Introducing the 2024–2026 Firelight Media Documentary Lab Fellows

Firelight Media’s flagship 18-month fellowship program supporting emerging filmmakers is now in its thirteenth cycle.

Firelight Media today announced the newest cohort of fellows selected to the Firelight Documentary Lab, the organization’s longest-running artist program. Firelight Media is proud to present this group of fellows, who represent some of the most talented and imaginative emerging filmmakers currently working in the United States.

Firelight Media Co-Founders Stanley Nelson and Marcia Smith launched the Documentary Lab in 2009 to support underrepresented filmmakers working on their first or second feature-length documentary films. Today, the Lab provides filmmakers with customized mentorship from prominent leaders in the documentary field, professional development opportunities, artist retreats, and networking opportunities. Firelight Media also awards a $25,000 grant for each project accepted into the Documentary Lab.

The projects the new class brings to the Fellowship include stories of Palestinian families attempting to rebuild ordinary lives in the midst of extraordinary violence in their homeland; chosen and biological families navigating the complexities of incarceration while attempting to recover and forge new bonds; and stylistically bold and visionary films incorporating elements of fantasy and dance.

“As we approach Firelight Media’s 25th anniversary in 2025, we continue to reflect on the powerful network of filmmakers we’ve built through our artist programs,” said Lucy Mukerjee, Director of the Documentary Lab. “We’re thrilled to welcome this impressive new cohort of filmmakers to the Firelight family. These fellows’ projects and the breadth and urgency of their subjects speak to Firelight’s enduring mission to support underrepresented filmmakers in telling their stories, and the stories of their communities, while advancing the art of documentary.”

The 2024–2026 Documentary Lab fellows and their projects are:

• Shaima Al Tamimi and Mayar Hamdan, The Myth of Mahmoud
  Filmmaker Maya Hamden captures the lives of her Palestinian family, who made Doha their home 60 years ago. Led by her mother Amal, who is approaching retirement, the family once again grapples with the dilemma of whether to move or fight to remain.
• Siyi Chen and Hansen Lin, Queens Ballroom (working title)
  In a New York ballroom, Asian American immigrants are transported through dance, revisiting the worlds they left behind and lives created anew.
• Rachael DeCruz, Nine
  After being sent to prison for life at 18, Gerald — also known as “Nine” — met Henry, who raised him into the man he is today. Using the lessons Henry taught him, Gerald organized his way out of prison. Now, Gerald is on a mission to bring his 83-year-old “Pops” home while there’s still time. Illuminating how love can serve as an act of resistance, Nine is a necessary portrait of Black life in the American Northwest and a poetic exploration of family, community, and masculinity.
• Gabriela Díaz Arp, Matininó
  This hybrid documentary is about a multi-generational family of Puerto Rican women transforming their experience with violence into a fantasy film.
• Sekiya Dorsett, 20 Years of Longing
  A Caribbean lesbian couple reflects on their two-decade journey of love and resilience, navigating societal and familial challenges as they strive to build a family in an ever-changing America.
• Hana Elias, If These Stones Could Talk
  Nassib and Maha found each other in diaspora and shared a dream to build a home in Nassib’s Palestinian town. Their daughter Hana documents this intricate love story between the family and the land as they revive an ancestral garden and sow new beginnings.
• Tommy Franklin, You Don’t Know My Name
  After being separated from his incarcerated mother at birth, filmmaker Tommy Franklin searches for her identity while navigating his way through systems designed to keep him in the dark.
• Milton Guillén, My Skin and I
  A son watches as his father, an exiled Nicaraguan music producer, as he plots revenge for his unjust imprisonment and expulsion. The child exists in a waking dream, and through his gaze, the film blends past, present, and a narrative of its own making.
• Eli Hiller, Becoming Us
  Five donor-conceived siblings, their mothers, and their newfound biological father unite through a DNA test, forging a path to redefine family. Together, they recreate childhood memories on home videos to heal emotional wounds, embrace their Filipino-American heritage, reconnect with ancestral roots, and reshape their shared identity.
• Jason Fitzroy Jeffers, The First Plantation (working title)
  A documentary on reparations becomes unexpectedly personal when a filmmaker returns home to Barbados to tell the story of Drax Hall, the oldest continuously owned and operated sugar plantation in the Americas, recently inherited by a wealthy British politician descended from the slave master who founded it.
• Roni Jo Draper and Marissa Lila, Good Fire (working title)
  Since time immemorial, Yurok people have placed fire on the land to maintain a healthy and balanced ecosystem. Over the past 100 years, settlers banned fire, and the environment and the people have suffered. Now, Yurok people are returning fire medicine to the land in order to heal the world.
• Amada Torruella, Vena Acuática
  An ecofeminist anthology of El Salvador, Vena Acuática takes us on a tender journey through the intimate relationships women keep with water and territory, including the stories of lives intertwined with migration and ecocide. This film highlights the critical intersection of science, culture, and environmental memory.

The 2024–2026 Documentary Lab Fellows were selected from a pool of more than 300 applicants. The review process included the work of a dedicated selection committee and culminated in final selections by an Advisory Board comprising prominent documentary industry leaders, including Opal H. Bennett; Senior Producer at POV and Executive Producer of POV Shorts; Jannet Nunez, Senior Manager of Content & Development at ITVS; independent filmmakers Felix Endara and Jacqueline Olive, and Jon-Sesrie Goff, Program Officer, Creativity and Free Expression at Ford Foundation/JustFilms; the latter two being alumni of the Documentary Lab.

Firelight Media has supported more than 130 filmmakers of color through the Documentary Lab over the last 15 years as part of its mission to make the nonfiction film industry — and public media in particular — more representative of the audience it serves. Recent Documentary Lab alumni include Set Hernandez, director of unseen and the winner of the Truer Than Fiction Award from the Independent Spirit Awards earlier this year; Silvia Del Carmen Castaños and Estefanía “Beba” Contreras, whose film Hummingbirds won the Grand Prix at the Berlinale in 2023; and Eloise King, whose documentary Shadow Scholars recently had its world premiere at the BFI London Film Festival and received Special Mention for the Grierson Award.

About Firelight Media

Firelight Media, which will celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2025, is a nonprofit organization that supports, resources, and advocates on behalf of documentary filmmakers of color. Firelight Media’s artist programs include the Documentary Lab, an 18-month fellowship for underrepresented filmmakers; Groundwork Regional Lab, which supports underrepresented filmmakers in the American South, midwest, and U.S. Territories; and the William Greaves Funds for mid-career filmmakers. Firelight Media also produces digital short films, including the forthcoming collection HOMEGROWN: A Part Of/Apart From, for PBS Digital Studios, and season 3 of In the Making, with PBS’ American Masters.