Cleveland (United States)
Directors: Michael Milano and Orlando Bagwell
Producer: Amanda Pike
Cleveland is a feature documentary about the city’s defining role on the American cultural and political landscape during the Obama presidency. Amidst an economic resurgence, this rust-belt town hopes to regain some of its historic stature, but a brutal string of police killings brings federal oversight and unearths decades of injustice. Cleveland goes behind the front lines in the battle over policing, and examines the use of deadly force from the perspectives of both perpetrators and victims.
Sundance Institute | John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

Get Up Stand Up(United States)
Director: Rameen Aminzadeh
Producer: Fisher Stevens
After back to back non indictments of the officers responsible for the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, a group of young, diverse, criminal justice advocates, organizers and formerly incarcerated artists ban together and set out on an epic journey to break a “Fixed System”. Fueled by their personal experiences with the so called “Justice System” and traumatic life changing events, Justice League NYC members dedicate every waking moment of their lives to demanding justice, uplifting the voices of those whose dreams have been stolen and applying pressure to bring about reform.

Ma Liang’s Time Machine (China)
Director: Yang Sun
Producer: S. Leo Chiang
When Chinese artist Ma Liang realizes that his father Ma Ke, an accomplished Peking Opera director, is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, he invites his father to collaborate on his most ambitious project to date—a haunting, magical, autobiographical stage performance featuring life-size mechanical puppets called “Papa’s Time Machine.” Through the creation of this play, Ma Liang and Ma Ke confront the challenges of aging and repercussions from the Cultural Revolution. They struggle to close the gap in their relationship before time runs out and memories are lost forever.

Oceti Sakowen (working title) (Seven Council Fires) (United States)
Director: Cody Lucich
Producer: Ben Alex Dupris and Heather Rae
In the shadow of the largest political occupation in Native American history, thousands of earth guardians descend on the international stage of Standing Rock, North Dakota to cut off the head of the “black snake” they call the Dakota Access Pipeline.

XY Chelsea (United States, United Kingdom)
Director: Tim Hawkins
Producer: Julia Nottingham
Soldier, trans woman and prisoner, Chelsea Manning has launched an appeal against the U.S. Military, challenging a 35-year sentence given after she disclosed almost 700,000 U.S. military and diplomatic documents. Incarcerated in an all-male military prison in Kansas, she is also undergoing hormone replacement therapy to transition to the female gender she has identified with all her life. This is a fight for Chelsea’s identity: her character, her integrity, and her humanity. Told from Chelsea’s perspective, through an intimate prison diary, XY Chelsea will provide an unique view of one of the most important stories of the 21st century and an ongoing legal battle that has implications for us all.

A Woman’s Work (Canada, United States)
Director: Yu Gu
Producers: Elizabeth Ai and Yu Gu
Football and feminism collide in this feature documentary that follows three former NFL cheerleaders and the class-action lawsuits they brought against their teams.
Sundance Institute | Rockefeller Foundation Impact Fund

Casting JonBenet (Australia)
Director: Kitty Green
Producers: Scott Macaulay and Kitty Green
An artful exploration of the legacy of America’s most sensational child-murder case, the unsolved death of six-year-old American beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey.

Even When I Fall (United Kingdom)
Directors: Sky Neal and Dara McLarnon
Producer: Elhum Shakerifar
Even When I Fall tells the story of Nepal’s first and only contemporary circus, set up by survivors of child trafficking.

Hispaniola (Dominican Republic, Canada, United States)
Directors: Michèle Stephenson and Joe Brewster
Producers: Jennifer Holness, Joe Brewster, and Michèle Stephenson
In 2013, the Dominican Republic Supreme Court stripped citizenship from individuals born in the country of Haitian descent. Hispaniola intimately follows the lives of several families affected by the decision, reflecting larger questions of imposed borders, citizenship, statelessness, and racial identity.

I Am Not Your Negro (United States, France)
Director: Raoul Peck
Producers: Rémi Grellety, Raoul Peck, and Hébert Peck
In I Am Not Your Negro Raoul Peck envisions the book James Baldwin never finished – a radical narration about race in America, using only the writer’s original words.

Untitled Jennifer Laude Documentary (United States)
Director: PJ Raval
Producers: Marty Syjuco, Sara Giustini, and Kara Magsanoc-Alikpala
Grassroots activists in the Philippines are spurred into action when a local transgender woman is found dead in a motel room with a 19-year-old U.S. marine as the leading suspect. As they demand answers and a just trial, hidden histories of U.S. colonization come bubbling to the surface.
Sundance Institute | Arcus Foundation Fund

Obstinate (Afghanistan)
Director: Sahra Mosawi
Producers: Nicole Levinge
When a 23-year-old Afghan woman, Khatera, confronts the will of her family and the traditions of her country to seek justice for years of sexual abuse from her father, she sheds light on the faulty Afghan judicial system and the women it rarely protects.

