Sony Pixel Power calrec Sony

2021 screenwriters lab fellows

22/01/2021

PARK CITY, UTAH - Fifteen emerging storytellers from Chile, India, Kenya, Tunisia and the U.S. will convene digitally for Sundance Institute's January Screenwriters Lab, taking place online via Sundance Co//ab from January 11 -15, 2021. The Fellows will work to further develop twelve original projects, in collaboration with an experienced group of Creative Advisors. Under the leadership of Michelle Satter (Founding Director, Sundance Institute's Feature Film Program) and Ilyse McKimmie (the Program's Deputy Director), the Creative Advisors include: Scott Frank (Artistic Director), Ritesh Batra, Andrea Berloff, Rodrigo Garcia, Amanda Idoko, Tarell Alvin McCraney, Doug McGrath, Walter Mosley, Jessie Nelson, Nicole Perlman, Howard Rodman, Elena Soarez, Dana Stevens, Robin Swicord, Joan Tewkesbury, Bill Wheeler, and Tyger Williams.

At this time of unprecedented change, we're so fortunate to virtually gather this inclusive group of bold and vibrant filmmakers and Advisors for a week of story meetings, craft workshops, and life-long creative relationships that have long been a hallmark of our Labs, said Satter. We strongly believe that storytellers have the power to reimagine and rewrite the future, and we're excited to launch this next generation of filmmakers with a year-round support system beginning with the January Lab.

For over 35 years, the FFP Labs have supported and championed an exciting and ground-breaking array of independent filmmakers including Radha Blank (The 40-Year-Old Version), Lulu Wang (The Farewell), Chloe Zhao (Songs My Brother Taught Me), Eliza Hittman (Beach Rats), Marielle Heller (Diary of a Teenage Girl), Fernando Frias de la Parra (Im No Longer Here), Cary Fukunaga (Sin Nombre), Damien Chazelle (Whiplash), Edson Oda (Nine Days), Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Station), Dee Rees (Pariah), Nia DaCosta (Little Woods), Ritesh Batra (The Lunchbox) and Benh Zeitlin and Lucy Alibar (Beasts of the Southern Wild), among many others.

The projects and fellows selected for the 2021 January Screenwriters Lab are:

Black Comic-Con (U.S.A.)

Natasha Rothwell (writer/director)

Two cosplaying Blerds, Kindsey and Allen, have an epic meet-cute at Comic-Con but are separated before they learn each other's true identity. When they unknowingly meet again in real life, Kindsey must reconnect to the courage and confidence that masked-anonymity provided her in order to see what (and who) is right in front of her face.

Natasha Rothwell is a series regular and producer on Issa Raes Peabody Award-winning HBO series Insecure, for which she was nominated for a 2019 NAACP Image Award. Before that, she wrote for Saturday Night Live and went on to write and star in the original sketch series Netflix Presents: The Characters. She can also be seen in the groundbreaking hit film Love, Simon as well as Sonic The Hedgehog and Wonder Woman 1984. Rothwell is currently developing two original series for HBO which she will executive produce, in addition to writing and starring in one of them. Concurrently, she is writing the coming-of-age feature We Were There, Too with Gloria Calder n-Kellett for HBO Max, and will star in Malltown, an animated series she is executive producing alongside Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer. Rothwell has voiced characters on Ducktales, Bojack Horseman, Tuca & Bertie, American Dad, Bobs Burgers, The Simpsons, and the new Nickelodeon series Baby Shark. Recipient of the 2021 Sundance Institute | Comedy Central Comedy Fellowship.

The Catch (Ghol) (India)

Rishi Chandna (writer/director)

An impoverished Muslim fisherman becomes a millionaire overnight after catching a shoal of the rare and prized Ghol fish in the polluted, nearly barren waters off the west coast of India. The newfound wealth offers him a chance to buy a bigger boat and rebuild his life, but a renewed wave of anti-Muslim sentiment threatens his plans and forces him to confront past traumas.

Rishi Chandna is a self-taught filmmaker based in Mumbai. As a writer-director-producer, he has created content that ranges from digital commercials to audio-video installations, which have shown at the MoMA, Venice Biennale of Architecture, and the MAK Museum Vienna. His debut short film, Tungrus (2018), traveled to more than 150 international festivals (including Hot Docs, BFI London Film Festival, and IDFA,) won 28 awards, and became an Oscar-qualifying documentary after winning the 2019 Slamdance Film Festival. Tungrus was released online on the NYT Op-Docs platform as well as on The Criterion Channel. Chandna's upcoming short film Party Poster is a hybrid satire about a community of laundrymen wanting to celebrate a religious festival in the face of a pandemic.

Chariot (U.S.A.)

Alyssa Loh (writer)

1958. In a purported attempt to redeem nuclear weapons, the American government embarks on a plan to blast a new harbor into the Alaskan coastline using five thermonuclear bombs - one of them 10 times the size of the weapon dropped on Hiroshima. A Native village next to ground zero must join forces with a young American scientist to face down the government and save their home from destruction. Inspired by true events.

