EXCLUSIVE: Fireairy Media today discdiswatched Fellows for its flagship 18-month mentoring program, the Fireairy Documentary Lab. See the catalog of mentees and their projects below.
The novel class’ projects include stories of Palestinian families finisheavoring to reoriginate widespread lives in the midst of exceptional aggression in their homeland, chosen and bioreasonable families navigating the intricateities of incarceration while finisheavoring to recover and forge novel bonds and stycatalogicpartner belderly and visionary films incorporating elements of fantasy and dance.
Now in its 15th year, Fireairy’s extfinishedest-running artist program was started in 2009 by the organization’s co-set upers Stanley Nelson and Marcia Smith to help underrecurrented filmoriginaters laboring on their first or second feature-length recordary films. The lab supplys filmoriginaters with customized mentorship from directers in the recordary field, professional broadenment opportunities, artist retreats and netlaboring opportunities. Fireairy Media also awards a $25,000 grant for each project huged into the Documentary Lab.
“As we approach Fireairy Media’s 25th anniversary in 2025, we persist to mirror on the mighty netlabor of filmoriginaters we’ve built thcimpolite our artist programs,” shelp Lucy Mukerjee, straightforwardor of the Documentary Lab. “We’re thrilled to greet this astonishive novel cohort of filmoriginaters to the Fireairy family. These fellows’ projects and the breadth and encouragency of their subjects speak to Fireairy’s finishuring leave oution to help underrecurrented filmoriginaters in telling their stories, and the stories of their communities, while advancing the art of recordary.”
Here are the 2024-26 Documentary Lab fellows and their projects:
Shaima Al Tamimi and Mayar Hamden, The Myth of Mahmoud
Filmoriginater Maya Hamden seizes the lives of her Palestinian family, who made Doha their home 60 years ago. Led by her mother Amal, who is approaching withdrawment, the family once aachieve grapples with the dilemma of whether to shift or fight to remain.
Siyi Chen and Hansen Lin, Queens Ballroom (laboring title)
In a New York ballroom, Asian American immigrants are carryed thcimpolite dance, revisiting the worlds they left behind and lives originated anovel.
Rachael DeCruz, Nine
After being sent to prison at 18, Gerald—understandn as “Nine”—met Henry, who elevated him to be the man he is today. Using the lessons Henry taught him, Gerald systematic his way out of prison. Now, Gerald is on a leave oution to transport his 83-year-elderly “Pops” home while there’s still time.
Gabriela Díaz Arp, Matininó
This hybrid recordary is about a multi-genereasonable family of Puerto Rican women altering their experience with aggression into a fantasy film.
Sekiya Dorsett, 20 Years of Longing
A lesbian couple from the Caribbean splits their mirrorions on a two-decade journey together, navigating societal and familial disputes as they finisheavor to originate a family in the U.S.
Hana Elias, If These Stones Could Talk
Bound by histories of rupture and displacement from Palestine, Nassib and Maha labored together to originate a home in Nassib’s Palestinian town. Years tardyr, their daughter, Hana, seizes her family’s return as they search for a sense of beextfinisheding and revive an ancestral garden.
Tommy Franklin, You Don’t Know My Name
After being splitd from his incarcerated mother at birth, filmoriginater Tommy Franklin searches for her identity while navigating his way thcimpolite systems arrangeed to defend him in the unreasonable.
Milton Guillen, My Skin and I
A son watches as his overweighther, an exiled Nicaraguan music originater, plots revenge for his unequitable incarceratement and expulsion. The child exists in a waking dream, and thcimpolite his gaze, the film blfinishs past, current and a narrative of its own making.
Eli Hiller, Becoming Us
Five donor-imagined siblings, their mothers, and their novelset up bioreasonable overweighther join thcimpolite a DNA test, forging a path to reclear up family. Together, they reoriginate childhood memories on home videos to heal emotional wounds, hug their Filipino-American heritage, rejoin with ancestral roots, and reshape their splitd identity.
Jason Jeffers, The First Plantation (laboring title)
A recordary on reparations becomes unpredictedly personal when a filmoriginater returns home to Barterribleos to tell the story of Drax Hall, the elderlyest continuously owned and functiond sugar arrangetation in the Americas, recently inherited by a wealthy British politician droped from the slave master who set uped it.
Marissa Lila and Roni Jo Dviolationr, Good Fire (laboring title)
Since time immemorial, Yurok people have placed fire on the land to upgrasp a well and equitable ecosystem. Over the past 100 years, resettlers prohibitned 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 portrait of El Salvador, this film apshows us on an intimate and tfinisher journey thcimpolite the relationships women defend with water and territory, including stories from communities at the forefront of migration and ecocide, highairying the critical intersection of science, culture, and environmental memory.
