The Sundance Institute has announced the recipients of the inaugural 2025 Sundance Institute Filmmakers Fund, a $120,000 grant program sponsored by Chase Sapphire Reserve. Ten projects were selected across feature film, documentary, Indigenous, Catalyst, Artist Accelerator, and Ignite programs.

Grantees include Roni Jo Draper and Marissa Lila Kongao with the documentary We Arrive With Fire | Ne-Kah Nuue’m Mehl Mech, Cris Gris with Forward, Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs with High Steel, Masami Kawai with Valley of the Tall Grass, and Khaula Haider Malik with Alien Nation. Other funded works are from Mackie Mallison (Everything Must Go), Efraín Mojica and Rebecca Zweig (Jaripeo), Steve Pargett (Blacked Out Dreams), Huda Razzak (Home of the Birds), and Walter Thompson-Hernández (If I Go Will They Miss Me).

“This partnership allows us to provide artists with critical support, empowering them to take bold creative risks and bring their powerful stories to life,” said Hajnal Molnar-Szakacs, Director of the Artist Accelerator Program and Women at Sundance.

The Filmmakers Fund is part of the Institute’s Artist Accelerator Program, which provides fellowships, funding, and year-round artist support to filmmakers from diverse backgrounds.

The 2025 grantees and their selected projects are:

Roni Jo Draper (Co-director) and Marissa Lila Kongao (Co-director and Cinematographer) with WE ARRIVE WITH FIRE | NE-KAH NUUE’M MEHL MECH (U.S.A.): Since time immemorial, Yurok people have placed fire on the land to maintain a balanced ecosystem. In the past century, settlers banned fire, and the environment and people have suffered. Now, Yurok people are returning fire medicine to heal the land.

Roni Jo Draper, Ph.D., is a member of the Yurok tribe, from the village of Weitchpec on the Klamath River. Her experience as a queer Yurok woman has influenced her work as a teacher, scholar, and artist. Draper explores storytelling practices as a way to understand humanity.

Marissa Lila Kongao is a multicultural documentarian and psychedelic healer who was raised in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Thailand. Their work as a director and producer for film and television centers marginalized perspectives who use storytelling to heal.

Cris Gris (Director) with forward (U.S.A.): After moving to a working-class part of the Hamptons, Latinx teen Ana finds herself drawn to enigmatic Bella, who spends her summer nights roller-skating. As their romance deepens, Ana must navigate the tender terrain of love and identity in a world that feels irreparably divided.

Cris Gris is a Mexican filmmaker whose work has screened at Berlinale, Cannes, and Morelia (Special Jury Award). A Sundance Institute and Film Independent Fellow, she’s directed for HBO Max’s Vgly, ViX’s She Walks Alone, and Amazon Prime Video’s Cometierra (Eartheater).

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 for a young 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, writer, and filmmaker, mainly known for her work in the groundbreaking series Reservation Dogs. Jacobs is currently writing her debut feature film, High Steel, which was selected as part of the 2025 Sundance Institute Directors Lab.

Masami Kawai (Writer-director and Producer) with Valley of the Tall Grass (U.S.A.): When a TV/VCR combo set is thrown out, it survives and circulates through the lives of Indigenous families. In this multicharacter tapestry, rambunctious sisters, struggling artists, a metal scrapper, and his skater daughter intersect and find connection through this seemingly obsolete object.

Masami Kawai is a Los Angeles–born filmmaker who lives in Eugene, Oregon. She’s of Ryukyuan descent from the island of Amami. Her work integrates issues of race, Indigeneity, class, and what it means to be an immigrant/settler in the United States.

Khaula Haider Malik (Writer-director) with Alien Nation (U.S.A.): After retiring, a Pakistani immigrant and his wife pursue a mysterious light in the skies over America. As they meet fellow seekers, their search for alien life reveals the distance between them — and what it means to navigate love, belonging, and wonder in a place that may never feel like home.

Khaula Malik tells character-driven stories grounded in humor, eccentricity, and pathos. She co-produced Apple TV+’s Girls State; is in post-production on her first feature documentary, The Nobles; and is currently filming No. 1 Fan, a documentary about an NFL memorabilia collector.

Mackie Mallison (Writer-director and Producer) with Everything Must Go (U.S.A.): A Japanese American family united by anxiety disorders and vivid daydreams struggles to let go of their dying matriarch.

Mackie Mallison is a filmmaker living in Brooklyn, New York. He is a Sundance Institute fellow, Film at Lincoln Center fellow, and one of Filmmaker magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film.” Mallison’s short films have screened at SXSW, NYFF, Palm Springs, and BFI and were acquired by The Criterion Channel.

Efraín Mojica (Co-director) and Rebecca Zweig (Co-director and Producer) with Jaripeo (Mexico, U.S.A.): At the rural jaripeos — a regional style of rodeo — in Michoacán, Mexico, a hypermasculine tradition is rife with hidden queer encounters.

Efraín Mojica is a photographer, filmmaker, and performance artist from Michoacán whose work has shown in galleries internationally. Their filmmaking is heavily influenced by their work as a conceptual artist, which explores the translation and interpolation of light, sound, and matter.

Rebecca Zweig is a filmmaker, journalist, and poet based in Mexico City. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Nation, and Nexos, among others. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and her filmmaking is shaped by her poetic practice.

Steve Pargett (Producer) with Blacked Out Dreams (U.S.A.): Over seven years, three Black teenagers come of age in Flint as they navigate school closures and a city in crisis. As they step into adulthood, they chase dreams, discover love, and search for belonging.

Steve Pargett is a producer and creative strategist known for powerful, community-driven storytelling. His work spans film, design, and social impact, amplifying underrepresented voices and using creativity to challenge perceptions and inspire change.

Huda Razzak (Writer-director) with Home of the Birds (U.S.A.): A small nightingale bird and her grandpa, both unable to fly, embark on a mythical cross-country journey with a human family to their hometown in 1963 Iraq, with the hopes of reuniting with her long-lost parents.

Huda Razzak is an animation filmmaker based in Atlanta whose parents immigrated from Iraq. In 2022, her short film The Ocean Duck won the Oscar-qualifying Jury Award for Best Animated Short at NYICFF. Razzak has also produced and directed content for Sesame Street and recently worked in production at Netflix Animation.

Walter Thompson-Hernández (Writer-director) with If I Go Will They Miss Me (U.S.A.): Twelve-year-old Lil Ant struggles to connect with his emotionally distant father when he begins to see surreal, spectral visions of Black boys drifting around his neighborhood in South Central, Los Angeles.

Walter Thompson-Hernández wrote and directed the short film If I Go Will They Miss Me (2022 Sundance Film Festival), which was awarded the Short Film Jury Award: U.S. Fiction presented by XRM Media. He recently developed the feature-length adaptation with the support of the Sundance Institute Directors and Screenwriters Labs.