Points North Institute Announces 2024 Artist Fellowship Recipients Ahead Of Camden International Film Festival

EXCLUSIVE: A diverse group of documentary filmmakers and major industry professionals will converge on the Maine coast next month for the 20^th Camden International Film Festival (CIFF), one of the most eagerly anticipated events of the year for the nonfiction film community.

The Points North Institute, which produces the festival, today announced an unprecedented number of filmmakers and projects have been selected to take part in this year’s Artist Programs, which run in tandem with CIFF. The institute also unveiled its Points North Forum program, which features artist talks and field-building conversations during the festival. Scroll for complete information.

“Eight years after CIFF launched the Points North Institute to provide more robust, year-round support to documentary filmmakers, the organization is supporting more projects-in-development and filmmaking teams than ever across 6 different fellowship programs and multiple partnerships with mission-aligned nonprofits,” the institute said in a release. “Each program is designed to connect filmmakers with mentors, funders, and potential collaborators, using the 20th annual Camden International Film Festival as a platform to build a community of support, while nurturing the careers of emerging and established nonfiction storytellers as they develop their unique artistic voices.”

In the week leading up to CIFF, selected filmmaker fellows will participate in “mentor-led workshops and feedback screenings, which culminate in a series of 400+ industry meetings taking place both in person and online.” The institute noted that collectively, the artist programs will support 48 independent film projects in development that originate from 28 countries.

Sean Flynn, program director and co-founder of the Points North Institute, said in a statement, “It is an incredible honor to create a vibrant space that supports artistic freedom and innovation for filmmakers from around the world, who are taking risks to share stories and reflect realities too-often ignored or misrepresented by mainstream media.”

Flynn added, “In these polarized times, their work has the power to expand our worldviews, challenge dominant narratives, and connect us in new ways across cultures, identities, and ideologies.”

Major support for this year’s CIFF and Artist Programs is provided by YETI, National Geographic Documentary Films, RandomGood Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, The deNovo Initiative, Kanopy, Luminate, LEF Foundation, Netflix, ESPN Films, Perspective Fund, and Media Courthouse Documentary Collective.

This year’s Camden International Film Festival takes place in person from Sept. 12-15 at venues in Camden and Rockland, Maine; the festival runs online from Sept. 16-30. The festival program was announced last week, a slate that includes The Last Republican, Soundtrack to a Coup D’Etat, Union, Blink, Driver, Mistress Dispeller, and Apocalypse in the Tropics.

Alums of the Points North Fellowship programs are behind several of the documentaries in this year’s CIFF lineup, including Jazmin Jones, director of Seeking Mavis Beacon, and Arun Bhattarai and Dorottya Zurbó, directors of Agent of Happiness. The full CIFF slate can be found here.

Below are full details on the Artist Programs and the Points North Forum.

2024 Points North Institute Artist Programs

Points North Fellowship

The Points North Fellowship supports six filmmaking teams as they develop their pitches and publicly present their documentary features in progress to a panel of funders and distributors at CIFF’s popular Points North Pitch, which will be moderated again by Elise McCave. Confirmed pitch panelists include Opal H. Bennett (POV), Megan Gelstein (Catapult Film Fund), Keisha Knight (IDA), Kelsey Koenig (Impact Partners), Rebecca Lichtenfeld (InMaat Foundation), Monika Navarro (Firelight Media), Elaisha Stokes (Chicken & Egg Pictures), and Noland Walker (ITVS). The program’s mentors include Assia Boundaoui, Kristin Feeley, and Tereza Simikova. The program is made possible by sponsorship from The deNovo Initiative.

The 2024 Points North Fellows are:

BURNING DADDY

Directed by Tana Gilbert
Produced by Paola Castillo
Camila and her family reconstruct their father’s image through old photographs and legal archives, navigating memories of his troubled past marked by violence and love.

FENCED

Directed by Gabriella García-Pardo
Produced by Jonna McKone & Gabriella Garcia-Pardo
Fenced is a lovingly subversive look at how land ownership shapes how we live, where we live, and the structures we live by.

