Directors Lab Marks Its 45th Year of Supporting Groundbreaking Independent Filmmakers
PARK CITY, UTAH, April 28, 2025 — The nonprofit Sundance Institute announced today the fellows selected for the 2025 Directors, Screenwriters, and Native Labs. The Native Lab, the signature initiative of Sundance Institute’s Indigenous Program, kicks off in person today through May 3 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Directors Lab, a core component of the Institute’s Feature Film Program, returns for its 45th year from June 1–16 in Estes Park, Colorado. Fellows will then participate in the Screenwriters Lab held online from June 24–27. Sundance Institute’s signature labs offer filmmakers a nurturing, immersive environment to develop their projects and refine their artistic voice under the guidance of accomplished creative advisors.
This year’s Native Lab supports four fellows and two artists-in-residence. The Directors Lab will support the development of eight projects and nine fellows, with two additional fellows joining for the Screenwriters Lab. Marking its 45th year, the Directors Lab has built a supportive community for visionary artists to convene and cultivate bold storytelling that has continued to resonate for decades.
Sundance Institute founder Robert Redford included Indigenous artists in the very first Sundance Institute lab in 1981. The Indigenous Program was formalized in the mid-’90s to uplift Native talent. Its alumni have brought Indigenous stories to mainstream audiences across film and television, earning recognition and awards for writers, directors, and actors alike.
The Native Lab is designed for artists of Native and Indigenous backgrounds who aim to center Indigeneity in their work. Over five days, fellows refine their scripts for feature and episodic projects in one-on-one feedback sessions, screenplay readings, and roundtable discussions with experienced advisors while building community on Native land in Santa Fe. Four fellows were selected: three U.S.-based (Jared Lank, Mi’kmaq; Isabella Dionne Madrigal, Cahuilla/Turtle Mountain Ojibwe; and Alex Nystrom, Ojibwe) and one from Canada (Jordan Waunch, Métis), selected in partnership with the Indigenous Screen Office (ISO). Also attending will be two artists-in-residence, Sabrina Saleha (Diné) and Svetlana Romanova (Sakha/Even), experiencing the lab while in script development. This year’s Native Lab creative advisors are: Bryson Chun (Kanaka Maoli), Sarah Friedland, Kiva Reardon, and Erica Tremblay (Seneca-Cayuga). The Native Lab is overseen by Adam Piron (Kiowa and Mohawk), Director of the Institute’s Indigenous Program, alongside Ianeta Le’i, the program’s Senior Manager.
“Every year our team selects a cross-section of bold, diverse Indigenous storytellers and committed advisors, and it’s always rewarding when we gather in Santa Fe to discuss storytelling and development because this process involves trust and reveals unexpected breakthroughs every time,” said Adam Piron, Sundance Institute Director of Indigenous Program. “We are looking forward to supporting this year’s fellows and to see how they support each other in challenging themselves, reimagining their work, and deepening their relationship to how Indigeneity factors into their work.”
The Directors Lab, in its second year at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, will offer hands-on experience to fellows as they rehearse, shoot, and edit scenes from their original screenplays under the guidance of experienced advisors. Fellows will focus on building a visual language, directing actors, and refining their overall creative vision. Led by Artistic Director Gyula Gazdag, this year’s advisor cohort includes Joan Darling, Rick Famuyiwa, Jomo Fray, Keith Gordon, Catherine Hardwicke, Ed Harris, Nicole Holofcener, Karyn Kusama, Christine Lahti, Kasi Lemmons, Joi McMillon, Jason Reitman, Nancy, Richardson, Estes Tarver, and Amy Vincent.
The Screenwriters Lab will take place online, where fellows will refine their scripts through individual story sessions with screenwriter advisors and group sessions on the art and craft of screenwriting. Led by Artistic Director Howard Rodman, the Screenwriters Lab advisor cohort includes Haifaa Al Mansour, John August, Andrea Berloff, Reggie Rock Bythewood, D.V. DeVincentis, Stephen Gaghan, John Gatins, Jenny Lumet, Darnell Martin, Joan Tewkesbury, Robin Swicord, and Bill Wheeler. The Directors and Screenwriters Labs are overseen by Michelle Satter, Sundance Institute Founding Senior Director of Artist Programs, and Ilyse McKimmie, Sundance Institute Deputy Director of the Feature Film Program.
