Chicken and Egg Pictures has announced the participants of their 2018 Accelerator Lab. Designed to support first- and second-time nonfiction female filmmakers, the program offers each finalist a $35,000 grant as well as year-long creative and professional mentorship. This year’s cohort hails from eight different countries.

The ten projects being developed in the 2018 Lab include Loira Limbals’ “Through the Night,” a verité documentary that explores a 24-hour daycare center, and “Writing With Fire,” a look into a newspaper in India run by rural women co-helmed by Rintu Thomas.

“All directors of the ten projects will come together at various points over the course of a year for an intensive period of professional development, tailored mentorship, and workshops with industry experts, creatively fusing the art and craft of filmmaking with best practices and peer-to-peer support,” a press release details.

“Community-building is key to this program,” said Chicken & Egg Pictures Program Director Lucila Moctezuma. “While the Accelerator Lab for first- and second-time filmmakers certainly helps women filmmakers to ​enter​ the industry pipeline, it also provides them with a community of support that helps them to ​stay​ in the pipeline,” she explained. “The reality of being a film director is that it can often feel daunting and isolating. By explicitly encouraging peer-to-peer mentorship among our cohort, we provide emerging filmmakers with a chance to bond with and learn from one another, to help one another carve a space for themselves in the industry, and to equip them with the strength of a community they can rely on throughout their careers.”

Chicken & Egg Pictures supports women nonfiction filmmakers. Since its founding in 2005, the non-profit has awarded over $6 million in grants and provided thousands of hours of mentorship to over 250 films.

The open call for the 2019 Accelerator Lab will launch on May 1.

Check out all of the 2018 Accelerator Lab grantees and details about their projects below, courtesy of Chicken & Egg. All of the projects are directed or co-directed by women.

A Cops and Robbers Story
Director: Ilinca Calugareanu (ROMANIA / UK)

Corey Pegues, one of the highest ranking black executives in the NYPD, reveals a few months after retirement that before joining the NYPD he worked the streets dealing crack cocaine for one of the most notorious drug gangs in the US, the Supreme Team. To many he is either a perp in cop costume or a criminal turned hero. But who is the real Corey Pegues?

People’s Hospital
Director: Siyi Chen (CHINA / US)

As Chinese society criticizes dysfunctional hospitals, a doctor’s daughter revisits the small-town hospital where she grew up — this time with a camera, in the middle of a chaotic ER.

Enemies of the State
Director: Sonia Kennebeck (MALAYSIA / GERMANY / US)

An average American family becomes entangled in a bizarre web of espionage and corporate secrets when their hacker son is targeted by the US government.

The Youth
Director: Eunice Lau (SINGAPORE / US) and Arthur Nazaryan (US)

The Youth​ is an unflinching look at the forces that drive one to adopt an extreme ideology. Through the eyes of a father who seeks to understand how his son is radicalized by the propaganda of the Islamic State Army, ​The Youth​ reveals how a Muslim American family is affected by the geopolitics and polemics that fuel the resurgence of reactionary and right-wing political movements. Through this intimate lens on the Somali community in Minnesota, ​The Youth​ explores the racism and prejudices against immigrants, the rise of radical Islam, and what it means to be Muslim in contemporary America.

Number 387
Director: Madeleine Leroyer (FRANCE)

This is the story of a Greek physician who collects pendants and bracelets. This is the story of an Italian woman who has been fighting for 15 years to “make bodies talk.” This is the story of those who watch over the forgotten migrants. Since the beginning of 2016, 3,649 migrants have died while attempting to reach Europe by sea. 3,649 names, the vast majority of which have been diluted in the deep blue waters of the Mediterranean. What happens to the dead? Who identifies them? What do the mothers, the brothers do to try to find their missing loved ones? For years, medical examiners have been trying to give back a name, dignity, a memory to these forgotten souls. This film tells their story.

Electric Malady
Director: Marie Lidén (SWEDEN / UK)

Director Marie Lidén grew up with a mother who suffered from an illness that the world did not recognize — Electrosensitivity. Years later, in a technologically advanced world, Marie gives a poignant account of the lives of two electrosensitives: William, a 41-year-old Swedish man, and Tyler, a 13-year-old Canadian boy. Using Marie’s own family story as a thread, the film explores William and Tyler’s isolated worlds and their families’ unrelenting commitment to help their children.

Through the Night
Director: Loira Limbal (US)

To make ends meet, Americans are working longer hours across multiple jobs. This modern reality of nonstop work has resulted in an unexpected phenomenon: the flourishing of 24-hour daycare centers. ​Through the Night​ is a verité documentary that explores the personal cost of our modern economy through the stories of two working mothers and a child care provider, whose lives intersect at a 24-hour daycare center in New Rochelle, NY.

Always in Season
Director: Jacqueline Olive (US)

As the trauma of a century of lynching African Americans bleeds into the present, ​Always in Season​ follows relatives of the perpetrators and victims in communities across the country who are seeking justice and reconciliation in the midst of racial profiling and police shootings. In Bladenboro, NC, the film connects historic racial terrorism to racial violence today with the story of Claudia Lacy who grieves as she fights to get an FBI investigation opened into the death of her seventeen-year-old son, Lennon Lacy, found hanging from a swing set on August 29, 2014. Claudia, like many others, believes Lennon was lynched.

Reentry (working title)
Director: Jennifer Redfearn (US)

Women are now the fastest growing population in the US criminal justice system, increasing at nearly double the rate of men. The majority of women going into prison are serving time for drug-related charges. This immersive, character-driven film follows three women — who are part of a new reentry program in Cleveland, Ohio — as they prepare to leave prison, reunite with their children, and find jobs after serving time for drug-related charges.

Writing With Fire
Co-Directors: Rintu Thomas & Sushmit Ghosh (INDIA)

In one of the most socially oppressive and patriarchal states of India emerges a newspaper run entirely by rural women. Meera, its popular reporter, decides to magnify the paper’s impact with an audacious move — to transform from print to a digital news agency. Working in media dark villages, mocked and discouraged, this is the story of a visionary woman’s feisty spirit in building what will probably be the world’s first digital news agency run entirely by rural women.