2026 Sundance Institute Ignite x Adobe Fellows Named

Ten Emerging Filmmakers Ages 18 to 25 Will Start Fellowship Year at Ignite Lab from June 14-19

LOS ANGELES, CA, June 15, 2026 - The nonprofit Sundance Institute announced today the names of 10 up-and-coming filmmakers who will take part in the yearlong Sundance Institute Ignite x Adobe Fellowship. The program begins with the Ignite Lab at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts, from June 14-19. For more than a decade, the Ignite fellowship has brought together talented storytellers ages 18 to 25 for professional development and community-building. The yearlong fellowship, supported through the Adobe Film and TV Fund, begins with the lab, a fun week that helps cultivate the creative processes of early-career artists and introduces them to the opportunities they'll participate in over the coming months.

Sundance Institute Ignite x Adobe fellows receive a $5,000 artist grant as well as a one-year complimentary membership to Adobe Creative Cloud in order to propel them in this stage of their careers. After the in-person lab in June, participants join monthly webinars to focus on specific topics around creative and professional development with the Ignite cohort. Fellows will also gather in person again for a curated program at the 2027 Sundance Film Festival in Boulder, Colorado. This year's cohort was selected from over 1,100 global applications.

It's with great pleasure that we return to MASS MoCA to kick off a new year with our Sundance Institute Ignite x Adobe fellows. The filmmakers selected represent an exciting cross section of perspectives, and we're appreciative of our partners at Adobe for their collaboration in bringing the group together this week, said Toby Brooks, Director, Sundance Institute Ignite. Our team is looking forward to facilitating a dynamic cohort of emerging filmmakers and connecting them with the tools needed to build a solid foundation for their careers in this coming year and beyond. Ignite is first and foremost a community - of alumni and mentors alike - and we're thrilled to welcome these 10 fellows into it.

Every filmmaker deserves the chance to bring their vision to life. Together with the Sundance Institute, we're working to make sure access to tools and funding is never what stands between a creator and their story, said Amy While, Global Head of Corporate Social Responsibility, Adobe. Over 15 years as partners, we've seen firsthand what happens when emerging filmmakers get that support and we couldn't be more excited to see what the new cohort of fellows brings to the screen.

Since its founding in 2015, the Sundance Institute Ignite x Adobe Fellowship has had 19 alumni projects selected to screen at the Sundance Film Festival, with several winning jury awards. Former fellows include Giselle Bonilla (director of The Musical, in the U.S. Dramatic Competition at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival), Sean Wang (2023 Sundance Institute Directors and Screenwriters Labs fellow and winner of the 2024 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award: U.S. Dramatic for his feature D di ( )), Charlotte Regan (her debut feature, Scrapper, premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic and later opened the 2023 Sundance Film Festival: London), Lance Oppenheim (his feature Some Kind of Heaven premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival), Terrance Daye (his film Ship: A Visual Poem won the Short Film Jury Award: U.S. Fiction at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival), Aurora Brachman (co-producer of Girls State, which premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival), and Olivia Peace (winner of a 2022 Student Academy Award for Against Reality). Former Sundance Institute Ignite x Adobe fellows have also won prizes at SXSW and Tribeca Festival, as well as the Short Film Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and an Academy Award nomination. Former fellows have gone on to participate in additional Sundance Institute artist programs, including the Directors, Screenwriters, and Episodic labs, and received funding from the Documentary Fund.

Earlier this year, the Sundance Ignite x Adobe Fellowship expanded to include a new short film fund available to Ignite alumni that supports more projects moving from concept to screen in the coming years. This direct-to-creator pathway allows for a more inclusive, innovative, and creator-driven entertainment ecosystem, one where technology helps unlock limitless creativity.

The fellows selected for the 2026 Sundance Institute Ignite x Adobe Fellowship are:

Simisolaoluwa Akande is a Nigerian British multiaward-winning artist filmmaker whose work spans fiction and speculative nonfiction. Grounded in queer African epistemologies, her practice challenges dominant narratives around African identity, memory, and representation.

Aicha Cherif is a director based in New York City drawn to storytelling as a means of excavation and the emotional architectures that shape how we belong to one another. Her documentary Heat screened in Film Forum's Tenement Stories, a century-spanning New York City retrospective, where she was the youngest director.

Blake Knecht is a filmmaker from Las Vegas, Nevada. Her work explores landscapes as evolving narratives, tracing relationships between land, labor, and movement. She earned her MFA in documentary media from Northwestern University, and her work has screened at IDFA, Slamdance, American Cinematheque, and more.

Franciszek Korolczuk is a Polish student filmmaker and music video director whose work blends narrative filmmaking with documentary realism. His debut short, Princeska, is currently on the festival circuit and premiered at the Brussels Short Film Festival.

Haneol Lee ( ) is an award-winning filmmaker exploring 1.5 generation Korean American identity, diaspora, and generational healing through a contemplative

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