“We’re beyond excited to welcome this remarkable group of filmmakers — especially in the 45th year of our Directors Lab,” said Michelle Satter, Founding Senior Director of Artist Programs at the Sundance Institute. “Our labs are a powerful space where bold, original voices are nurtured in a creative, supportive environment. Artists work closely with world-class advisors to sharpen their writing and directing skills and deepen their vision. While the lab spans several weeks, our commitment to these artists is year-round creative and strategic support in helping them build a sustainable filmmaking career. As a nonprofit, we’re incredibly grateful to the advisors, actors, crew, and staff who make this work possible and who help carry forward our mission of championing independent storytelling.”
Previous Sundance Institute lab fellows whose early career work has been fostered at the labs include award-winning filmmakers Andrew Ahn, Paul Thomas Anderson, Gregg Araki, Darren Aronofsky, Lisa Cholodenko, Nia DaCosta, The Daniels, Rick Famuyiwa, Sydney Freeland, David Gordon Green, Sterlin Harjo, Marielle Heller, Sky Hopinka, Miranda July, Nikyatu Jusu, James Mangold, John Cameron Mitchell, Kimberly Peirce, Gina Prince-Bythewood, Boots Riley, A.V. Rockwell, Ira Sachs, Quentin Tarantino, Shaandiin Tome, Erica Tremblay, Taika Waititi, Lulu Wang, Charlotte Wells, and Chloé Zhao.
The 2025 Sundance Institute Native Lab fellows are:
Jared Lank (Writer-director) with Forerunner (U.S.A.): In the northern forests of 1700s New England, a traveler’s arrival at night prompts a Mi’kmaq woman and her brother to call on their ancestors, the land, and tightly held fragments of tradition to save their people from a merciless onslaught of colonial raiders and looming threat of annihilation.
Jared Lank is a Mi’kmaq filmmaker from Maine. His existential works explore themes of cultural erasure, myth, and grief. In 2024, his debut short film, Bay of Herons, was an official selection of the Sundance Film Festival, and he was featured in Filmmaker magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film.”
Isabella Dionne Madrigal (Writer-director) with Menil and Her Heart (U.S.A.): When a Cahuilla teen vanishes, her sister searches for the truth, navigating her family’s grief and ancestral visions that draw her into a cosmic world that may hold the answers — if she chooses to listen.
Isabella Dionne Madrigal (Cahuilla/Turtle Mountain Ojibwe) is a writer-director-actor. She is a
Harvard alum, a winner of the Yale Young Native Storytellers Contest, and co-director
of the Luke Madrigal Indigenous Storytelling Nonprofit. Her work centers ancestral
wisdom, healing, and Indigenous futurisms.
Alex Nystrom (Writer-director) with Spiral (U.S.A.): A young Ojibwe man confronts the unsettling possibility that his late father’s spirit is haunting him while caring for his dementia-stricken grandmother in an isolated cabin.
Alex Nystrom is an Ojibwe director, writer, and producer. His pilot Between was selected for the The Black List’s second annual Indigenous List, and his short film Four Nights and a Fire (Palm Springs International Shortfest, Short of the Week) is currently being developed into a feature film, Spiral.
Jordan Waunch (Writer-producer) with Hyperia (Canada): When stowaway and fugitive Séraphine Cielara awakens aboard the covert government transport shuttle Hyperia, she discovers its true destination is not to Earth and her family, but a sinister anomaly at the galaxy’s edge, a power that could reshape time, space, and the fate of everyone on board.
Jordan Waunch is an award-winning Métis filmmaker based in the Coast Salish territories. He
directed Sisters Of Sorrow via TELUS STORYHIVE and produced the Queer Indigenous horror film Terror/Forming, and his most recent writing and directing project, Shadow Of The Rougarou, is playing on APTN Lumi.
The 2025 Sundance Institute Directors and Screenwriters Lab fellows are:
Leo Aguirre (Writer-director) with Verano (U.S.A.): An unruly teenager’s summer plans are upended when his parents decide to foster an adolescent from Central America who is seeking asylum in the United States. As the two teens realize they must share more than just a bedroom, they are forced to confront their differences amid their harsh realities.
Leo Aguirre is a first-generation Mexican American filmmaker and visual artist. His work has received international recognition through film and photography projects spanning the advertising, music video, and narrative landscapes. Verano is his feature film debut.
