They Made the Cut: Meet the 2025 Documentary Story Lab Fellows
If there’s one thing every documentary director knows all too well, it’s the “big board”. It’s fretted over, it’s tinkered with, it’s argued about. All that fuss over a cork board with story-beat cards!
But when the cards (and scenes) line up in just the right order, you get clarity, emotion and hopefully an unforgettable story.
Luckily, this year’s Film Independent Documentary Story Lab Fellows are up for the challenge. In its second year, the one-week intensive focuses on projects in post-production, where filmmakers can hone story structure and editing, and ends with a final pitch event with industry execs.
“This year’s Documentary Story Lab Fellows are not united by geography or genre, but a fearless and tenacious commitment to telling the truth,” said Daniel Cardone, Senior Manager of Nonfiction Programs & Fiscal Sponsorship at Film Independent. “Whether exploring identity, justice, legacy or the fragility of our environment, these filmmakers aren’t just documenting the world—they’re questioning it and reframing it, helping us see it anew.”
The Fellows will workshop their projects with both Editing and Directing Mentors, with Editing Mentors, including Pablo Proenza (Fahrenheit 11/9), Christy Denes (Seduced: Inside the NXIVM Cult), Sara Newens (Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields), Claire Didier (Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed) and Mikaela Shwer (Allen v. Farrow). Directing Mentors include Smriti Mundhra (Indian Matchmaking), Anayansi Prado (Uvalde Mom), Kirsten Johnson (Dick Johnson Is Dead), Ted Passon (Patrice: The Movie),Alysa Nahmias (Art and Krimes by Krimes) and Tracy Droz Tragos (Plan C).
Additionally, the Cayton-Goldrich Family Foundation Fellowship, an unrestricted $10,000 grant awarded to a Jewish filmmaker accepted into one of our Artist Development Programs, has been awarded to Emily Cohen Ibañez, participating in the program with her film Orquidea.
Without further ado, we’re very proud to announce this year’s fellows and their projects:
Natalie Baszile
Natalie Baszile is the author of the novel, Queen Sugar, which was adapted for seven television seasons by writer/director Ava DuVernay, and co-produced by Oprah Winfrey, and the non-fiction book, We Are Each Other’s Harvest: Celebrating African American Farmers, Land & Legacy which was an Amazon Editor’s Pick and was a Wall Street Journal Book of the Year, 2021. Her non-fiction work has appeared in National Geographic, The Bitter Southerner, O, The Oprah Magazine, and numerous anthologies. Baszile was a SFFILM Resident and received the SFFILM / Bonnie Rattner fellowship at the Djerassi Resident Arts Program. Harvest is her first documentary feature.
Hyacinth Parker
Hyacinth Parker worked as a Creative Strategist for The New York Times before entering production where she worked on FX’s docuseries, Welcome to Wrexham. She has since worked with award-winning directors on series including Netflix’s With Love, Meghan, and ID / Max’s The Fall of Diddy. Hyacinth directs, writes, and produces narrative and documentary films and series, and is passionate about telling stories about unusual people in unexpected places. She has received grants from the Ford Foundation and SF Film Invest, and fellowships from Film Independent, The Redford Center, and Chicken and Egg’s (Egg)Celerator Lab.
Harvest
Logline: The Nelson brothers are determined to be the USA’s biggest farmers, but after two years of poor harvests, the new year brings much opportunity as uncertainty. This season the brothers farm more land than ever, facing the headwinds of climate change, equipment failures, racism and familial tension along the way.
Emily Cohen Ibañez
Colombian-American filmmaker Emily Cohen Ibañez pairs lyricism with social activism, advocating for labor and environmental justice. Her feature documentary, Fruits of Labor, had its World Premiere at SXSW 2021 and broadcast on PBS POV | American Documentary. Her short films are distributed with POV Shorts, The Guardian, The Intercept, and TIME. She was recently awarded the SFFILM Rainin grant for her first fiction screenplay, From Honey To Ashes, and is completing a short film about competitive river rafters in the Colombian Amazon, supported by the Points North Pretty Wild Fellowship.