GREEN IS THE FIRE’S TINT

Directed and Produced by Cristina Hanes, Isabella Rinaldi, & Arya Rothe

Somi (37), an indigenous woman, faces eviction from her land due to the opening of an iron mine. Somi was an armed Naxalite rebel; now, she’s determined to lead her community in fighting against displacement and deforestation—this time without her rifle.

HOUSE NO. 7

Directed by Rama Abdi
Produced by Hazar Yazji
After escaping their abusive family homes and their conservative societies, three women rent rooms in an old Damascene house. They manage to create a safe space isolated from the madness of the post-war era, but soon the girls start facing many threats, and protecting their fragile space becomes a challenge.

VESTIBULE

Directed by Riley Hooper
Produced by Caitlin Mae Burke & Bryn Silverman
Vestibule chronicles filmmaker Riley Hooper’s decade-long journey to diagnose, treat, and heal from Vestibulodynia—a vulvar disorder that made intercourse painful. What begins as a singular mission to have pain-free sex becomes a multi-generational story about sexual health, pleasure and agency.

WITH TIME

Directed by Noah Schamus & Brit Fryer
Produced by Jesse Miller
Blending realism with fantasy, With Time follows a group of trans elders through a theater and oral history workshop as they search for meaning in their memories and build a living archive of trans life for gender-expansive people questioning the possibilities of growing older.

LEF/CIFF Fellowship

Points North’s long-standing commitment to supporting regional filmmakers is evident in the LEF/CIFF Fellowship, a program developed in partnership with the LEF Foundation that offers five New England-based filmmakers with feature documentaries in production or post-production the opportunities to attend CIFF for project development workshops and industry meetings. LEF is the Founding Sponsor of the Points North Forum, the industry program that laid the foundations for the organization’s expansion from a four-day film festival into a year-round media arts institute. The cohort will be mentored by filmmaker Cecilia Aldarondo.

The 2024 LEF/CIFF Fellows are:

COSMIC MOOSE AND GRIZZLY BEARS VILLE

Directed and Produced by Amber Bemak

Peter Valentine, living on disability in an apartment, fought MIT while they demolished his neighborhood to develop University Park, claiming he couldn’t leave because it was his electromagnetic laboratory. Eventually, MIT gifted him the entire building, moving it to another street. Peter was diagnosed schizophrenic and unmedicated all his life.

EJ LEE: ALL AMERICAN

Directed by Jason Rhee
Produced by Jason Rhee & Zoe Sua Cho
EJ Lee, a Louisiana legend nicknamed the “Korean Magic Johnson of NCAA women’s basketball,” has been overlooked her entire career. But finally, at the age of 60, EJ receives her first opportunity to become a college head coach and lead an underdog team of young women in west Texas.

LUCID DECAPITATION

Directed by Karthik Pandian
Produced by Nell Augustin
Lucid Decapitation imagines the afterlife of colonialism through the fall of a monument.

NOMADS

Directed by Vanessa Carr & Josh Gleason
Produced by Vanessa Carr, Josh Gleason, & Xan Parker
Two women—one on the cusp of adulthood, one entering her golden years—try to escape the affordability crisis by embracing a low-cost life as American nomads.

TEN SECONDS OF SUGAR

Directed by Martine Granby
Produced by Arielle Knight
Ten Seconds of Sugar is a personal essay documentary exploring filmmaker Martine Granby’s family history of caretaking, motherhood, and silence surrounding Black women’s mental health.

North Star Fellowship

Co-presented this year BlackStar Projects, the North Star Fellowship, now in its 8th year, supports four innovative media artists and filmmakers of color who are developing projects that span the latitudes of creative nonfiction. The program creates space for mentorship, critical dialogue, and industry access, enabling a deeper connection with the documentary film community and new strategies for bridging different modes of documentary art. The cohort will be mentored by award-winning artist Jessica Beshir, filmmaker Nicolás Pereda, creative executive Alex Hannibal and CIFF programmer Zaina Bseiso.

