Ask any indie producer, and they’ll tell you that the job requires the long view. First, you have to find a project you believe in, then you’ve got to get investors to believe in it. You pitch, you develop, and then if you’re lucky you make the thing. Production requires a whole other set of skills, and if you’re making a doc, even principal photography could take years. The film goes through too many iterations in post, and when it’s finally ready, you’re there to shepherd it through its festival run, distribution and release.
One of the best strategies a producer can have to survive all that is to know where to look to get a leg up– where they can find industry experts who can give advice and strengthen a project, coaching to help them plan for both projects and careers, grants and funding to make the process a little easier, and a place to bring all those elements together and curate the experience. Thirteen producers have found all that at this years’ Film Independent Fiction Producing Lab and Documentary Producing Lab, and we’re thrilled to announce them here.
This year marks the 26th annual Fiction Producing Lab (running September 28 – October 9) and the 3rd annual Documentary Producing Lab (which wrapped September 18). Both are intensive programs built to grow careers of independent producers. Fellows work closely with industry advisors to refine their projects and pick up real-world insight into the business side of producing.
“Making a documentary is rarely a straight line, and producers are the people who keep moving the project forward when the path gets complicated,” said Daniel Cardone, Senior Manager of Nonfiction Programs. “We’re excited to bring together this year’s cohort to tackle those challenges head-on, share what they’ve learned, and build a community that extends well beyond the Lab.”
Ashley Flores, Manager of Fiction Programs, echoed that sense of momentum. “We’re proud to support this incredible group of producers and the visionary projects they’re bringing to life. Fellows will leave the Lab with greater clarity, confidence and meaningful relationships to help move both their projects and careers forward.”
Fellows are also getting extra support this year in the form of professional coaching from Renee Freedman & Company (backed by The Harnisch Foundation), and sustainability grants from Film Independent’s newly launched Artist Sustainability Fund.
Alongside the announcement come two major grants: the $30,000 Alfred P. Sloan Producers Grant, awarded to a project that weaves science or technology themes into dramatic storytelling, goes to Justin Hung Nguyen for Stem. The $10,000 Cayton-Goldrich Family Foundation Fellowship was awarded to Drew Dickler. The unrestricted grant goes to a Jewish filmmaker in a Film Independent Artist Development Program.
Film Independent’s Producing Labs have a rich history of launching acclaimed films, including In the Summers (Sundance Grand Jury Prize), The Inspection (TIFF, NYFF, released by A24), Joyland (Cannes Un Certain Regard, Spirit Award winner), All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (Spirit Award nominee), and Songs My Brothers Taught Me (Spirit Award nominee). On the documentary side, alumni projects include Natchez (Tribeca Best Documentary), Ascension (Academy Award nominee), Minding the Gap (Academy Award nominee, Spirit Award winner), and United Skates (Emmy Award nominee).
The Fellows
The 2026 Fiction Producing Lab Fellows and their projects are:
Megan Leonard
Megan Leonard is an award-winning creative producer and festival programmer hailing from the Pacific Northwest. She is a Sundance Institute and Gotham alumni, and her films have launched at premier festivals including Sundance and SXSW, debuted on global streaming platforms including Hulu and MUBI, and received five Vimeo Staff Picks. Notable works include: Dream Creep (dir. Carlos A.F. Lopez), Harbor Island (dir. Calvin Lee Reeder), The Influencer(dir. Lael Rogers), and Mixtape Marauders (dir. Peter Edlund). Leonard started working film festivals in 2010 and is currently the Festival Programming Manager at the Seattle International Film Festival.
Project: Call Cutters
Logline: At a gamified call center where pay is dictated by performance and competition is fierce, a new threat forces a motley crew of night shift employees to band together and decide what winning really means in a system built for them to lose.
