Sundance Institute has selected their first-time filmmakers for this year’s Directors Lab, and five out of the eight directors chosen are women. That’s a lovely 62 percent.
The annual Lab supports the next wave of independent filmmakers exploring new ideas and shaping the future of storytelling and has helped launch the careers of such female filmmakers as Dee Rees (“Pariah”)and Marielle Heller (“The Diary of a Teenage Girl”).
The Lab will take place from May 30-June 23 in the mountains of Sundance Resort in Utah. Under the leadership of Sundance Institute Feature Film Program Founding Director Michelle Satter, Labs Director Ilyse McKimmie, and the artistic direction of Gyula Gazdag, the Fellows will work with an accomplished group of advisers, professional actors, and production crews to shoot and edit key scenes from their screenplays. “Through this concentrated, hands-on process,” Sundance says, “the Fellows workshop and make key discoveries about their scripts, collaborate with actors and find a visual storytelling language for their films.”
Michelle Satter, Founding Director of the Sundance Institute Feature Film Program, stated, “Our Directors Lab and other programs play a critical role in discovering diverse artists and launching their careers, and this year’s filmmakers are our most diverse group ever in terms of their backgrounds, experiences and perspectives. We are thrilled to work with each of them to further develop the most distinctive, singular and timely stories that might otherwise go untold.”
The women participating in this year’s lab are listed below, with film synopses and bios courtesy of Sundance.
Frances Bodomo- “Afronauts” (Zambia/U.S.A.): Just after Zambian Independence in 1964, an ingenious group of villagers build a homemade rocket in a wild bid to join the Space Race. Seventeen-year-old astronaut Matha Mwambwa must decide if blasting off in the precarious rocket vindicates her past or just makes her a glorified human sacrifice. Inspired by true events.
Ghanian writer-director Frances Bodomo grew up in Ghana, Norway, and Hong Kong, before moving to New York City to study film at Columbia University (BA) and NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts (MFA). Her short films “Boneshaker” and “Afronauts” both premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, and went on to play various festivals including the Berlinale, Telluride, and New Directors/New Films. She recently directed the short segment “Everybody Dies!” for the omnibus feature Collective:Unconscious, which premiered at the 2016 SXSW Film Festival. Bodomo is a Sundance Institute | Alfred P. Sloan Fellow.
Annie Silverstein- “Bull” (U.S.A.): In a near-abandoned subdivision west of Houston, a wayward teen runs headlong into her equally willful and unforgiving neighbor — an aging bullfighter who’s seen his best days in the arena. It’s a collision that will change them both.
Annie Silverstein is an award-winning filmmaker and youth worker based in Austin, Texas. Her fiction and documentary films have screened at international festivals including Cannes, SXSW, Silverdocs and on PBS Independent Lens. Most recently she wrote and directed “Skunk,” which won the jury award at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival–Cinéfondation. Silverstein is a recipient of the San Francisco Film Society/Kenneth Rainin Foundation Grant for developing her first fiction feature.
Eva Vive- “Nina” (U.S.A.): Just as Nina Geld’s brilliant and angry stand up kicks her career into high gear, her romantic life gets complicated, forcing her to reckon with what it means to be creative, authentic and a woman in today’s culture.
Eva Vives is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. In 2000, she won the Best Short Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and Cannes Film Festival with “Five Feet High and Rising,” a short she cast, edited and produced. She followed that up with the feature “Raising Victor Vargas,” which she co-wrote. Vives has been writing numerous projects, including “Chrome & Paint,” a film she co-wrote with Ice Cube. Vives was one of four writers in the Disney Writers Program from 2010–2012. Most recently, she wrote and directed the short film Join the Club, which premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival. She was also a finalist for the 2016 Atlanta Film Festival’s Filmmaker to Watch award.
Sandhya Suri- “Santosh” (India/United Kingdom): In the corrupt hinterlands of Northern India, a young widow, Santosh, inherits her husband’s job as police constable. When a girl’s body is found in a well, she is forced to confront the brutality around her and the violence within.
Sandhya Suri is a British-Indian writer/director based in London. A graduate in pure mathematics, she received a scholarship to study documentary at The National Film and Television School. Her feature documentary “I for India” premiered in the World Competition section of the Sundance Film Festival, screened at over 20 international festivals and garnered several awards before being released theatrically to critical acclaim in the UK and the U.S. Suri also participated in the 2015 Drishyam | Sundance Screenwriters Lab.
Pippa Bianco- “Share” (U.S.A.): In this cyber thriller, a disturbing video — leaked from a local high school — throws a Long Island community into chaos and the national spotlight as they try to unravel the story behind it.
Pippa Bianco studied at Yale University, where she received the Lamar Film Studies Prize and Pearson American Studies Prize before moving to New York to make films. In 2015, her short film “Share” screened at the Telluride Film Festival, won a jury prize at SXSW 2015, and won Cinéfondation’s First Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Her recent work also includes a commission for LACMA scored by Nico Jaar, and a writing credit on “Bleed for This,” a forthcoming boxing biopic starring Miles Teller, produced by Bruce Cohen and executive produced by Martin Scorsese.