The 2024 North Star Fellows are:

MISSISSIPPI MUD IN SPRING

Directed and Produced by Imani Dennison
Mississippi Mud in Spring is a multimedia project encompassing film, sound, installation, and photography. Central to this project is the exploration of Black interiority—delving into the layers of personal and collective memories, emotions and spiritual connections between ourselves and the history.

NON-ALIEN

Directed by Rea Tajiri
Produced by Angela Park & C. Ree
Non-Alien: a hybrid documentary and speculative biography of Nikkei journalist and photographer Vince Tajiri, best known as the founding photo editor of Playboy.

OLD GROWTH

Directed by Lokotah Sanborn

A man’s lingering questions from childhood hold deeper implications about the history of colonialism within the state of Maine.

THE INSTRUMENT

Directed by Zac Manuel
Produced by Darcy McKinnon
An aging jazz singer uses artificial intelligence to resurrect the voice of his late father, a mesmerizing vocalist he regrets never recording.

4th World Media Lab

Developed in partnership with Nia Tero and Big Sky Film Institute, the 4th World Media Lab provides Indigenous creators a progressive immersion into independent filmmaking from storytelling basics and pitching, to presentation and marketing, to distribution and industry networking. The program begins at Big Sky Documentary Festival, continues at Seattle International Film Festival, and concludes with a weeklong creative retreat at Camden International Film Festival. The cohort will be mentored by filmmaker Tracy Rector, post-producer Stina Hamlin and filmmaker Lisa Jackson.

The 2024 4th World Media Lab Fellows are:

Victoria Cheyenne (Project: How to Be a Daughter) Keisha Erwin (Project: Black and Native on the Prairies) Cass Gardiner (Project: Fry Bread Power)
Nicolle L. Gonzales (Project: Native Sisters)
Bruce Thomas Miller (Project: Land Warriors)
Sisa Quispe (Project: Yakumama)

Victoria Cheyenne (she/her/ella) is an Indigenous Bolivian-American (Aymara/Tsétsêhéstâhese) documentary filmmaker based in Bozeman, Montana. As a storyteller, Cheyenne navigates intimate familial storylines with a deep passion for themes centered on matriarchal lineage and cultural heritage. Her activism focuses on land sovereignty and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples. Her documentary short film, Learning I’m Home, was a Kendeda Fund grant recipient and premiered at the 2023

Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, winning the bronze award in the Indigenous Documentary Film competition, judged by Lily Gladstone. Cheyenne is a 2022/2023 NeXt Doc Fellow and a member of the Chicana Directors Initiative. She has previously worked producing and directing for digital original productions at Paramount. She’s currently in development for her debut feature documentary How to Be a Daughter, which follows her mother’s journey to her birthplace in Bolivia to reconnect with the family who spent the last 50 years searching for her.

Keisha Erwin is a 2S nīhithaw (Woodland Cree) emerging artist, academic, and a citizen of the Lac La Ronge Indian Band in Saskatchewan. Keisha holds a B.A. Honors in Indigenous Studies and is undertaking their Master’s of Educational Foundations at the University of Saskatchewan with a research focus on community-led Indigenous language revitalization. They are a second language learner of nihithawiwin (Woodland Cree-TH dialect) and has released a Cree kids’ book that they illustrated themselves and translated with help from their Cree mentor Christine McKenzie. With mentorship from 2S filmmakers Fallon Simard and TJ Cuthand, Keisha was able to produce their first film in 2019. Keisha’s film pî-kiwîk (2023), created through the NSI Indigidocs program, premiered at ImagineNative and has and will be screened internationally. Keisha’s dreams are to get into filmmaking and animation, through which to tell stories in their Indigenous language (Cree), to inspire and encourage youth to learn Cree. Keisha is the founder of nihithaw oskatisak (Cree youth), a grassroots initiative in their community, and has received grants from WeMatter Org, United Church Healing Fund, Indigenous Youth Roots, and the Indigenous Resiliency Fund to organize initiatives around art as healing for youth and language revitalization.