Orquídea
Logline: From Colombia’s Amazon River Basin to the top of a volcanic mountain, guerilla ex-combatants, Indigenous elders, and biologists safeguard orchids and the forests they inhabit. Just as a wandering filmmaker in search of home seeks them out, a glacier melts and throws nature out of balance.
Bobby Herrera
Bobby Herrera is a South Texas-born Mexican American narrative and documentary filmmaker based in St. Louis City. His recent feature screenplay is supported by the Sundance Institute, SFFILM, and Antigravity Academy. He shot, directed, and edited the feature documentary The Gray Seasons, which premiered in festivals in 2011. His no-budget narrative, Palacios, premiered in festivals in 2017. Both films earned worldwide distribution. In 2024, Herrera was selected as a Berlinale Talent and for participation in the Berlinale Doc Station with his latest documentary feature. He also directs and produces a wide range of commercial and creative content.
The Seven Ages of Olajuwon
Logline: Told on stage and through 16+ years of intimate and powerful footage, a gifted Black performer struggles to exist as he stares down a defining journey towards purpose when met with unreal expectations, risks to his livelihood and injustice when the FBI ensnares him in a deadly terrorist plot.
Julia Hunter
Julia Hunter is a Midwest-based documentary filmmaker whose work resists objectivity and centers, harm reduction and the politics of personal archives. Her film survivorship –This is Me Loving You (post-production) has received support from Big Sky, BAVC, ITVS and Film Independent. Hunter is currently in, a documentary produced by Christina Shaver exploring the surrealist painter Gertrude production on Gertrude Abercrombie’s tumultuous life and explosive posthumous rise. With a background in creative writing, she works across genres and in 2022 lensed the feature comedy Everything Fun You Could Possibly Do in Aledo, Illinois.
This Is Me Loving You
Logline: Sydney, a gregarious heroin user, moves into a Chicago recovery home and befriends Julia, an alcoholic filmmaker. When Sydney gets pregnant and returns to her abusive boyfriend, both women re-enter a world of abuse and addiction where they must choose between protecting those they love and saving themselves.
Nadav Kurtz
Nadav Kurtz is a director whose work has screened at Sundance, True/False, Sheffield, and been featured by The Criterion Channel, PBS’ POV, the New York Times Op-Docs, and Sundance Doc Club. His debut short, Paraíso, about high-rise window washers in Chicago, won Best Documentary Short at Tribeca, AFI-Silverdocs, and others, and was short-listed for an Academy Award. Kurtz was named a 2020 New Face of Independent Film by Filmmaker Magazine and is a CIFF Points North Fellow. His upcoming feature, Untitled Sam Project, follows an immigrant family’s entanglement with filmmaking and the justice system. He previously spent over a decade as a film and commercial editor.
Untitled Sam Project
Logline: When film producer Kaz Bader was sentenced to 24 years in prison, his brother Malik helped raise Kaz’s 8-year-old son Omar. Now, 14 years later, Omar struggles finding his own path. As the family confronts its unspoken past – Omar gains the courage to pursue his artistic dreams.
Daniel Lombroso
Daniel Lombroso is a director and journalist who spent the last nine years building the Oscar-nominated video departments at The New Yorker and The Atlantic. His debut feature, White Noise, based on his reporting inside white nationalist movements, was named one of the top documentaries of 2020 by Vox and The Boston Globe. His short, Nina & Irena, Executive Produced by Errol Morris, won multiple festival awards, while Nina’s full interview was added to the U.S. Holocaust Museum’s Permanent Collection. Lombroso’s work has premiered at Sundance, TIFF, SXSW, and has earned eight Vimeo Staff Picks, two National Magazine Award nominations, an IDA nomination, and a spot on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list.
You’ll Be Happier
Logline: You’ll Be Happier follows a year in the life of Bill Moore, a gay businessman in Dallas striving to make penis enlargement as common as Botox. This darkly funny and deeply empathetic film is a frank exploration of how men are navigating new standards of masculinity and beauty in the age of Trump.
The Documentary Story Lab is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
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