Oscar Hernandez
Oscar Hernandez is an award-winning Mexican-American filmmaker based in Los Angeles. After studying ancient architecture as an undergraduate, he moved to Los Angeles to pursue film and later enrolled in NYU’s graduate film program. His work has screened at festivals including Tribeca, LA Film Fest, Austin Film Festival, Cinequest, and Seattle. He was the main producer of Nigerian Prince, an independent feature selected by the Tribeca Film Festival for its AT&T Untold Stories competition. Hernandez also recently received an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he focused on exploring new business models and financing structures to empower creators.
Carolina Tamez
Carolina Tamez is a Mexican producer focused on championing multicultural, globally minded storytelling and elevating Latin voices. She began in television, training with the BBC, National Geographic, and NBC. She was a Creative Producer on Fernando Frías’ I’m No Longer Here, which premiered at Tribeca, won 10 Ariel Awards, and was shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. Her work has screened at Cannes Critics’ Week, Berlinale, TIFF, Slamdance, and FICG, and received support from the Spike Lee Film Production Fund and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association Fellows Fund.
Project: Lucius Luz
Logline: When teenager Lucius is sent from Mexico to work with his estranged father in California, he becomes drawn to Angel, who is believed to possess divine healing powers and is the son of the local pastor. As their bond deepens, Lucius begins to uncover dark secrets that upend his life and threaten to tear the town apart.
Justin Hung Nguyen
Justin Hung Nguyen is a 2026 Film Independent / Sloan Fiction Producing Lab Fellow and a member of the 2026 Gold House Producer Accelerator. Nguyen produced the USC and Sloan Foundation-supported short Stem (Telluride Film Festival; Student Academy Awards finalist), which is actively being developed into a feature (Sundance Screenwriters Intensive). His feature credits include Too Soon (Heartland International Film Festival). Nguyen’s experience spans development and production across film and television. A graduate of USC’s Peter Stark Producing Program and NYU Tisch, Nguyen is a guest lecturer at USC and co-founder of EDscapade Games, a San Jose escape room company.
Project: Stem*
Logline: Inspired by a true scandal, a devoted female researcher risks everything to earn the approval of a world-renowned stem cell scientist — only to uncover the dark secrets behind his miracle cure that promises to end human disability.
*2026 Film Independent Alfred P. Sloan Producers Grant Recipient
Steven Snyder
Steven Snyder is an independent producer whose short film work, Azi and Seniors, both premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. He’s a 2025 Sundance Producers Lab Fellow, and he previously worked with producer Jim Burke at his company Innisfree Pictures. He is an executive producer on Dreamin’ Wild, which had its world premiere at the 2022 Venice Film Festival. He’s participated in such programs as Film Independent’s Fast Track, PGA Create, and Inside Out’s International Finance Forum, the first and only 2SLGBTQ+ finance forum of its kind promoting queer creatives.
Project: Tell Me a Secret
Logline: When eighteen-year-old Azi Rahimi meets Elizabeth Kessler, it unlocks hidden desires and leads to an unexpected game that affects Azi and those around her.
Po Wei Su
Po Wei is a Taiwanese filmmaker and producer based in Los Angeles. He began his career in commercials and music videos before moving to the US to pursue narrative filmmaking. His producing credits have screened at major festivals including Tribeca, SXSW, Berlin, Palm Springs, and Chicago. Drawing on his roots in Taiwanese cinema, Su bridges Eastern sensibilities with contemporary Western storytelling. Committed to supporting underrepresented voices, he has produced for Tribeca Rising Voices Seasons 2, 3, and 4, and the CAPE Julia Gouw Program Season 1. He is currently in pre-production on two features: The Death of Youngjoo and Multiplier.
Project: The Death of Youngjo
Logline: In the conservative 1980s Midwest, a fiery Asian American student investigates the suspicious suicide of her fellow best friend, a pastor’s son, inside an elite white fraternity. She uncovers a tragic, forbidden romance involving the fraternity president, a governor’s son, ultimately forcing her to choose between vengeful justice and systemic reform.
