhang (“One Child Nation”) are among the Chicken & Egg Award’s previous recipients.
Bios for the 2022 Chicken & Egg Award honorees and the Chicken & Egg Award Finalist Development Grant recipients are below.
2022 CHICKEN & EGG AWARD RECIPIENTS
Petra Costa (BRAZIL)
Petra Costa is a Brazilian documentary filmmaker whose work lives on the borderlines of the personal and political. She directed The Edge of Democracy (2019), which was nominated for the Academy Award® for Documentary Feature in 2020; Undertow Eyes (2009); Elena (2012); and Olmo and the Seagull (2015). Petra is associate producer of Barbara Paz’s Babenco (2019), producer of Moara Passoni’s Ecstasy (2020), and EP of Rebeca Huntt’s BEBA (2021).
Beverley Palesa Ditsie (SOUTH AFRICA)
Dr. Bev Palesa Ditsie (Hon) is a radical gender nonconforming lesbian activist and award winning filmmaker, disruptor and change agent who was instrumental in bringing LGBTIQA+ rights into focus in the late 80’s and 90’s in South Africa and the world. She is also a reality TV director whose credits include Big Brother Africa, Survivor South Africa, and Project Runway South Africa. Among her film credits are Simon & I, A Family Affair, and The Commission. Lesbians Free Everyone (2020), their latest work filmed during lockdown, takes you along their journey as the first African Lesbian to address the UN at the Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing 1995.
Anayansi Prado (PANAMA, UNITED STATES)
Born in Panama, Anayansi Prado is an award-winning documentary filmmaker whose work has focused on issues of undocumented immigration, indigenous rights, and race identity. Her feature films have aired nationally on PBS including The Unafraid (2018), Paraiso for Sale (2010), and Maid in America (2005). Anayansi is a Rockefeller Media Fellow and a Creative Capital Artist; her work has been supported by the MacArthur Foundation, Ford Foundation, Chicken & Egg Pictures, amongst others.
Brett Story (CANADA, UNITED KINGDOM)
Brett Story is an award-winning filmmaker and writer based out of Toronto. She is the director of the critically acclaimed feature documentaries The Prison in Twelve Landscapes (2016) and The Hottest August (2019), both of which have screened around the world. Brett has held fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and Sundance Institute, and she was named one of Variety’s 10 Documentary Filmmakers to Watch 2019.
Margreth Olin (NORWAY)
Margreth Olin is a director and producer with a large cinema audience in Norway. She has made 13 films, which have received critical acclaim, participated at numerous festivals abroad, and won several Norwegian and international awards. Margreth has managed to catalyze important dialogues with the topics her films shed light on. She has personally received 26 honorary awards for her commitment and focus on human rights. Her credits include My Body (Tribeca 2002), EFA-nominated Raw Youth (2004), The Angel (TIFF 2010), Nowhere Home (IDFA 2012), Cathedrals of Culture (Berlinale 2013), Self Portrait (DOC NYC 2020).
Tracy Heather Strain (UNITED STATES)
Tracy Heather Strain, a two-time Peabody Award-winning and Emmy-nominated filmmaker, explores stories about the ways diverse peoples have experienced life in the US. She won an NAACP Image Award for Motion Picture Directing for Lorraine Hansberry: Sighted Eyes/Feeling Heart, which premiered at TIFF and made its television debut on American Masters. She is presently developing Survival Floating, a hybrid documentary investigating African-descended peoples’ relationships with swimming.
2022 CHICKEN & EGG AWARD FINALIST DEVELOPMENT GRANT RECIPIENTS
Ditsi Carolino (PHILIPPINES)
Ditsi Carolino studied filmmaking at the National Film & Television School in the UK on a Chevening Scholarship. Her past projects include Life on the Tracks, about a couple who live by the railway slums (IDFA World Premiere, BBC Storyville Broadcast); and Bunso, The Youngest, about three imprisoned boys from 11–13, which was used by child rights advocates to pass the juvenile justice law. Ditsi is a member of Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Sonia Kennebeck (US, GERMANY, MALAYSIA)
Sonia Kennebeck is an award-winning director and producer and has released three critically-acclaimed independent feature films: National Bird (Berlinale Special 2016), Enemies of the State (TIFF 2020), and United States vs. Reality Winner (SXSW 2021). She received the Adrienne Shelly Excellence in Filmmaking Award and Ridenhour Documentary Film Prize. She is a first-generation college graduate who was born in Malaysia, raised in Germany, and lives in the US.
Note: The parentheses next to the directors’ names indicate the filmmakers’ nationalities and/or countries of origin.