Recovering Irma (United States)
Director: Sandra Salas
Producer: Sandra Salas
A soul-searching road trip winds its way across geography and generations, memories and mysteries probing for answers to the difficult question: “How do you end domestic violence?”
Sundance Institute | Kendeda Fund

Survivors (United States, Sierra Leone)
Directors: Arthur Pratt, Anna Fitch, Banker White and Barmmy Boy
Producer: Banker White, Anna Fitch and Samantha Grant
Through the eyes of Sierra Leonean filmmakers, Survivors presents a portrait of their country during the Ebola outbreak, exposing the complexity of the epidemic and the sociopolitical turmoil that lies in its wake.
Sundance Institute | Rockefeller Foundation Impact Fund

Sweetheart Deal (United States)
Director: Elisa Levine and Gabriel Miller
Producer: Peggy Case
Sweetheart Deal follows four heroin-addicted women living on Seattle’s Aurora Avenue, an infamous stretch of highway lined with cheap motels and lost souls. Desperate to escape the street, they accept the help of Gray Cloud – a seemingly kind, ponytailed man in his 60s. Inside his battered RV he nurses broken birds back to health. And, he explains, he can fix broken women too. As the story unfolds, we learn that his generosity does not come without a cost.

Sylvia and Marsha (United States)
Director: David France
Producers: Laura Teodosio and Kimberly Reed
The origin story for the trans movement comes to light as the mysterious cold case of Marsha P. Johnson, moribund for decades, gains traction with the NYPD. Will bringing closure for the founder of the trans rights movement help stop a record-breaking crime wave against trans women of color?
Sundance Institute | Arcus Foundation Fund

This is Congo (United States)
Director: Daniel McCabe
Producers: Geoff McLean, Alyse Spiegel, Daniel McCabe
An unfiltered look into the history of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the lives of three characters surviving one of the most recent cycles of conflict.

32 Pills: My Sister’s Suicide(United States)
Director: Hope Litoff
Producer: Beth Levison
She’s beautiful, artistic, loved—and can’t stand to be alive. 32 Pills: My Sister’s Suicide traces the fascinating life and mental illness of my sister, New York artist and photographer Ruth Litoff, and my struggle to come to terms with her tragic suicide.

Angels Are Made of Light (United States)
Director: James Longley
Producer: Joslyn Barnes
Angels Are Made of Light is an observational documentary that takes the viewer on a journey into the heart of Afghanistan, following children and teachers in a public school in Kabul over three years at the formal end of U.S. Military involvement.

City of Ghosts (United States)
Director: Matthew Heineman
Producer: Matthew Heineman
This is the story of a new type of warfare: a battle over ideas, over hearts and minds, over clicks and views.

EX LIBRIS – New York Public Library (United States)
Directors: Frederick Wiseman
Producers: Frederick Wiseman
The New York Public Library is the dominant cultural and democratic institution in the City of New York. Libraries throughout the U.S. find they must simultaneously sustain their traditional activities, and develop new programs related to the digital revolution all at once. This is the first time permission has been given to make a documentary about this important, vast and complex institution.

Fly Away (United Kingdom)
Director: Lucy Cohen
Producer: Julia Nottingham
When a father took his own life, time stood still for his wife and seven children. As they piece together fragments of a broken past, questions of memory, identity and love must be faced before they can embrace the future.

Ghost Hunting (Palestinian Territories/France/Switzerland/Qatar)
Director: Raed Andoni
Producer: Palmyre Badinier
To free himself from the demons from his incarceration, the filmmaker assembles an eclectic group of Palestinian ex-prisoners. From an empty yard and fragmentary memory, they give rise to the famous Israeli interrogation center, and release the ghosts in their midsts.

The Infiltrators (United States)
Directors: Alex Rivera and Cristina Ibarra
Producers: Alex Rivera and Cristina Ibarra
The Infiltrators is a docu-thriller that tells the real — and surreal — story of a group of immigrants in America who got themselves apprehended by Border Patrol to ‘infiltrate’ secretive, for-profit detention centers and help other immigrants get free.
Sundance Institute | John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

Mudflow (United States)
Directors: Cynthia Wade and Sasha Friedlander
Producer: Tracie Holder
Mudflow is the story of a community’s response to one of the biggest man-made environmental disasters in the world – a giant, unstoppable mud volcano in Indonesia — as experienced by three families who lost their homes to the mud and are banding together to rebuild their lives.