Chheangkea (Writer-director) with Little Phnom Penh (Cambodia, U.S.A.): Spanning two ever-changing decades, from post–Khmer Rouge Phnom Penh to early 2000s California, a Cambodian woman grapples with her deep personal desires, untimely love, and shifting family roles amid profound cultural and historical upheavals.
Chheangkea is a Cambodian-born filmmaker based in Brooklyn. He earned an MFA in Filmmaking from the NYU Graduate Film program. His short film Grandma Nai Who Played Favorites won the Short Film Jury Award: International Fiction at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. His previous short film, Skin Can Breathe, streams on Max.
Andrea Ellsworth (Co-writer-director) and Kasey Elise Walker (Co-writer-director) with The Dispute (U.S.A., U.K.): Down on their luck and desperate for more, two best friends from South Central take a chance encounter as an invitation to trade their dead-end lives in Los Angeles for something new. When chaos ensues during their seemingly lucrative adventure, they realize the true cost of their actions.
Andrea Ellsworth is a Black and Filipino actress and filmmaker from Los Angeles. She’s currently in development on her debut feature film, The Dispute, and can be seen starring as Deja in The Vince Staples Show on Netflix.
Kasey Elise Walker is a writer-director-actress best known for co-writing and starring in The Dispute, a short film that is now in development to become a feature. Her directorial debut, Hoop Dreams, premiered at Tribeca Festival after winning the Soho Script Lab.
Roberto Fatal (Writer-director) with Electric Homies (U.S.A.): Ria, a Two-Spirit healer, receives a miracle when their comatose sister uploads her consciousness into a digital utopia. But as more in their barrio upload, Ria questions what it means to be human and learns the true cost of escaping the pain of carbon-based life. [Screenwriters Lab only]
Roberto Fatal is a Mestize Chicana video artist–turned–genre filmmaker. Their sci-fi, horror, and action movies center marginalized humans navigating the intersections of death and survival, technology and culture, and overwhelming terror and profound love.
Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs (Writer-director) with High Steel (Canada, U.S.A.): A Mohawk man splits his time between his reservation with his family and Manhattan, where he ironworks 60 stories above the ground. When he falls in love with a white photographer in the city, his identity is challenged and he must keep his double life a secret or risk losing everything.
Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs is an award-winning actor and filmmaker known for their work in the groundbreaking series Reservation Dogs. Jacobs produced her first feature, Backspot, which premiered at TIFF and SXSW to critical acclaim. Jacobs is currently writing her debut feature film, High Steel.
Diffan Sina Norman (Writer-director) with Sitora (Malaysia, U.S.A.): A young doctor arrives in a Malay village to establish its first health clinic, jeopardizing the community’s allegiance to a racketeering shaman and his unlikely accomplice: an elusive half-man, half-tiger.
Diffan Sina Norman is a Malaysian Iranian filmmaker based in Northeast Texas. His short films Kekasih (2014), Benevolent Ba (2020), and Pasture Prime (2024) premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. He is an alumnus of the 2025 January Sundance Institute Screenwriters Lab and a recipient of Sundance Institute’s Horror Fellowship.
Alexandra Qin (Writer-director) with Thirstygirl (U.S.A.): When Charlie is forced to drive her estranged younger sister cross-country to rehab, her own secret addiction comes to the surface in the most devastating and hilarious ways.
Alexandra Qin is a French Filipino Chinese writer-director with a background in software engineering and prison reform activism. Her first short film, Thirstygirl, was an official selection of the 2024 Sundance Film Festival among 50 other festivals worldwide. She is one of Vimeo’s 10 Breakout Creators of 2024.
Chloe Sarbib (Writer-director) with Trou Normand (France, U.S.A.): As her family prepares to leave their Normandy home, an aging actress becomes convinced that a lost Vichy-era heirloom is the magical solution to all her problems — but the search may dig up more than she bargained for.
Chloe Sarbib is an American and French Algerian filmmaker drawn to characters who get in their own way. Her shorts have been supported by Tribeca, the DGA Student Film Awards, and major festivals. An alum of Yale and Columbia’s film MFA, she recently directed on The CW/Netflix’s In the Dark.