Cass Gardiner is an Anishinaabe Algonquin filmmaker, curator, and writer from Kebaowek First Nation. She directed the short film Janelle Niles: Inconvenient, which premiered at Hot Docs in 2023 and is streaming on CBC Gem and Crave in Canada. She produced the short documentary Jewels Hunt, which was supported by ITVS and TFI, and broadcast on Independent Lens in 2020. Her documentary film The Edible Indian has met critical acclaim in classrooms and theaters internationally and was nominated for Best Documentary Short at the American Indian Film Festival. Her writing on Indigenous art, film, and food has been published in Inuit Art Quarterly, Cherry Bombe, and Compound Butter Magazine, and her work was accepted to the Oxford Food Symposium in 2023. Cass has held a variety of positions within documentary film institutions, namely the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) and the Tribeca Film Institute (TFI), where she worked in film education and supported the IF/Then Shorts program. She is an independent contractor and film curator for the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in New York City, curating the annual Native Cinema Showcase in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She holds a BA from New York University Gallatin and an MFA in Documentary Film from Toronto Metropolitan University.

Nicolle L. Gonzales (Arthun) is a Dine’ Nurse-Midwife from the Navajo Nation who has over 12 years of Nurse-Midwifery experience practicing in rural hospitals and community birth settings in New Mexico. She founded the Changing Woman Initiative in 2015 with the mission to empower our diverse Indigenous communities to protect cultural birth resiliency and the fundamental human right to reproductive health, dignity, and justice. Nicolle is the producer of Native Sisters, a series about Diné siblings Nicolle and Kansas, who embark on a journey to reclaim the narrative of Native and Indigenous women. Throughout their venture, they shatter antiquated myths and create a community of Indigenous trailblazers. Their ultimate aim is to build a sisterhood of Indigenous trailblazing women who will garner support for Native women in leadership spaces like the United Nations and the U.S. Congress.

Bruce Thomas Miller is a multi-disciplinary artist. He writes, directs, and produces various film and television projects. He is Anishinaabe, raised off reserve in various Northern Ontario communities, but now is based out of Mohkintstis (also known as Calgary.) He strives to produce compelling stories that will highlight Indigenous stories.

Sisa Quispe is a Quechua Aymara award-winning director, writer, producer, speaker, and host in New York City. As an Indigenous woman, her work largely seeks to inspire the preservation of native ways while sharing a decolonizing message. Quispe wrote, produced and directed Urpi: Her Last Wish, a film exploring the complexity of the Indigenous identity, which won The Gotham’s 5th Annual Student Short Film Showcase. She is finalizing Kusi Smiles, a short film about finding a path of healing in the Andes, as part of the Latino Film Institute Inclusion Fellowship sponsored by Netflix. Her TEDx talk, “Re-thinking Who We Are Through a Decolonizing Lens,” shares her decolonization journey. She also produced Vive el Quechua (Living Quechua), an episodic YouTube series sharing her Indigenous language and culture. Sisa hopes to bring more representation of Indigenous women’s perspectives to the screen and to continue cultivating a path for Indigenous youth.

Pretty Wild Fellowship

Presented by YETI, and developed in partnership with Little Monster Films, the Pretty Wild Fellowship at Points North provides financial and creative support for four cinematic, character-driven short documentary films that shine a light on the beauty, grandeur, and vulnerability of the outdoors and the people and stories that live there. The cohort will be mentored by filmmakers Kristi Jacobsen and Bing Liu, editor Rebecca Adorno-Dávila and Anna Barnes, president at Little Monster Films.

The 2024 Pretty Wild Fellows are:

BABY HIGHLANDER

Directed and Produced by Mike Day

The rare, magnificent Highland cows of the purple heather covered hills in the north of Scotland continue their reign of the glens thanks to humans who tend them. Our story follows Isla, an 8-year-old girl from the Highlands of Scotland as she takes her calf to a Highland show to try and win a prize, but the herd’s future hangs in the balance.

RARE BIRD

Directed and Produced by Juliana Schatz Preston

Eliana Rodriguez proves she is one-of-a-kind as she trains to become the first woman to skydive from the stratosphere.

RIVER

Directed by Emily Cohen Ibañez
Produced by Sara Dosa & Cesar Rodriguez
From combat to competition, a woman from the Colombian Amazon jungle seeks glory on the world stage of river rafting. She aims to save her community’s ecological reserve through sport when limited resources challenge her team’s ability to compete.