Brian Grigsby
Brian Grigsby is a Pittsburgh-raised, Los Angeles-based producer who advocates for unique stories told in captivating ways. He’s a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences and was nominated for a NAACP Image Award for the short film Blackout. Grigsby is a Sundance and Film Independent alumni, having participated in the 2022 Sundance Producer’s Intensive Fellowship as well as Film Independent’s Project Involve program in 2020. He has produced projects for the NFL, NBA, HBO, and NBC, among others. His company, Nelson Studios, specializes in narrative content that inspires audiences through stories of perseverance, redemption and faith.
Project: The Last Cowboy
Logline: Saddled by crippling mob debt, a suave ex-con conspires with an unassuming bartender for a series of heists that’ll provide them with the freedom they’ve long desired, but they soon realize this union is more than what they bargained for as the struggle for power could cost them their lives.
The 2026 Documentary Producing Lab Fellows and their projects are:
Rachel Elizabeth Seed
Rachel Elizabeth Seed is a Los Angeles-based nonfiction storyteller working in film, photography, and writing. Her debut feature film A Photographic Memory is a New York Times Critic’s Pick and was called “one of the best docs of the year” by ROGEREBERT.COM. It was awarded a 2025 Film Independent Truer Than Fiction Spirit Award and was nominated for a 2025 Cinema Eye Honors Spotlight Award. Rachel’s work has been supported by the Sundance Institute, Chicken + Egg Pictures, NYFA, Field of Vision, the Jerome Foundation, NYSCA, Jewish Story Partners, and IFP/Gotham Labs, among others. Formerly a photo editor at New York Magazine, her photography has been exhibited at the International Center of Photography, and she was a cameraperson on several award-winning feature documentaries.
Project: Bad Girl Marcia Tucker
Logline: After being fired from NYC’s Whitney Museum for her radical exhibitions, feminist curator Marcia Tucker founded the New Museum in 1977 to champion marginalized artists. Through rare archive and insight from today’s artworld rebels, Bad Girl Marcia Tucker traces Marcia’s defiant legacy – offering a blueprint for resistance in the face of contemporary threats to art, artists and art institutions.
Jyoti Sarda
Jyoti Sarda is an Emmy Award–winning, Los Angeles–based producer and the founder of Nimble Media. She draws on her experience as a senior-level global marketing executive at studios including Paramount and Fox to develop impact-driven documentary and narrative work. Jyoti’s credits include the feature film Lilly, about fair-pay icon Lilly Ledbetter and starring Patricia Clarkson, now streaming on Netflix; the POV docuseries And She Could Be Next, which follows a women-of-color–led movement transforming American politics from the ground up; and the documentary features Equal Means Equal, Sirens, and the Emmy-winning Black Barbie, also on Netflix.
Project: The Cost of Care
Logline: In post-Dobbs America, state abortion bans are hollowing out the healthcare workforce — a crisis that goes far beyond bodily autonomy. The Cost of Care follows medical students, residents and frontline doctors across two neighboring states, one banned and one protected, as they navigate legal risk, training gaps and impossible ethical choices to reveal who really pays the price when politics dictates medicine.
Drew Dickler
Drew Dickler is a documentary filmmaker and co-founder of Deep Dive Films. A Sundance Institute fellow, she most recently served as lead producer of What Will I Become?, which premiered at the Berlinale and won the Amnesty International Film Award. She directed the short documentary Big Bass, which has screened at festivals worldwide and earned jury awards at Outfest NEXT and Palm Springs International ShortFest. Her debut feature documentary, Fireboys, streamed on HBO.
Project: The Grass Ceiling*
Logline: Filmmaker Sarah Strauss revisits her abandoned dream of playing professional baseball by following four girls fighting for a place in the sport, as a historic women’s league prepares to launch.