Katla Sólnes (Writer-director) with Eruption (Iceland): In the highlands of Iceland in 1972, a geologist’s wife finds her marriage tested when a wily American student arrives, stirring tensions as volatile as the volcanic landscape. [Screenwriters Lab only]
Katla Sólnes is a writer-director represented by True North Talent. She has been the recipient of support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and Indian Paintbrush. She is an adjunct assistant professor in screenwriting at Columbia University, where she recently graduated with her MFA.
Lana Wilson (Writer-director) with Back Seat (U.S.A.): When a Romanian immigrant is arrested for leaving her son in a car, she struggles to hold on to fragile daily routines while navigating an unforgiving system. As she fights for custody, encounters with strangers, family, and her children force her to confront the judgment she fears most — her own.
Lana Wilson is an Emmy-winning director and writer. Her films include After Tiller (2013 Sundance Film Festival, Emmy winner), Miss Americana (2020 Sundance Film Festival, Netflix), Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields (2023 Sundance Film Festival, Hulu), and Look Into My Eyes (2024 Sundance Film Festival, A24). She is working on her feature narrative debut.
The Sundance Institute Indigenous Program is supported by Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria, Mellon Foundation, The 11th Hour Project, a program of the Schmidt Family Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, WBD Access, Indigenous Screen Office, NBCUniversal LAUNCH, SAGindie, and Indigenous Media Initiatives.
The Sundance Institute Feature Film Program is supported by explore.org, a direct charitable activity of the Annenberg Foundation; Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; The Asian American Foundation (TAAF); Hartbeat; United Airlines; The Walt Disney Company; Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade (OEDIT); Salman Al-Rashid; NBCUniversal; Ray and Dagmar Dolby Fund; Scott and Jennifer Frank; Golden Globe Foundation; NHK; Steward Family Foundation; Levantine Films; Daniel Crown; Essex County Community Foundation; SAGIndie; Spotlight on San Francisco; Rosalie Swedlin and Robert Cort; Adobe; Karen and Ian Calderon; ShivHans Pictures; River Road Entertainment; the Deborah Reinisch & Michael Theodore Fund; and Brian Siberell.
Sundance Institute
As a champion and curator of independent stories, the nonprofit Sundance Institute provides and preserves the space for artists across storytelling media to create and thrive. Founded in 1981 by Robert Redford, the Institute’s signature labs, granting, and mentorship programs, dedicated to developing new work, take place throughout the year in the U.S. and internationally. Sundance Institute Collab, a digital community platform, brings a global cohort of working artists together to learn from Sundance Institute advisors and connect with each other in a creative space, developing and sharing works in progress. The Sundance Film Festival and other public programs connect audiences and artists to ignite new ideas, discover original voices, and build a community dedicated to independent storytelling. Through the Sundance Institute artist programs, we have supported such projects as Beasts of the Southern Wild, The Big Sick, Bottle Rocket, Boys Don’t Cry, Boys State, Call Me by Your Name, Clemency, CODA, Dìdi (弟弟), Drunktown’s Finest, The Farewell, Fire of Love, Flee, Fruitvale Station, Half Nelson, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Hereditary, The Infiltrators, The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Little Woods, Love & Basketball, Me and You and Everyone We Know, Mudbound, Nanny, One Child Nation, Pariah, Raising Victor Vargas, Requiem for a Dream, Reservoir Dogs, RBG, Sin Nombre, Sorry to Bother You, Strong Island, Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), Swiss Army Man, A Thousand and One, Top of the Lake, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, and Zola. Through year-round artist programs, the Institute also nurtured the early careers of such artists as Paul Thomas Anderson, Wes Anderson, Gregg Araki, Darren Aronofsky, Lisa Cholodenko, Ryan Coogler, Nia DaCosta, The Daniels, David Gordon Green, Miranda July, James Mangold, John Cameron Mitchell, Kimberly Peirce, Boots Riley, Ira Sachs, Quentin Tarantino, Taika Waititi, Lulu Wang, and Chloé Zhao. Support Sundance Institute in our commitment to uplifting bold artists and powerful storytelling globally by making a donation at sundance.org/donate. Join Sundance Institute on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, YouTube, and Bluesky.
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MEDIA CONTACTS: Tammie Rosen, tammie_rosen@sundance.org; Tiffany Duersch, tiffany_duersch@sundance.org; Sylvy Fernández, sylvy_fernandez@sundance.org, Alex Courides, alex_courides@sundance.org; Ray Love Jr., ray_love@sundance.org