THE ARCTIC WOMEN

Directed by Tasha Van Zandt
Produced by Lily Kaplan
The Arctic Women follows the extraordinary story of polar explorers and citizen scientists Sunniva Sorby and Hilde Fålun Strøm,as they leave everything behind to embark on a groundbreaking journey to become the first women in history to overwinter without men in the Arctic’s remote Svalbard archipelago.

Diane Weyermann Fellowship

The Diane Weyermann Fellowship at Points North champions filmmaking teams producing cinematic feature documentaries that take artistic risks in highlighting stories of moral and ethical urgency. Mirroring Diane’s generosity and commitment to bold, visionary storytelling, this program aims to empower a new generation of creative documentary directors and producers, building a robust community of support that will help them create significant works of art that connect with audiences across the world. The program was established in partnership with the Skoll Foundation and Participant. The cohort will be mentored by editor Andrea Chignoli, editor Mary Lampson, and producer Andrea Meditch.

The 2023-2024 Diane Weyermann Fellows are:

THE LAST NOMADS

Directed and produced by Biljana Tutorov, co-directed by Petar Glomazić, and co-produced by Quentin Laurent
In the pristine mountains of Montenegro, a mother and daughter defend their land from militarization. A gripping family and environmental drama unfolds, as the story of violence against women and nature echoes violence against nature.

THE PRODUCTION OF THE WORLD

Directed by Brett Story Produced by Jeff Reichert

The Production of the World is an all-archival documentary about the radical critic John Berger, the CIA’s infiltration of the arts during “cultural Cold War,” and the ways images operate as a battleground for politics.

UNTITLED

Directed and Produced by Shirley Abraham & Amit Madheshiya

Undisclosed project.

2024 Points North Forum program

Co-presented by ESPN Films

Points North Campus Case Study: SEEKING MAVIS BEACON

Co-presented by Kanopy

The beauty of creative documentary lies in its ability to pave new roads, imagine new languages, and forge unique relationships between subject matter and form. A filmmaker’s voice sculpts an aesthetic that reflects their personal worldview, backgrounds and approach to cinema. However, this uncharted terrain can often feel intimidating to first-time filmmakers. Director Jazmin Jones has ventured both near and far in SEEKING MAVIS BEACON, not only in their creative decisions but also in their production process. In collaboration with theatrical distributor NEON, they’ve found ways to think outside the box, making this singular film on their own terms, and blazing a new trail for cinematic nonfiction. There is much to learn from this rule-breaking dream team.

Nonfiction in the Age of Generative AI

Co-presented by Luminate
In partnership with Archival Producers Alliance, WITNESS & MIT Co-Creation Studio
In this two-part conversation, we’ll take a deep dive into the world of generative AI and its impacts on the production and circulation of documentary film and other forms of nonfiction media. For much of its history, documentary film’s significance has rested on its allegiance to truth and the integrity and authenticity of its recorded images and sounds. How does that relationship shift in a world of AI models that can create synthetic media and manipulate primary sources with increasing speed and sophistication? How can filmmakers and artists use these creative tools responsibly and transparently? What are the legal repercussions of using generative AI tools that are built from creative output of millions of others? For journalists and activists, what does it mean to use the tools of nonfiction media to “bear witness” when trust in images as a factual record is called into question? And how might we tell stories about AI that shift narratives around emerging technology and help us better grapple with its impacts on society and democracy?

The session will open with the launch of the Archival Producers Alliance’s “Best Practices for Use of Generative AI in Documentaries”

The conversation will continue with Kat Cizek from MIT Co-Creation Studio and shirin anlen from WITNESS, who will explore ethics and standards, labor issues and creativity in the context of documentary and human rights.