People’s Republic of Desire (China)
Director: Hao Wu
Producer: Hao Wu
China’s super-rich and dirt-poor never cross paths in real life, yet in popular virtual showrooms they band together to worship their favorite online stars. In this digital universe where everything seems possible, a karaoke singer, a poor migrant worker and a rags-to-riches comedian seek fame, fortune and human connection, but find the same promises and perils online as in their real lives.

United Skates (Australia / United States)
Directors: Dyana Winkler and Tina Brown
Producers: Dyana Winkler and Tina Brown
United Skates follows an underground subculture growing inside our country’s last standing roller rinks. Through the eyes of two unassuming leaders, Reggie and Phelicia battle in a racially charged environment to save a community and culture still undiscovered by the American mainstream before it disappears.

Untitled Missouri Film (United States)
Director: Rebecca Cammisa
Producer: James B. Freydberg, Larissa Bills
Untitled Missouri Film is an environmental justice story of two communities in St. Louis who are mobilizing themselves to get answers. One community is adjacent to an out-of-control, underground landfill fire that is moving towards a legacy nuclear waste site, and the other is experiencing high rates of cancer possibly due to ionizing radiation poisoning from the same nuclear waste source buried there since the 1940s.

Whose Streets (United States)
Directors: Damon Davis and Sabaah Jordan
Producers: Flannery Miller and Jennifer MacArthur
Whose Streets? is an intimate portrayal of the Ferguson story told by the people who lived it.
Sundance Institute | John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

Women Leaders of the First Intifada (Brazil/United States)
Director: Julia Bacha
Producers: Rula Salameh and Rebekah Wingert-Jabi
In the spring of 1988, a clandestine network of Palestinian women emerged to lead a vibrant nonviolent social movement that put the Palestinian people on the map. Their identities have remained hidden… until now.

Newtown (United States)
Director: Kim A. Snyder
Producers: Maria Cuomo Cole and Kim A. Snyder
Joining the ranks of a growing club to which no one wants to belong, a cast of characters within Newtown, Connecticut interconnect, weaving an intimate story of resilience and tracing the aftermath of the worst mass shooting of schoolchildren in American history, the traumatized community and their new sense of purpose.
Sundance Institute | Kendeda Fund

Hatim’s Dreams (Uganda)
Director: Matthew Bishanga
Co-Director/Producer: Nathan Magoola
A tenacious 13-year old child in rural Uganda, Hatim Sebanja, who suffers from sickle-cell anemia, embarks on a journey to Kampala, the big city, to compete in a robotics competition despite the odds stacked against him.

Khalik Allah is a New York-based filmmaker and photographer. His previous film, Field Niggas, premiered at the 2015 True/False Film Festival and has played over 50 film festivals, schools and universities around the world. Of the film, Richard Brody of the New Yorker wrote, “director Khalik Allah revitalizes the genre of observational filmmaking”. Khalik chosen as one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film” in 2015. He is currently in-production on his next film, BLACK MOTHER.

Kitty Green is an award-winning Australian filmmaker. Her independent feature documentary, Ukraine Is Not A Brothel premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2013 and screened at IDFA, Hot Docs, SXSW and over 50 film festivals internationally. Her short film, The Face of Ukraine: Casting Oksana Baiul won the Non-Fiction Jury Prize at Sundance Film Festival in 2015. Kitty has just completed post-production on her second feature, Casting JonBenet.

Kirsten Johnson has worked as both a documentary director and cinematographer, committing herself to human rights issues and visual creativity. Kirsten directed Cameraperson, which premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, played as the Closing Night film at New Directors/New Films, and went on to win nine jury prizes at festivals around the world. The film has been nominated for Best Documentary by the 2016 Gotham Awards. Her short film The Above premiered at 2015 New York Film Festival.

RaMell Ross is a Rhode Island and Alabama based artist whose work has focused on the contemporary Historic South. He was part of Filmmaker Magazine’s 2015 list of “25 New Faces of Independent Film”. RaMell’s large format photography, published in outlets such as The New York Times and Oxford American, has received international recognition, and he was recently awarded a 2016 Aaron Siskind Individual Photographer’s Fellowship. He is currently in-production on the feature film Idiom (Hale County this Morning, This Evening) while a Professor of Practice at Brown University.