Alyssa Loh is a writer and filmmaker whose essays on technology, surveillance, and visual culture have appeared in Artforum, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and The American Reader, where she served as deputy editor. She sits on the Editorial Board of the history journal Lapham's Quarterly and has held creative residencies at dispersed holdings (NYC) and Mildred's Lane (Beach Lake, PA). She co-created the ensemble film Twelve Theses on Attention for the 2020 Glasgow International. Loh is a joint MBA/MFA (filmmaking) candidate at NYU. She holds a BA from Princeton in literature and creative writing, where she won the Ward Mathis Prize for best short story, and was se
LINK: http://www.sundance.org/blogs/news/2021-screenwriters-lab-fellows...
See more stories from sundance

Most recent headlines

05/01/2027

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be demoed at CES 2026

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...

06/09/2026

Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA World Cup 2026 in Germany with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos

June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...

04/08/2026

Dalet Announces Commercial Availability of Dalia, Bringing Media-Aware Agentic AI to Enterprise Productions

Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...

04/07/2026

Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in Dolby Cinemas Across Japan, Presented in Dolby Atmos and Dolby ...

April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...

16/06/2026

Thomson launches new learning App

Thomson's highly regarded expert-led online learning courses are now easier to access on the go via our new App. Available now on Google Play Store, the J...

16/06/2026

Neumann MT 48 Receives Major Firmware 2.0 Update

Neumann.Berlin has released firmware version 2.0 for the MT 48 audio interface, adding plugin compatibility, expanded Dante networking options, broadcast encode...

16/06/2026

TVNewsCheck Opens Nominations for 2027 Women in Technology Awards

TVNewsCheck has announced that nominations are now open for its 2027 Women in Technology Awards, to be presented at NAB Show 2027 on Tuesday, April 6 in the Med...

16/06/2026

Clear-Com Introduces Avalon IP Intercom Platform

Clear-Com has announced Avalon, a 1RU IP intercom platform for broadcast, live events, and production environments. Designed for IP-only workflows, Avalon suppo...

16/06/2026

SNS EVO Enables Remote and Distributed Video Editing Workflows

SNS has published a guide to remote video editing workflows using its EVO shared storage platform and companion tools, covering use cases ranging from home edit...

16/06/2026

Richmond Flying Squirrels Deploy Grass Valley LDX 110 Cameras at CarMax Park

Grass Valley has announced that the Richmond Flying Squirrels, a Minor League Baseball affiliate of the San Francisco Giants, have deployed five Grass Valley LD...

16/06/2026

AIMS Launches Free Official IPMX Training Series Online

The Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS) has announced the launch of the Official IPMX Training Series, a free online program covering the design, configurati...

16/06/2026

Swerve Womens Sports Announces Distribution Deals with Fubo, Plex, Amazon Fire TV, and Anoki AI

Swerve TV has announced distribution agreements with Fubo, Plex, Amazon Fire TV,...

16/06/2026

ATP and TikTok Expand Global Content Partnership

ATP and TikTok have announced an expansion of their global content partnership, extending the ATP's TikTok hub powered by TikTok GamePlan to cover all nine ...

16/06/2026

FOX Sports Turns Los Angeles Pico Lot Into Its FIFA World Cup Production Nerve Center

Network's LA facility serves as the heart of a sprawling operation built to ...

16/06/2026

300+ Records a Day, 150 TB Daily, and a Relentless Content Avalanche: Inside FOX Sports' World Cup Media Engine

At Pico, the network's media-management team is supporting a flood of HBS fe...

16/06/2026

NHL Games Leaving CBC in Canada as Sublicense With Rogers Sportsnet Ends

The NHL will no longer air on CBC after the pulic broadcasters and national rights-holder Rogers Sportsnet were unable to come to agreement. After a successfu...

16/06/2026

SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Virtual Eye's Ben Taylor on Making Live Sports More Valuable and Entertaining Through Data-Driven Graphics

As live sports broadcasters continue to seek new ways to make complex action mor...

16/06/2026

Thats BRISK, Baby! FOX Sports' Broadcast Remote IP Studio Kits Bring World Cup Fan Energy Back to Pico

Built with the 2026 FIFA World Cup in mind, these small but mighty IP-based tran...

16/06/2026

Rumble three-band soft synth by UVI

Boasts individual synths for each band UVI's latest synth takes an interesting approach to synthesis, offering a trio of synth engines that each operate...

16/06/2026

PSP Levelizer: auto level adjustment plug-in from PSPaudioware

New intelligent auto-fader plug-in unveiled PSPaudioware's latest release offers automatic level adjustment and provides more detailed control than many...

16/06/2026

The Crow Hill Company launch Crystal Pads

New performance-focused library announced Crystal Pads is the latest addition to The Crow Hill Company's ever-growing product range, and according to th...

16/06/2026

GForce launch official Prophet-5 soft synth

Developed in partnership with Sequential In recent years, GForce Software have branched into official emulations of classic hardware synths, delivering a ha...