Cinematic Encounters with the (IM)material

From space exploration to rock formations, this panel reflects on the material and immaterial by drawing connections between kidney stones, volcanoes, energies, stars, and space conquests. The featured filmmakers employ innovative cinematic languages, deconstruct archives, and flirt with humor to engage with both Western and Indigenous knowledge systems as well as the entanglements of culture, ecology, and history. CIFF directors Lisa Jackson (WILFRED BUCK), Sofie Benoot (APPLE CIDER VINEGAR), and Andrés Jurado (WELCOME INTERPLANETARY AND SIDEREAL SPACE CONQUERORS) lead us on a journey across time and space to explore what it means to cinematically observe and encounter the world through colonial resonances, ancestral knowledge, and the relationship between land and body.

Questions of Care: The Documentary Core App and the Art of Consent

In partnership with DAWG, IDA and Sundance Institute

This two-part conversation will kick off with representatives from DAWG and IDA introducing the newly revised Non-Fiction Core Application, which includes, among other things, updated questions about care, consent and collaboration. After a preview of the changes that filmmakers can expect in upcoming grant and fellowship applications, they’ll host an open dialogue between industry professionals and filmmakers around questions of accountability, safety, positionality and the process of evaluation.

In part 2, we’ll jump out of the application and into the lived experiences of CIFF filmmakers who have navigated complex issues of consent, care, and accountability in their work. This is a unique opportunity to explore both the theory and practice of documentary filmmaking’s thorniest ethical questions and their impacts on funding and the creative process.

Collaborative Filmmaking, Collective Action

How are films made when creativity is a shared endeavor? How are decisions navigated, and control balanced among collaborators? This panel explores the potential of collective filmmaking models as they counter cinematic ableism and engage in politics with nuance, care, and humor. The creative possibilities and unique storytelling methods of this mode of production are brilliantly showcased by filmmakers: Benjamin Brown, Steven Eastwood & Sam Ahern (THE STIMMING POOL), Felipe Morgado (OASIS), and Michael Toledano (YINTAH).

Shorts In-Session

Co-presented by American Documentary, Chicken & Egg Pictures, and UFO

Four filmmakers were selected to the new UFO, Chicken & Egg Pictures and American Documentary work-in-progress initiative, “Shorts In-Session,” which presents short documentaries in production and post-production to a panel of industry experts. The filmmakers presenting in this session are: Bree Nieves Robert, Elana Meyers, Katie Heiserman and Paloma Martinez.

Redefining Sports Storytelling

In today’s media landscape, ESPN Films’ 30 for 30 series remains a director-driven platform that prioritizes story over access, upholds strict ethical standards, and demonstrates a strong commitment to engaging diverse voices. As narratives at the intersection of culture, race, and sports shift, the methods of storytelling, production, and distribution have also been in constant flux. ESPN has showcased strategies that allow producers to maintain integrity and reach while delivering compelling content in this transformed sports storytelling landscape. This panel reflects on these successes through conversations with producers, focusing on case studies such as BLACK GIRLS PLAY by Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson and the recent short MOTORCYCLE MARY by Haley Watson. They will also be joined by Charles Frank, the remarkable filmmaker of the CIFF short THROUGH THE STORM.

Re:Distribution | A Documentary Town Hall (Part 2)

Co-presented by RandomGood Foundation with additional support from Doc Society

The landscape for distribution of independent documentaries is undergoing seismic changes–in the U.S. and around the world. The early streaming era boom has given way to a slowdown in the marketplace, as big platforms retreat from acquiring independent films and cable companies fold their documentary divisions. Theatrical distributors and arthouse cinemas have likewise struggled to maintain audiences for most independent films through the pandemic. Public media contends with aging audiences and threats to federal funding.

These new fissures in our distribution systems point to the ways things have been broken all along, but they are also reminders of how scarcity and precarity have motivated past generations of filmmakers to imagine and build new models for funding and distributing indie docs.

What new paradigms are being imagined and built today? How can we leverage data and new marketing strategies to help independent filmmakers reach the diverse audiences that would be most deeply moved by their work? How would distribution work differently if it accounted for a film’s social and artistic value as much as its economic value in a noisy marketplace of attention?

We are teaming up again with Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy and our friends at RandomGood Foundation and Doc Society to host the 3rd annual “Documentary Town Hall,” bringing together filmmakers and industry leaders for an honest, solutions-driven dialogue about the future of documentary distribution.