Film Independent has lined up quite the class for its 2020 Documentary Lab — this year’s participants are all women. Eight projects from 11 filmmakers were selected for the program, which is designed for filmmakers currently in post-production on a feature documentary. The Lab provides creative feedback and “advances the careers of its Fellows by introducing them to film professionals who can advise on both the craft and business of documentary filmmaking.”
“The 11 visionary filmmakers represented in this year’s Documentary Lab take risks to create artful nonfiction storytelling that impacts the broader cultural conversation,” said Documentary Programs Manager Lisa Hasko, per a press release announcing the participants. “We’re thrilled to work with these diverse voices and look forward to helping them hone their craft and nurturing their careers through the Documentary Lab and as Film Independent Fellows.”
The 2020 Doc Lab projects include “Bangla Surf Girls,” Elizabeth D. Costa’s coming-of-age doc about three Bangladeshi girls who join a surf club, and Meg Smaker’s untitled investigation of a deradicalization program. Mikaela Shwer’s “The Kids Are Not Alright,” which showcases cult-like reform programs and the teens sent to them, was also selected.
Among the program’s Mentors and Guest Speakers this year are “Speed of Life” director Liz Manashil, “Dick Johnson is Dead” producer Marylin Ness, and Oscar-nominated “St. Louis Superman” filmmaker Smriti Mundhra.
The 2020 Documentary Lab projects are below, courtesy of Film Independent. Find more info and filmmaker bios on the org’s website.
Title: Bangla Surf Girls
Director: Elizabeth D. Costa
Logline: Bangla Surf Girls is an observational coming-of-age documentary set in Cox’s Bazar along a natural sea beach in Bangladesh. The beach, a haven for tourists, is just a place of work for three young girls who sell trinkets to tourists—until they join a surf club and get a taste of freedom. The documentary takes place over the course of three years and follows the girls as they ride the highs and lows of their lives.
Title: How to Escape from Prison
Director: Elizabeth Mirzaei
Logline: Each year, thousands of California prisoners serving life sentences fight to get parole; one resolute Dominican nun has made it her mission to see them succeed. But can mock hearings, self-critique, and tough training pay off in a broken system?
Title: Untitled Terrorist Rehabilitation Film
Director: Meg Smaker
Logline: This film follows a group of former Islamic extremists as they attend a deradicalization program. Is it possible to rehabilitate a terrorist?
Title: The Kids Are Not Alright
Director: Mikaela Shwer
Logline: Despite decades of documented abuse and hundreds of deaths, thousands of teenagers across the United States are held in cult-like reform programs that generate multibillion-dollar profits with little-to-no government oversight. The Kids Are Not Alright reveals the devastating effects this industry has on its survivors and draws the curtain back on this controversial industry.
Title: Mama Bears
Director: Daresha Kyi
Producer: Laura Tatham
Logline: Mama Bears is a feature documentary that explores the many ways in which the lives of conservative, Christian mothers are utterly transformed when they decide to accept their LGBTQ children. Spread throughout the country but connected through private Facebook groups, they call themselves “Mama Bears” because they fight ferociously for the civil rights of their children and the entire LGBTQ community.
Title: Manzanar, Diverted
Director: Ann Kaneko
Director: Jin Yoo-Kim
Logline: From the snow-capped Sierras to the now-parched valley of Payahuunadü (the Owens Valley), this intersectional documentary tracks women from three communities — Native Americans; Japanese American World War II incarcerees and local environmentalists — who form an unexpected alliance to fight for dignity, their home and for future generations against the city of Los Angeles, owner of 90 percent of the land.
Title: That’s How We Roll
Director: Sara Terry
Producer: Alysa Nahmias
Logline: When housing on the lowest rung of the American dream is being devoured by the wealthiest of the wealthy, whose dream are we serving? That’s How We Roll addresses urgent issues of class and economic (im)mobility through mobile home park residents fighting to preserve their dreams and homes as wealthy investors buy up parks, squeezing every penny from mobile home owners who rent the land they live on.
Title: Untitled PRC Project
Director/Producer: Jessica Kingdon
Logline: Untitled PRC Project is a portrait of China’s industrial supply chain through its accelerated economy in an increasingly consumer-driven yet repressive society. With an observational lens, the feature documentary examines megatrends of today’s China, revealing paradoxes born from prosperity of the world’s emergent superpower through the cycle of production, consumption and waste. This impressionistic collage of the new “Chinese Dream” consists of conceptually linked vignettes, immersed in locations ranging from the remote Sichuan mountains where farmers mine cryptocurrency, to bustling megacities where live-streamers build their brands by selling goods.