*2026 Cayton-Goldrich Family Foundation Fellowship Grant Recipient
Sruti Lodha
Sruti Lodha is a producer and development lead at The Storiculture Company, where she works
across fiction and non-fiction projects, stewarding ideas from early development to pitch and building creator labs that support emerging voices. Her work is anchored in feminist perspectives and underrepresented narratives, with a particular focus on stories that sit at the intersection ofcommunity and culture. Sruti is the producer and impact producer on Auto Queens, a documentary and impact campaign centering women auto drivers in Chennai, that premiered at IDFA 2025. Across her slate, she brings a dual commitment to rigorous story development and meaningful real-world impact, shaping projects that resonate both on-screen and beyond.
Project: In Search of Missing Clouds
Logline: When the monsoons fail and harvests collapse, eight-year-old burn survivor Aaru refuses to give up on her home in Vidarbha’s dry, saline land, which her family can no longer afford to stay on. In Aaru’s search for answers, a filmmaker returns to the questions that once led his own family to migrate from the same land.
Zak Piper
Zak is an award-winning documentary film producer whose work spans feature documentaries, docuseries, and television. Most recently he produced The Luckiest Guy in the World, a documentary series about NBA legend Bill Walton, directed by Steve James for ESPN’s 30 for 30. The series premiered at SXSW in 2023 and won an Audience Award. Zak has produced several films directed by James, including The Interrupters, for which he was awarded a News & Documentary Emmy Award; Life Itself, named one of the year’s best by the National Board of Review and Broadcast Film Critics Association and was shortlisted by the Academy for Best Documentary; and the Emmy-nominated docuseries City So Real, which premiered at Sundance and was selected for President Barack Obama’s annual list of favorite films and television. Zak produced and co-directed The Ants and the Grasshopper with Raj Patel, which was released theatrically by Giant Pictures before premiering on PBS. He also produced All These Sons for Concordia Studio and 16 & Recovering for MTV, earning an RFK Journalism Award. Zak is currently developing several documentary projects and proudly serves on the Conservation Advisory Board for the town where he lives with his family in Western New York.
Project: My First Phone
Logline: My First Phone is a documentary following four kids in the city of Chicago before, during and after they receive their first smartphones from their families. The film explores how the transition into digital life impacts their social experience, family dynamic and understanding of themselves, using groundbreaking technology to provide a never-before-seen look inside what has become the ultimate rite of passage for young people today.
Beatriz Browne
Beatriz Browne is an award-winning documentary producer and filmmaker. She has produced
projects for HBO Max, Disney+, Hulu, The New York Times, CNN, Google, and Airbnb, with her work recognized by the Cinema Eye Honors, Telluride Film Festival, DOC NYC, SFFILM Doc Stories, the Webby Awards, the International Documentary Association, and the Critics Choice Documentary Awards, among others. Her documentary credits include The Best Chef in the World, The Truth About Jim for HBO, and most recently Rachel, Breathe, directed by Frank Marshall and produced by the Kennedy/Marshall Company. She is currently producing Southern Quest, which was selected for the 2026 Sheffield DocFest MeetMarket.
Project: Southern Quest
Logline: In search of an extraordinary adventure, a group of ordinary people set sail on an old fishing boat from London to Antarctica. Surviving plane crashes, shipwrecks and each other, they become the last independent expedition to the South Pole. Four decades later, they finally reckon with the hidden cost and political impact of their ambition.
Fiction Producing Lab advisors and guest speakers include Juliet Berman, Erika Canchola, Neal Champagne, Pierre M. Coleman, Kyle Greenberg, Sarah Kim, Kaylee Madrid, Lauren Mann, Amanda Marshall, Tony Yang, and Jim Young; fellows also get complimentary access to Rightscenter, a research service for film and TV literary rights.
Documentary Producing Lab advisors and guest speakers include Sarba Das, Orly Ravid, Ben Proudfoot, Smriti Mundhra, Alysa Nahmias, Senain Kheshgi, Diane Becker, Lauren Cioffi, Trevite Willis, Megan Gilbride, Dale Cohen, and Loralee Sundra.
The Fiction Producing Lab is supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, The Harnisch Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. The Documentary Producing Lab is also supported by The Harnisch Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
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