UNIVERSAL FILM AND FOCUS FEATURES RENEW EXCLUSIVE PARTNERSHIP WITH SUNDANCE INSTITUTE TO SUPPORT RISING FILMMAKERS

Announcing the 2026 Sundance Institute Breakthrough | Focus Features Fellows

LOS ANGELES - August 25, 2026 - Universal Film and Focus Features have announced a two-year extension of their exclusive partnership with the Sundance Institute, continuing the support for emerging filmmakers through the Breakthrough Fellowship. With Universal's Filmmaker & Content Strategies group guiding the overall sponsorship, the companies oversee the Sundance Institute Breakthrough | Focus Features Fellowship which provides grants, mentorship, and career guidance each year to a distinguished class of filmmaker fellows.

In addition to renewing the partnership, the organizations have announced the program's fellowship class of 2026, a group of four writer-directors selected from the Sundance Institute Screenwriters Lab and Directors Lab. This year's fellows are Roberto Fatal, Joanna Rothkopf, Said Zagha, and Renee Zhan. Focus will provide each fellow with a financial grant and mentorship to support their creative development, while Universal's Filmmaker & Content Strategies group will program enrichment opportunities designed to expand the fellows' professional networks and provide greater insight into the studio ecosystem, through direct engagement with leaders and executives across the filmmaking pipeline, including development, production, marketing, distribution and more. The fellows are also automatically eligible to be considered for the Universal Writers Residency, which partners writers with the Universal's term deal producers to develop original film ideas.

Universal's exclusive partnership with the Sundance Institute for nearly a decade has been a source of pride across the Studio. They've consistently demonstrated an exceptional ability to identify top-tier filmmakers on the verge of breakthrough success, said Janine Jones-Clark, Executive Vice President Filmmaker & Content Strategies for Universal Film. The alignment with Focus Features opens up even more opportunities for filmmakers. With a proven track record of elevating visionary auteur filmmakers and bringing distinctive stories to audiences, Focus is uniquely positioned to champion emerging talent with their powerful platform.

Focus are enormous fans of the Sundance Institute, and so happy to be able to support their Directors Lab fellows. Together they create a world in which filmmakers are allowed to dream deeply and freely, ultimately leading to films we'll all be talking about for years to come, said Kiska Higgs, President of Production and Acquisitions at Focus Features.

This extended partnership continues a longstanding collaborative relationship between the companies. Universal Film has partnered with the Sundance Institute since 2016, when Universal Pictures became a founding sponsor of Sundance Institute's FilmTwo, which later became the Sundance Institute Momentum fellowship program. Alumni from the two iterations of the program include BAFTA winner Charlotte Wells (Aftersun); Stephen Caple Jr. (Creed II); Film Independent Spirit Award winner Andrew Ahn (Spa Night): Actor Award winner Clea Duvall (Happiest Season); and Erica Tremblay (Fancy Dance).

Building on its longstanding history of identifying emerging voices at Sundance Institute, Focus joined the partnership in 2025, with select projects from last year's fellowship class currently in production or pre-production at the studio. Focus has a rich history of elevating emergent storytellers alongside Sundance Institute. The studio has distributed numerous films premiering at Sundance Film Festival, including A.V. Rockwell's Grand Jury Prize winner A Thousand and One, Sean Wang's Audience Award winner D di, Cory Finley's Independent Spirit Award nominee Thoroughbreds, and Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre's Independent Spirit Award nominee The Mustang. Focus has also collaborated with numerous Sundance Institute Labs alumni, including Academy Award winners Chlo Zhao and Paul Thomas Anderson.

2026 Sundance Institute | Focus Features Breakthrough Fellows:

Roberto Fatal

Roberto Fatal [they/them/ellos] is a Meztize Chicana filmmaker and storyteller. They come from Rar muri, Gen zaro, and Spanish ancestry. Their Queer, gender fluid, Mestize/Mixed identity informs the sci-fi films they make. Their work centers on humans who sit at the intersections of time, space, and culture. From this unique vantage point, these characters can bridge divides, see all sides, find new paths forward, and recall multiple histories long forgotten. The mixed people of Fatal's stories can connect us deeply to an undercurrent of humanity that we often overlook in a world that is increasingly divided. Survival, intersectional identity, perseverance, love, empathy, community, connection, and creation are at the heart of their characters and films. Fatal is a Sundance Institute Native Lab alum and an imagineNATIVE Director's Lab alum. Their debut feature script, Electric Homies, was included in the 2025 Sundance Institute Screenwriters Lab and the Directors Lab, and their newest short film, En Memoria, was selected to screen in competition at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival Shorts program.

Joanna Rothkopf

Joanna Rothkopf is a writer and filmmaker living in Brooklyn. Since 2019, she has worked as a Senior Writer on HBO's Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, through which she has won multiple Emmy Awards, WGA Awards, and a Peabody. Her short documentary, Pet Store, which she wrote, directed, and produced, played a variety of festivals in 2024, including the Hamptons International Film Festival and the Austin Film Festival, where it was nominated for the Documentary Short Jury Award. Her writing has also appeared in New York Magazine, Dwell, Esquire, The New Republic, the New York Times Magazine, and on Jezebel. She holds a maste

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