Documentary filmmakers Kristi Jacobson, Julia Reichert, Yoruba Richen, Elaine McMillion and Michèle Stephenson have been named the five recipients of Chicken & Egg Pictures’ inaugural Breakthrough Filmmaker Awards. The honor comes with a $50,000 grant and a year-long mentorship program. 

As an organization, Chicken & Egg is dedicated to supporting female documentarians. Given the financial challenges of working within the nonfiction film industry, the Breakthrough Filmmaker Award seeks to "recognize and elevate five mid-career women directors with unique voices who are poised to reach new heights and to continue to be strong filmmaker-advocates for urgent issues." The recipients were selected through a nation-wide confidential nomination process. 
               

"Chicken & Egg
Pictures continues to make bold investments in both women artists and gender
equality to ensure that a greater diversity of voices are acknowledged for
their participation in the storytelling that drives change," said Jenni
Wolfson, Chicken & Egg’s Executive Director. "Our hope with this new award
is to provide support and a platform for these artists to continue showcasing
and elevating critical social justice, environmental and human rights issues
and stories while working to increase their visibility and ensure they receive
the recognition they deserve."

 
Here are the bios of the 2016 Breakthrough Filmmaker Award recipients, courtesy of a Chicken & Egg press release: 

Kristi Jacobson

Kristi Jacobson is a NY-based
filmmaker whose films capture nuanced, intimate, and provocative portrayals of
individuals and communities. Her most recent film, A Place at the Table
(Participant Media/Magnolia Pictures), called “one of the most important…and
gripping non-fiction films to debut in some time” by Indiewire, premiered at
the 2012 Sundance Film Festival before its theatrical release in over 35 U.S.
cities. Previous films include the critically acclaimed Toots, winner of
the National Board of Review’s 2007 Top Documentary Award, and American
Standoff (HBO), produced by two-time Oscar winner Barbara Kopple. Jacobson
is a member of the Director’s Guild of America, NYWIFT, and a two-time Sundance
Creative Producing Fellow. She is a recipient of grants from Tribeca Film
Institute, Sundance Institute DFP, Chicken & Egg Pictures, and many others.
She is currently working on an upcoming HBO documentary that provides an
immersive and unprecedented look inside the world of solitary confinement in
the U.S.

Julia Reichert

Julia
Reichert is a three-time Academy Award nominee for her documentary work. She
lives in Ohio, and has chosen to focus on class, gender, and race in the lives
of Americans.  Julia’s first film, Growing Up Female, was the first feature
documentary of the modern Women’s Movement.  It was recently selected for
the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.  Her films Union Maids and Seeing Red were nominated for
Academy Awards for Best Feature Documentary, as was The Last Truck, a short (co-directed
with Steven Bognar) which premiered at the Telluride Film Festival and on
HBO.  Her film A Lion in the House (an ITVS co-production, made with Bognar)
premiered at Sundance, screened nationally on PBS, and won the Primetime Emmy
for Exceptional Merit in Nonfiction Filmmaking.  She co-wrote and directed
the feature film Emma and Elvis.  Julia is co-founder of New Day Films,
the independent film distribution co-op.  She is author of “Doing It
Yourself,” the first book on self-distribution in independent film, and was an
Advisory Board member of IFP.
Reichert
is currently directing a film about the 9 to 5 movement, telling the stories of
the millions of low wage, invisible women who populated the clerical pool,
served coffee, and suffered sexual harassment before it was named.  In the
1970’s they gathered their courage and rose up against their bosses, large
corporations, and institutions.  She’s also begun filming a verite
follow-up to The Last Truck, chronicling the arrival of a new plant in her economically
devastated Midwestern city.

Yoruba Richen

Yoruba
Richen is a documentary filmmaker whose work explores issues of race, space,
and power. She has directed films in the U.S. and abroad, including The
New Black and Promised Land. The New Black won
Audience Awards at AFI Docs, Philly Q Fest, and Frameline LGBT Film Festival.
The film also won best documentary at the Urbanworld Film Festival and was
nominated for an NAACP Image Award and a GLAAD Media Award.  The
New Black opened theatrically at New York’s Film Forum and aired on
PBS’s Independent Lens. Yoruba has received numerous grants including from
Sundance Documentary Fund, Chicken & Egg Pictures, and the Ford Foundation.
She won the Creative Promise Award at Tribeca All Access and was also a
Sundance Producers Fellow. Yoruba is a featured TED Speaker and a Guggenheim
Fellow. She is director of the documentary program at the CUNY Graduate School
of Journalism. Yoruba is currently working on How It Feels To Be Free, a two-part
documentary chronicling how black entertainers like Lena Horne and Cicely Tyson
navigated the industry and took control of their own images, all while fighting
for civil rights through their art and actions.

Elaine McMillion Sheldon

Elaine McMillion
Sheldon is a documentary filmmaker and media artist who explores themes of
identity, roots, and change. She’s the director of Hollow, the
Emmy-nominated and Peabody-winning interactive documentary that explores life
in the Appalachian coalfields. She’s also the co-producer of The Lower 9,
a feature-length documentary about The Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans after
Hurricane Katrina. Sheldon’s film and interactive work has been exhibited
nationally and internationally, from the New York Film Festival to IDFA.
Sheldon was a 2013 Future of Storytelling Fellow, and named one of the "25
New Faces of Independent Film" in 2013 by Filmmaker Magazine and one of
"50 People Changing The South" in 2015 by Southern Living Magazine.
She works across platforms and mediums—film, photo, audio, interactive media—to
create storytelling experiences. Sheldon is currently working on several
projects that employ the storytelling skills she has developed for multiple
mediums, including short and feature filmmaking, longform and interactive
journalism, participatory media, virtual reality, and audio storytelling. Two
of the film-based projects include a feature-length documentary about home,
identity, and roots of Latino families living in Appalachia, and a
short-film collaboration with the New York Times Op-Docs centered on the
election year in rural America.

Michèle Stephenson

Michèle
Stephenson pulls from her Caribbean roots and international experience as a
human rights attorney to tell compelling personal stories that resonate beyond
the margins. Her work has appeared on a variety of broadcast and web platforms,
including PBS, Showtime, and MTV. Her most recent film, American Promise,
was nominated for three Emmys including Best Documentary. The film won the Jury
Prize at Sundance and was selected for the New York Film Festival’s Main Slate.
Stephenson’s community engagement work has won numerous awards including the
BRITDOC Puma Impact Award and a Revere Award nomination from the American
Publishers Association. Other films directed by Stephenson include Slaying
Goliath and Faces of Change. Her recent book, “Promises Kept,”
written with co-authors Joe Brewster and Hilary Beard, won an NAACP Image
Award. Stephenson
is currently working on Hispaniola, a documentary chronicling the lives of
families affected by the TC-186 Dominican Republic Supreme Court ruling that
strips citizenship from individuals of Haitian descent who were born in the
country. She’s also part of the filmmaking team behind Conversations On Race, a New York Times Op-Docs series of short films
that uses powerful personal narratives to elevate shared experiences of race
and equality.