Loira Limbal, Jialing Zhang, Cristina Ibarra, Maryam Ebrahimi, Tatiana Huezo, and Elwira Niewiera will be honored with a $50,000 grant and a year-long mentorship program for their documentary filmmaking. Women and Hollywood can exclusively announce that the six artists are the recipients of the 2021 Chicken & Egg Award. Presented to established women and non-binary documentarians, the honor is “designed to take [awardees] to the next stages of their careers,” a press release details.
Along with the grant and mentorship, honorees also receive “dedicated support from the Chicken & Egg Pictures creative team geared toward the development of new documentary projects.”
Originally given to U.S. filmmakers, the Chicken & Egg Award is also recognizing artists working from Mexico, Sweden, and Germany this year. “The six Award recipients use their art to document some of today’s most urgent issues, while also experimenting with the limits of form and storytelling,” per the source.
Limbal released “Through the Night,” a portrait of a 24-hour daycare last year, and Zhang produced Nanfu Wang’s COVID-19 doc “In the Same Breath,” which recently debuted at Sundance. Ibarra’s work includes immigrant detention docu-thriller “The Infiltrators,” while human trafficking doc “Tempestad” is among Huezo’s credits. Ebrahimi’s films include “No Burqas Behind Bars,” focusing on an Afghan women’s prison, and Niewiera explored the life of Polish filmmaker Michal Waszynski in “The Prince and the Dybbuk.”
“At a time when women are being pushed out of the workforce in record numbers, sustaining their careers in our documentary film community is vitally important,” said Jenni Wolfson, Chicken & Egg’s Executive Director. “Because of our holistic approach at Chicken & Egg Pictures, the Award grant is unrestricted — not tied to their film projects but to their professional growth and wellbeing. We are so honored to welcome six new, talented filmmakers into the program and to be their unwavering advocates in the industry.”
Ramona Diaz (“A Thousand Cuts”), Kirsten Johnson (“Dick Johnson Is Dead”), and Yoruba Richen (“How It Feels to Be Free”) are among the Chicken & Egg Award’s past recipients.
Bios for the 2021 honorees are below, courtesy of Chicken & Egg.
Note: The parentheses next to the directors’ names indicate the filmmakers’ nationalities and/or countries of origin.
Maryam Ebrahimi (IRAN, SWEDEN)
Emmy Award-winning producer and director Maryam Ebrahimi’s credits include No Burqas Behind Bars (2012) about an Afghan women’s prison and Stronger Than a Bullet (2017) about war photographer Saeid Sadeghi. Maryam was born in Tehran, where she studied art and art theory at University of Tehran and continued her education in Sweden. As a filmmaker, she has a deep knowledge of visual storytelling and extensive experience in location shooting.
Tatiana Huezo (MEXICO, EL SALVADOR)
Mexican-Salvadoran filmmaker Tatiana Huezo gained an international reputation with her debut feature The Tiniest Place (2011), which screened at more than 80 festivals. Her work has been acknowledged by The Mexican Academy of Film Arts and Sciences with four Ariel Awards, among them Best Documentary and Best Director for Tempestad (2016), which also represented Mexico at the Academy Awards and the Goya Awards.
Cristina Ibarra (MEXICO, UNITED STATES)
Cristina Ibarra is a Chicana border crosser and award-winning independent filmmaker with roots along the Texas-Mexico border. Her credits include The Infiltrators (2019), a hybrid docu-thriller which received the NEXT Audience and Innovator Awards at Sundance; and Las Marthas (2014), called “a striking alternative portrait of border life” by the The New York Times and awarded Best US Latinx Film by Cinema Tropical.
Loira Limbal (PUERTO RICO, UNITED STATES)
Born in Puerto Rico to Dominican parents, Loira Limbal is an Afro-Latina filmmaker interested in telling nuanced and revelatory stories about working class women of color. In addition to being the Senior Vice President of Programs at Firelight Media, Limbal is a Sundance Institute Momentum Fellow, DOC NYC Documentary New Leader, and a former Rockwood JustFilms Fellow. Limbal’s credits include Estilo Hip Hop (2009) and Through the Night (2020), a New York Times Critics’ Pick and selection for POV’s 2021 season.
Elwira Niewiera (GERMANY, POLAND)
Elwira Niewiera is the director of award-winning documentary films Domino Effect (2014) and The Prince and the Dybbuk (2017). Her work focuses on social and cultural transformations in Eastern Europe; she has won many international awards, including the Golden Dove at DOK Leipzig, Best Documentary on Cinema at the Venice International Film Festival, and the Polish Academy Award for Best Documentary.
Jialing Zhang (CHINA)
Jialing Zhang is an Emmy Award-nominated filmmaker based in Massachusetts. She produced In the Same Breath (Sundance Film Festival 2021), co-directed and produced One Child Nation (Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner 2019), and Complicit (Human Rights Watch Film Festival 2017). Before becoming a filmmaker, she worked in journalism in Beijing for six years. She has a master’s degree from NYU’s School of Journalism.
