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Sundance Institute Announces 2026 Directors and Screenwriters Lab Fellows

Eight Projects to Be Developed at Directors Lab, 10 Projects to Be Supported Online at Screenwriters Lab

LOS ANGELES, CA, June 9, 2026 — The nonprofit Sundance Institute announced today the fellows selected for the 2026 Directors and Screenwriters Labs. The…
Meet the Bold Filmmakers Shaping the Future at Sundance Institute’s 2026 Directors and Screenwriters Labs

LOS ANGELES, CA, June 9, 2026 — The nonprofit Sundance Institute announced today the fellows selected for the 2026 Directors and Screenwriters Labs. The Directors Lab, a cornerstone of the Institute’s Feature Film Program, will take place from June 9–24 at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado. Fellows will then participate in the Screenwriters Lab, held online from June 29–July 2. Sundance Institute’s signature labs offer filmmakers a nurturing, immersive environment to develop their projects and refine their artistic voice with the guidance and generosity of accomplished creative advisors. 

The Directors Lab will support the development of eight projects and fellows, with two additional projects and four fellows joining for the Screenwriters Lab. The Directors Lab provides a robust community for visionary artists to convene and cultivate bold storytelling; artists supported by the program over its history have created work whose impact has endured for decades. The Directors Lab 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 directing actors, building a visual language, and refining their overall creative vision while embracing risk-taking and collaboration. Led by Artistic Director Gyula Gazdag, this year’s advisor cohort includes Colman Domingo, Ava DuVernay, Nisha Ganatra, Noëlle Gentile, Lesli Linka Glatter, Affonso Gonçalves, Keith Gordon, Catherine Hardwicke, Ed Harris, Ellen Kuras, Ken Kwapis, Christopher McQuarrie, Terilyn A. Shropshire, 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, Anna Boden, Reggie Rock Bythewood, Ryan Fleck, Rodrigo García, Attica Locke, Jenny Lumet, Darnell Martin, Robin Swicord, Bill Wheeler, and Tyger Williams. The Directors and Screenwriters Labs are led 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 honored to welcome this incredible cohort of filmmakers to the annual Directors and Screenwriters Labs,” said Michelle Satter, Founding Senior Director of Artist Programs at Sundance Institute. “For over four decades, our labs have created a nurturing space where bold and powerful storytellers hone their craft and build lasting relationships. The artists will work alongside esteemed advisors to sharpen their skills and strengthen their vision for their projects. We are so incredibly grateful to the advisors, actors, crew, and staff who make this possible and carry forward our mission of uplifting independent storytellers and bringing a creative community together.”

Filmmakers whose early career work has been cultivated at the Sundance Institute labs include the recent Academy and Golden Globe Award–winning writer-directors Paul Thomas Anderson, Ryan Coogler, Guillermo del Toro, and Chloé Zhao. Additionally, the labs have supported the award-winning work of Andrew Ahn, Gregg Araki, Andrea Arnold, Darren Aronofsky, Lisa Cholodenko, Nia DaCosta, The Daniels, Rick Famuyiwa, Sydney Freeland, David Gordon Green, Hasan Hadi, Sterlin Harjo, Marielle Heller, Miranda July, Nikyatu Jusu, James Mangold, John Cameron Mitchell, Kimberly Peirce, Gina Prince-Bythewood, Dee Rees, Boots Riley, A.V. Rockwell, Ira Sachs, Quentin Tarantino, Erica Tremblay, Taika Waititi, Lulu Wang, and Charlotte Wells.

The 2026 Sundance Institute Directors and Screenwriters Labs fellows are:

Roberto Fatal (Writer-director) with Electric Homies (U.S.A.): Ria, a Two-Spirit social worker, rejoices when they get the opportunity to upload their dying sister’s consciousness into a new digital utopia.

But as thousands more upload and their barrio begins to disappear, Ria and the community must confront the true cost of this technological miracle.

Roberto Fatal is a Mestize Chicana filmmaker and storyteller from Rarámuri, Genízaro, and Spanish ancestry. Their Queer, genderfluid, Mestize/Mixed identity informs the sci-fi films they make. Their work centers on humans who sit at the intersections of time, space, and culture.

Taylor Sanghyun Lee (Writer-director) with Rounds (U.S.A.): Years after a violent shooting shattered their Presbyterian church community, an impending deportation forces two Korean American families to confront the limits of their forgiveness and the true meaning of grace.

Taylor Sanghyun Lee is a filmmaker based in New York City. He is a recipient of the Sundance Institute Ignite Fellowship, CJ & TIFF K-Story Fund prize, Marcie Bloom Fellowship in Film, ARRI Volker Bahnemann Award, and Spike Lee Production Fund. He earned his MFA from the NYU Tisch Graduate Film program, where he was an Ang Lee Scholar.

Smriti Mundhra (Director), Nikesh Shukla (Co-writer), and Himesh Patel (Co-writer) with Brown Baby (U.K., U.S.A.): A mixed-race couple’s marriage begins to crack when their young daughter’s reaction to a doll exposes the truths they’ve spent years avoiding. [Screenwriters Lab only]

Smriti Mundhra is a DGA Award–winning, two-time Oscar-nominated, and Emmy-nominated filmmaker. She created Netflix’s global hit Indian Matchmaking and its spin-offs, and her work spans documentary, narrative, and series.

Nikesh Shukla is an award-winning, bestselling novelist/screenwriter, best known for Spider-Man India, Two Dosas, and for editing the groundbreaking collection of essays The Good Immigrant. Shukla has worked in writers rooms for Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, Amazon, and HBO.