Brett Story is a writer and nonfiction filmmaker based in New York. Originally from Canada, Brett holds a PhD in Geography from the University of Toronto, and was the recipient of the Documentary Organization of Canada Institute’s 2014 New Visions Award. Her most recent feature documentary, The Prison in Twelve Landscapes, is currently touring festivals internationally and will be broadcast on PBS’s Independent Lens in 2017. Brett is currently in development on her next project, The Hottest August.

Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets (Development)
Directors: The Ross Brothers
Producers: The Department of Motion Pictures, Matt Sargeant, Chere Theriot
The Ross Brothers are a documentary filmmaking team whose works have been featured at museums and festivals throughout the world. Their work has been supported by the Sundance Institute, the Rooftop Filmmaker Fund, Cinereach, The San Francisco Film Society and the late Roger Ebert. In the fall of 2016 they were voted one of the Ten Documentary Filmmakers of the Decade by the Cinema Eye Honors. Their credits include the award winning films 45365, Tchoupitoulas, Western, and Contemporary Color.

Caniba (Production)
Directors: Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel
Producer: Sensory Ethnography Laboratory
Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel collaborate as anthropologists, artists, and filmmakers in the Sensory Ethnography Laboratory, based in Cambridge, USA, at Harvard University, and in Paris, France. Their work conjugates art’s negative capability with an ethnographic attachment to the flux of life. Most of Castaing-Taylor and Paravel’s collaborations are in film, video, and installation. Their latest film Leviathan was released theatrically in 2013, and won awards at over twenty film festivals around the world.

Realm of Satan (Working Title) (Development)
Director: Scott Cummings
Scott Cummings is a New York-based filmmaker. His work has screened at MOMA, IFF Rotterdam, CPH:DOX, BAMcinemaFEST, Visions du Reel, Chicago Underground Film Fest, and more. His 2014 film Buffalo Juggalos won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2014 AFI Fest and received the Cinema Eye Honors for Outstanding Achievement in Short Nonfiction Filmmaking. He was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film in 2014.

Untitled (Development)
Director: Joshua Oppenheimer
Producer: Signe Byrge Sørensen
Joshua Oppenheimer’s debut feature, The Act of Killing (2014 Academy Award Nominee for Best Documentary), was named Film of the Year in the 2013 by the Guardian and the Sight and Sound Film Poll, and won 72 international awards. His second film, The Look of Silence (2016 Academy Award Nominee for Best Documentary), premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where it won five awards, including the Grand Jury Prize and the critics award (Prix FIPRESCI). Since then, The Look of Silence has received 72 awards internationally. In 2014, Joshua was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.

Untitled (Development)
Director: Amanda Rose Wilder
Producer: Chris Boeckmann
Amanda Rose Wilder’s debut feature Approaching The Elephant was named one of 2014’s best unreleased films by Film Comment and Indiewire and one of 2015’s best films by The New Yorker and The A.V. Club. The film was nominated for a Gotham for Best Documentary and Indie Spirit’s Truer Than Fiction Award, and received the Emerging Cinematic Vision Award at Camden Film Festival and the Maysles Brothers Award at Belfast Film Festival.

Accidental Anarchist (Post-Production)
Directors and Producers: John Archer and Clara Glynn
Social Entrepreneur/Organization: Independent Diplomat
A look at how the contemporary system of governments and capitalism is failing to solve problems like inequality, global warming and political instability, and one man’s belief in a solution: Anarchism. From Spain to Kurdistan, “Independent Diplomat” Carne Ross pursues this belief.

Awavena (Development)
Director: Lynette Wallworth
Producer: Nicole Newnham
Social Entrepreneur/Organization: The Sociocultural Association of Yawanawá
A virtual-reality immersive artwork that travels the viewer/visitor to the Amazonian forest home of the Yawanawa people.

Cross My Heart (Development)
Director: Kip Oebanda
Social Entrepreneur/Organization: Visayan Forum Foundation
A scripted episodic crime series about a college student who tries to find his missing sister he suspects has been the victim human trafficking.

Francis (Production)
Director: Judy Korin
Producers: Zoë Adams and Cori Shepherd Stern
Social Entrepreneur/Organization: Basic Needs
Based on the true story of Francis Pii Kugbila, a husband, father and teacher in northern Ghana, this VR project addresses the importance of global mental health treatment..

Kailash Satyarthi Project (Production)
Director: Pankaj Johar
Social Entrepreneur/Organization: Kailash Satyarthi
A short documentary about the child labor activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner and the battle to end child slavery.

