-- Los Angeles, CA - The nonprofit Sundance Institute announced today the eight artists working across disciplines selected for its 2021 Women at Sundance | Adobe Fellowship. The year round program is designed to foster community, further craft, and support women artists creating bold new work in film and media, prioritizing support for filmmakers from historically underrepresented communities.The program offers a full year of comprehensive support with custom-tailored mentorship from Sundance Institute and Adobe executives, skill-building workshops in the fall and spring, ongoing coaching, a $6,250 cash grant, and a one-year subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud. Fellows will also receive introductions to key industry contacts and creative advisors, referrals to specific career and development opportunities, and participate in quarterly group calls to share progress and learnings. Each fellow is also participating in a Sundance Institute Lab or program aligning with their career path.
We're excited to announce our new group of cross-disciplinary artists, supporting storytellers working in documentary, fiction and episodic formats. This year-long fellowship will provide bespoke professional and creative development designed to advance their singular projects and burgeoning careers, said Michelle Satter, Founding Senior Director, Artist Programs.
Women have been noticeably under-represented in creative fields like film-making-indeed, this year we were delighted to see Chloe Zhao be one of only two female directors to win an Oscar-and Adobe is committed to help address this, said Ann Lewnes, Adobe CMO and EVP, Corporate Strategy & Development and member of the Sundance Institute Board of Trustees. I'm incredibly proud of the ways Adobe is helping to advance the role of women in film through our support of programs like the 2021 Women at Sundance fellowship.
Created in 2020, this fellowship was formed by the Institute and Adobe around a shared commitment to nurturing, developing, and championing underrepresented voices. Updates on the inaugural cohort of 2020 Women at Sundance Adobe Fellows include: Jenny Shi's documentary feature Finding Yingying was acquired and broadcast on MTV's Documentary Films channel and was nominated for the 42nd Annual News & Documentary Emmy . Dionne Edwards has wrapped production on her debut fiction feature Pretty Red Dress.
Adobe is also the founding supporter of Sundance Ignite, a year-long artist development program supporting filmmakers ages 18-25.
Women at Sundance is made possible by leadership support from The David and Lura Lovell Foundation, The Harnisch Foundation, and Adobe. Additional support is provided by Paul and Katy Drake Bettner, Barbara Bridges, Abigail Disney and Pierre Hauser-Like a River Fund, Hollywood Foreign Press Association,, Suzanne Lerner, Cristina Ljungberg, Susan Bay Nimoy, Ann Lovell, Zions Bank, The Female Quotient, Pat Mitchell and Scott Seydel, Jenn Lee Smith, Kimberly Steward, Brenda Robinson, and an anonymous donor.
The 2021 Women at Sundance | Adobe Fellows are:
McKenzie Chinn
McKenzie is a filmmaker, actor, and poet based in Chicago. She is the writer and lead actor of Olympia, which won the Audience Award at the 2019 Bentonville Film Festival. She has appeared on screen, including in the upcoming series The Big Leap, as well as onstage with Goodman and Steppenwolf Theatres, The Second City, and others. Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and she is part of Growing Concerns Poetry Collective whose releases include two albums and the poetry collection Five Fifths. She is a 2021 Sundance Institute Screenwriters and Directors Lab Fellow.
Melody Cooper
Most recently story editor on the 22nd season of NBCUniversal's Law & Order: SVU, Melody Cooper was previously staff writer on Stage 13's Two Sentence Horror Stories, now on Netflix. A 2021 Sundance Institute Episodic Lab Fellow and 2019 HBO Access Writing Fellow, Melody has been named one of the Top 25 Screenwriters to Watch in 2021 by ISA. An award-winning playwright, Melody received a Ford Foundation grant to develop her Rwanda play Sweet Mercy. Melody also writes the comic book OMNI (Vol. 2: Issues #5 10). Her next project is a soon to be announced feature for Netflix.
Deborah Esquenazi
Deborah Esquenazi is a two-time Emmy-nominated, Peabody-winning director, screenwriter, and investigative reporter. Her debut documentary, Southwest of Salem, helped exonerate the San Antonio Four from their wrongful convictions. She was a 2020 Sundance Institute Momentum Fellow for her feature, A Killing on Park, a thriller also based on Esquenazi's original investigative work. She is the creator of the podcast, A Feminist History of Crime, now in development.
Cris Gris
Cris Gris is a Mexican filmmaker whose films have screened internationally in prestigious festivals, including La Semaine de la Critique, Festival de Cannes. She's known for moving between acting, writing, and directing, and landed her first leading role in the feature independent drama Fish Bones (2018). Her short San Miguel (2018) received the Spike Lee Film Production Fund, the HFPA Fellows Fund, and was named a 2019 NBR student grant winner. Her short Pia & Mike (2019) premiered at Morelia International Film Festival. Gris is a Film Independent Project Involve 2020 fellow, a 2021 Sundance Institute Screenwriters and Directors Lab Fellow. Forward will be her feature directorial debut.
Meryam Joobeur
Meryam Joobeur is an Academy Award nominated Tunisian director, based in Montr al, Canada. Her work includes both documentary and fiction. Her short films Gods, Weeds and Revolutions (2012) and Born in the Maelstrom (2017), starring Sasha Lane, screened internationally. Her academy nominated Short Brotherhood (2018) screened at 150+ festivals and wo