Himesh Patel is an actor and writer, best known for Station Eleven, The Odyssey, Yesterday, and currently cast as the co-lead in the upcoming The X-Files. He is a writer and contributed to The Good Immigrant.

Bec Pecaut (Writer-director) with The Terrible Child (Canada): Toronto, 2009. Sixteen-year-old Augusta “Gussie” Goodman resists the pull of adulthood while her father’s terminal illness progresses, discovering the imperfect ways loss shapes us into ourselves.

Bec Pecaut is a filmmaker based in Los Angeles and Toronto. Their debut short film, Are You Scared to Be Yourself Because You Think That You Might Fail? (2024), had its domestic premiere at TIFF ’24, where it won the Short Cuts Award for Best Canadian Film, and its international premiere at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Pecaut is currently developing their debut feature, The Terrible Child.

Joanna Rothkopf (Writer-director) with Attachment (a.k.a. Bluey Is the Warmest Color) (U.S.A.): A mother becomes dangerously obsessed with a wildly popular children’s entertainer in this arch erotic thriller. It’s Fatal Attraction meets All Fours meets Ms. Rachel. Somehow.

Joanna Rothkopf is a writer and filmmaker living in Brooklyn. Since 2019, she has worked as a senior writer on HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, for which she has won multiple Emmy and WGA Awards. Her short film Pet Store, which she directed and produced, played festivals in 2024.

Philip Thompson (Writer-director) with Dance Monkey Dance (U.S.A.): Told through TV clips, voicemails, and personal recordings, this fictional found-footage documentary follows 2000s Black comedian Wesley Harris, who gains fame performing stereotypes for white audiences. As his identity erodes, the film exposes how media often celebrates yet confines Black artists.

Philip Thompson is a Brooklyn-based filmmaker who was included as one of Filmmaker magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film.” His work explores how popular media shapes culture, focusing on the emotional impact of media consumption and the one-sided relationship between viewers and image subjects.

George Watsky (Writer-director) with yellowwood (U.S.A.): Zoe and Jordie, a couple who never wanted kids, confront an unexpected pregnancy. Rather than choose between diverging futures, they enter a radical tech experiment that lets them walk both paths — one with a child, one without.

George Watsky is a multidisciplinary artist from San Francisco working across music, writing, and filmmaking. He has released six studio albums as Watsky and toured internationally with his live band. His essay collection How to Ruin Everything (Penguin/Plume) was a New York Times bestseller.

Bess Wohl (Writer-director) with Liberation (U.S.A.): In the wake of her mother’s death, Lizzie steps back in time to her mom’s 1970s feminist consciousness-raising group, only to discover that their questions from decades ago are shockingly similar to her own. Past blends with present, as Lizzie asks, “What does it take for a woman to be free?” [Screenwriters Lab only]

Bess Wohl is a playwright and filmmaker whose plays have been produced on and off-Broadway, regionally, and internationally. Awards and nominations for her play Liberation include the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and five Tony Award nominations, including Best Play. In film and television, she has developed projects with Amazon Prime Video, HBO, Paramount, ABC, Disney, and others.

Said Zagha (Writer-director) with Black Harvest (Palestine, France, U.K., Jordan, Norway, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Qatar): After his son is killed, a Palestinian father’s pursuit of vengeance drags him into a brutal spiral of crime and corruption that could destroy his remaining family.

Said Zagha is a Palestinian British writer-director working in political genre cinema. His short film Coyotes premiered at the Venice Film Festival, won Best Short Film at the BFI London Film Festival, and is now BAFTA-qualified. He directed the first two episodes of Crashing Eid, an Arabic-language Netflix Original.

Renee Zhan (Writer-director) with BAOBAO (U.K.): After the revocation of the one-child policy in China, Mimi returns home to discover that her parents have had a second child. Her parents refuse to see that there is something unnaturally strange about their new baby boy and that an evil other presence haunts their stately home.

Renee Zhan is a Chinese American director and animator. In her films, she explores topics of identity, obsession, and sexuality — all things beautiful, ugly, and squishy. Her first live-action short film, SHÉ (SNAKE), screened at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, TIFF, and SXSW.

WHO

Rolex Is the Official Partner and Exclusive Timepiece of Sundance Institute.

Support for the Sundance Institute Feature Film Program is also provided by explore.org, a direct charitable activity of the Annenberg Foundation; Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; THE WALT DISNEY COMPANY; Peter H. Friedland; Salman Al‑Rashid; The Asian American Foundation (TAAF); United Airlines; Big Newport Studios; NBCUniversal Focus Fellowship; Ray and Dagmar Dolby Family Fund; Golden Globe Foundation; NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation); K Period Media Foundation, Blumhouse; Walter Salles; Steward Family Foundation; Essex County Community Foundation (via Alexander McGrath); SAGIndie; Spotlight on San Francisco; Rosalie Swedlin and Robert Cort; Karen and Ian Calderon; River Road Entertainment; the Deborah Reinisch & Michael Theodore Fund; Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck; and an anonymous donor.

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 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 the projects 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, RBG, Requiem for a Dream, Reservoir Dogs, 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, Gregg Araki, Darren Aronofsky, Lisa Cholodenko, Nia DaCosta, Ryan Coogler, The Daniels, Robert Eggers, Rick Famuyiwa, David Gordon Green, Sterlin Harjo, Marielle Heller, Miranda July, Nikyatu Jusu, James Mangold, John Cameron Mitchell, Kimberly Peirce, Gina Prince-Bythewood, Boots Riley, A.V. Rockwell, Ira Sachs, Walter Salles, Quentin Tarantino, Erica Tremblay, 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, YouTube, X, and Bluesky.

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