16/06/2026

DT 30 IE: New in-ears from beyerdynamic

Designed specifically for live performance monitoring beyerdynamic's latest announcement sees the company introduce an affordable in-ear monitoring syst...

16/06/2026

Cherry Audio recreate the Ensoniq ESQ-1

Official emulation celebrates iconic synth's 40th anniversary Cherry Audio have just introduced Ensoniq ESQ-1, an official recreation of the 1986 polyph...

16/06/2026

Australians place growing trust in SBS News

Australians place growing trust in SBS News 16 June, 2026 Media releases SBS has been recognised as one of Australia's most trusted news providers, ran...

16/06/2026

Rohde & Schwarz achieves highest number of GCF validated 3GPP NR NTN test cases for RF, RRM and PCT domains

Rohde & Schwarz achieves highest number of GCF validated 3GPP NR NTN test cases ...

16/06/2026

Hitachi and PESA Announce Strategic Partnership to Drive Growth in Poland's Rail Market

Bydgoszcz to Become a Local Centre of Excellence for Advanced Rail Technologies....

16/06/2026

Chyron Unveils Chyron Weather 2.4

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

16/06/2026

Historic Zhuque-3 Reusable Rocket Test Mission Captured with URSA Cine Immersive

Historic Zhuque-3 Reusable Rocket Test Mission Captured with URSA Cine Immersive Brie Clayton June 16, 2026 0 Comments Apple Immersive Video puts view...

16/06/2026

SMPTE Plans ST 2110 Education Summer Programs

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

16/06/2026

Rise Awards Returns for 2026 to Celebrate Excellence in B...

Rise WIB, the award-winning advocacy group championing gender diversity and career progression across the broadcast and media technology industry, today announc...

16/06/2026

Limecraft Expands its Media Production Platform with Team...

Limecraft today announced the availability of Limecraft 2026.4, the fourth of eight planned platform releases this year. The update introduces Team-Based Access...

16/06/2026

Perry Sook: Big Tech Poses 'Very Urgent Threat to Broadcast Stations

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

16/06/2026

FIFA World Cup Delivers Record Ratings on Fox

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

16/06/2026

AIMS Launches the Official IPMX Training Series Online

Free Program Supports IPMX Education from Foundational Concepts Through System and Network Design The Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS) today announced t...

16/06/2026

Share your views on Screen Australia and the future of the industry

Share your views on Screen Australia and the future of the industry 15 June 2026 Your feedback matters. Following the instrumental insights provided in 2025,...

16/06/2026

Techtel Supports T-Motion RCCP-2A Controller Upgrade for Major Australian Broadcaster

Techtel Supports T-Motion RCCP-2A Controller Upgrade for Major Australian Broadc...

16/06/2026

Record audiences tune in for opening weekend of ICC Womens T20 World Cup 2026 on Sky Sports

Tuesday 16 June 2026 Record audiences tune in for opening weekend of ICC Women&...

16/06/2026

Fastest, Largest, Strongest: NVIDIA Blackwell Sweeps MLPerf Training 6.0

Every breakthrough AI model starts the same way: with a training run. The infrastructure running those training jobs shapes everything: how fast teams can itera...

15/06/2026

University of South Carolina's Valerie Gerfin on Gamecock Productions' Growth, Upgrades at Williams-Brice Stadium

One of the more exciting internal video production divisions within a college at...

15/06/2026

Fox Corp. To Acquire Roku, Pairs Live Sports Powerhouse With Major CTV Platform

The deal valued at $22 Billion is expected to close in the first half of 2027...

15/06/2026

Golf Channel Mobile to Live Stream 2026 Arnold Palmer Cup Beginning July 13th

Golf Channel and the Arnold Palmer Cup have announced a partnership to livestream the 2026 Arnold Palmer Cup on Golf Channel Mobile and GolfChannel.com. The tou...

15/06/2026

TikTok and Panini Launch Digital Collectible Card Experience for FIFA World Cup 2026

TikTok and Panini have announced a partnership to bring a digital collectible ca...

15/06/2026

Cosm and Monster Energy Launch First Full-Dome Immersive Advertisement in Shared Reality Venues

Cosm and Monster Energy have announced the debut of the first full-dome immersiv...

15/06/2026

Fox Nation and Real American Freestyle Sign International Media Rights Deal

Real American Freestyle (RAF) and Fox Nation have announced an exclusive streaming agreement for three RAF international events, beginning with RAF Georgia on J...

15/06/2026

FanConnect and Extreme Networks Announce IPTV Integration for Large Venue Deployments

FanConnect has announced a partnership with Extreme Networks integrating FanConn...

15/06/2026

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 Institut...

15/06/2026

Rumble from UVI

Innovative three-band soft synth introduced UVI's latest synth takes an interesting approach to synthesis, offering a trio of synth engines that each op...

15/06/2026

Oram Awards 2026: Open call announcement

Applications now open for 2026 The Oram Awards have returned for 2026 to celebrate the unusual, unique and unfiltered creative worlds of women and gender-di...