Logs of War (Production)
Director: Anjali Nayar and Hawa Essuman
Producer: Steven Markovitz
Social Entrepreneur/Organization: Global Witness
With a network of dedicated citizen reporters and mobile technology, seasoned Liberian activist Silas Siakor determines to change the status quo of big business by fighting for local communities.

Namati Film Project (Development)
Director: Jerry Rothwell
Social Entrepreneur/Organization: Namati
A feature documentary about legal practitioner Sonkita Conteh, who trains a team of “barefoot lawyers” that fight to overturn unjust land sales agreements and restore the environmental integrity of their land.

Orphans of the Land; Children of the Sea (Development)
Director: Garth Cripps
Advisor: Jerry Rothwell
Social Entrepreneur/Organization: Blue Ventures
The first installment of a documentary series about the Vezo of southwest Madagascar –one of the world’s last truly traditional fishing people and how overcoming the odds to protect their corals reefs and seafaring way of life.

Racial Terror in America: A History in Three Acts (Production)
Co-Directors: Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson
Interactive: Kat Cizek
Social Entrepreneur/Organization: Equal Justice Initiative
An interactive film trilogy that tells the story of how our present day lived experiences of racial violence and discrimination reflect a long insufficiently acknowledged history of white racial oppression. The trilogy connects the impact of today’s structural oppression on communities of color in America with the legacy of slavery and white supremacy.

The Hard Stop (UK)
Director: George Amponsah
Producers: George Amponsah and Dionne Walker
The racially charged police killing of Mark Duggan in August 2011 ignited the worst civil unrest in recent British history. Duggan’s closest friends, Marcus and Kurtis, take us on a tour of their insulated world, which we pass everyday but never really see.

Untitled Jennifer Laude Documentary (United States)
Director: PJ Raval
Producers: Marty Syjuco, Sara Giustini, and Kara Magsanoc-Alikpala
Grassroots activists in the Philippines are spurred into action when a local transgender woman is found dead in a motel room with a 19-year-old U.S. marine as the leading suspect. As they demand answers and a just trial, hidden histories of U.S. colonization come bubbling to the surface.

Obstinate (Afghanistan)
Director: Sahra Mosawi
Producer: Nicole Levinge
When a 23-year-old Afghan woman, Khatera, confronts the will of her family and the traditions of her country to seek justice for years of sexual abuse from her father, she sheds light on the faulty Afghan judicial system and the women it rarely protects.

America in Transition (United States)
Director: André Pérez
America in Transition is a web series, interactive documentary, and community engagement campaign that takes a real look at social change from the perspective of trans people in marginalized communities. Director André Pérez founded the Trans Oral History project seven years ago, motivated by the isolation he felt growing up in a military family in Virginia. Join this journey across the country to document real life for a two-spirit educator, a suicidal veteran, a woman living with HIV and more.
Sundance Institute | Arcus Foundation Fund

CareForce (United States)
Creator: Marisa Morán Jahn in collaboration with Yael Melamede
The CareForce™ is a transmedia public art project, web series, and mobile studio (the CareForce One™) that amplifies the voices of America’s fastest growing workforce — caregivers. Initiated by Studio REV- (lead artist, Marisa Morán Jahn) in collaboration with Oscar and Emmy-winning filmmaker Yael Melamede (SALTY Features), the CareForce™‘s goal is to spark the public imagination around caregiving relationships. Join the CareForce™ for hands-on workshops, exhibitions, dance sessions, and pit-stops at museums, parks, libraries, worker centers, transit stops, and public spaces across the U.S.
Sundance Institute | Rockefeller Foundation Impact Fund

Flux (Denmark, United States)
Creator: Suvi Andrea Helminen
How much of our gender identity is shaped by culture and how much by nature? This is an eternal question which never ceases to intrigue. Flux is an interactive and personalized web documentary in development that will allow users to explore how gender identities are constructed. It is a journey into an alternate society where gender is negotiated and chosen instead of being defined by sex. Fluidity rules! Nothing is definite. Flux is an intimate encounter with gender-fluid people, a path to self-discovery, and the seed for a collective movement of imagining change.
Sundance Institute | Arcus Foundation Fund

Queerskins (United States)
Director: lllya Szilak
Producer: Katy Morrison & Oscar Raby
A diary found in a box of belongings offers a devoutly Catholic mother living in rural Missouri a second chance to know the estranged son she has lost to AIDS. Combining an interactive art installation with a virtual space and award-winning online narrative, this project offers a baroque, magical realist journey through loss, remembrance, desire and fantasy that will challenge user conceptions of love, faith and redemption.
Sundance Institute | Arcus Foundation Fund