THE ITVS INCUBATOR FUND

The ITVS Incubator Fund offers early development support and a three- to six-month incubator for nonfiction features and web series crafted for public media’s streaming platforms, like YouTube and the PBS app. Selected documentarians receive funding, hands-on guidance, and a collaborative space to strengthen program materials—from concept outlines to visual samples—while growing their creative instincts and craft.

Click here to learn more.

Deadline: January 30, 2026

CHICKEN & EGG RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT GRANT

The Chicken and Egg Research & Development Grant supports directors who are planning for their next feature-length film, providing financial support during a filmmaking stage that is too often unpaid and unsupported. 

A total of $450,000 USD will be awarded in the following grant amounts:

$10,000 USD grants for Research

$20,000 USD grants for Development

Click here to learn more.

Deadline: February 4th. 2026

SUNDANCE INSTITUTE IGNITE X ADOBE FELLOWSHIP

The Sundance Institute and Adobe are teaming up to find the next 10 Sundance Institute Ignite x Adobe Fellows—emerging filmmakers (ages 18 to 25) who are creating stories that bring their passion, voice, and perspective to life. 

The yearlong Sundance Institute Ignite x Adobe Fellowship is open to emerging documentary and fiction filmmakers from across the globe between ages 18 and 25. The fellowship begins with a weeklong in-person lab at MassMoca in North Adams, Massachusetts. Throughout the year, filmmakers will work with a Sundance Institute alumni mentor, receive a $5,000 artist grant , participate as a cohort in monthly webinars, workshops and workshares throughout the year,

and receive a complimentary Adobe Creative Cloud 12-month membership, where Creative Cloud is available.

Click here to learn more.

Deadline: Februrary 12, 2026.

2026 JEWISH FILM INSTITUTE GRANT

Filmmakers, applications are open for the 2026 JFI Grants cycle! The Jewish Film Institute (@sfjewishfilm) provides crucial finishing funds to diverse projects that expand understanding of Jewish life, culture, and identity worldwide.

Click here to learn more.

Early Deadline: February 15, 2026 

CUTTING THROUGH ROCKS NOMINATED FOR ACADEMY AWARD

Congratulations to the CUTTING THROUGH ROCKS team for their Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature Film!

CUTTING THROUGH ROCKS tells the story of Sara Shahverdi, the first elected councilwoman of her deeply conservative Iranian village, and a divorced, motorcycle riding, former midwife. Tenacious and not easily intimidated, Sara is determined to uplift her community and put an end to the empty promises and laziness perpetuated by local councilmen over the years. But it is as an advocate for the girls and women in her village where she encounters the greatest opposition.

Among other things, she aims to break long-held patriarchal traditions by training teenage girls to ride motorcycles and stopping child marriages. When accusations arise questioning Sara’s intentions to empower the girls, her identity is put in turmoil.

SPENCER PRIDE UPDATES

Spencer Pride, produced and directed by Mitchell Teplitsky, has entered its editing phase. The editor is the award-winning filmmaker Laura Paglin. The team is aiming to be finished in June 2026.

Laura Paglin's film This is Pike County will be screening at the Tivoli Theater in Spencer, IN - the location of the Spencer Pride doc — on Jan 24th, with Mitchell Teplitsky moderating the Q&A.

SPENCER PRIDE tells the story of how a small group of LGBTQ+ folks and allies built a thriving all-volunteer pride organization that’s brought people together, helped revitalize the town, and become a leader in the LGBTQ+ movement in rural America.

TRIPLE DECKER: A NEW ENGLAND LOVE STORY SCREENING

TRIPLE DECKER A NEW ENGLAND LOVE STORY, which was directed by Marc Levitt and edited by CID filmmaker DAVID WELLS, will be having a free screening on Saturday, February 14th at Providence Public Library.

Click here for registration and additional information.

The New England triple-decker's history is a microcosm of the American urban experience. It is a story of paradox and transformation, where a simple architectural form became a powerful symbol of immigration and community, fostering a sense of pride and shared identity. Triple Decker: A New England Love Story is both a key cultural artifact in the building's recent history as well as an act of cultural reclamation.

FOUR RATIONAL PEOPLE UPDATES

The FOUR RATIONAL PEOPLE team is now editing the TV cut for the project, and is excited to announce that the film has gained distribution through Juno Films.

The world premiere is expected to take place in the spring of 2026 in New York City, followed by a limited theatrical release in the US. Additional dates and details will be announced next year alongside a press release. 

Goethe once said that a string quartet is like “a conversation between FOUR RATIONAL PEOPLE,” and for the members of the Emerson String Quartet, that conversation is coming to a bittersweet ending as they embark on their final season of a fifty-year history that includes 9 GRAMMY Awards and thousands of concerts. Interweaving vivid memories of the Emerson Quartet’s past with delicate observations of life on the road in the weeks and days before disbanding, FOUR RATIONAL PEOPLE, directed by TRISTAN COOK and produced by BIRGIT GERNBOCK, explores the group’s difficult decision to walk away from the things that they cherish most in life: the music they play and the friends they hold dear.

DIAMOND DIPLOMACY UPDATES

2025 was an eventful year for DIAMOND DIPLOMACY, produced and directed by YURIKO ROMER. The project's NEH grant was unexpectedly cancelled by DOGE in April, however the team was able to close the funding gap following a series of interviews and news articles about Arts defunding. EP Glen S. Fukushima was particularly helpful in helping to close the gap.

A sneak preview of the film was shown at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in May, and the world premiere took place at the Mill Valley Film Festival. The film received the Better Angels Fellowship and got the Runner-up Library of Congress, Lavine, Ken Burns Prize for Film.

DIAMOND DIPLOMACY is an hour-long HD documentary that explores the relationship between the United States and Japan through a shared love of baseball. Using the baseball life of Masanori “Mashi” Murakami (the first Japanese major leaguer) as a touchstone, DIAMOND DIPLOMACY reveals a surprising, obscure and often-controversial duality that has existed throughout this history. Dedication to the game has been tossed between the U.S. and Japan since the opening of Japan to the West in the late 1800s, and mirrors profound shifts in diplomacy and conflict between the two nations.

CURED SCREENING AT NEW YORK LAW SCHOOL

New York Law School will host a screening of CURED, produced and directed by BENNETT SINGER and PATRICK SAMMON, On Wednesday, March 25, 2026, from 6 to 8 pm, at the Wilf Impact Center for Public Interest Law.

Following the screening, New York Law School Professor Emeritus Arthur Leonard will join CURED co-director Patrick Sammon and Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, Senior Counsel and Health Care Strategist at Lambda Legal, for a conversation about the film

Click here to RSVP for this free event. 

CURED is an Emmy-nominated documentary that tells the story of the activists who achieved a pivotal yet little-known milestone in LGBTQ+ history: the American Psychiatric Association’s 1973 decision to remove homosexuality from its manual of mental disorders. The film offers a vivid portrait of grassroots activism, courage, and collective action that reshaped medicine, law, and society.

UNBOWED UPDATES

UNBOWED, produced and directed by MAE GAMMINO and DAVID H. WELLS, premiered at the African International Human Rights Festival at Freedom Park, Lagos, on 9 December 2025.

Ocean State Media (RI PBS) television broadcasted the RI premiere of UNBOWED on Friday, January 11, 2026 at 8:00 P.M. Additional broadcasts will occur through 2026. 

UNBOWED is a feature-length documentary filmed over the course of a pivotal year in Rhode Island refugee Omar Bah’s life. It is based in an intimate and human world through an observational lens focused on Omar Bah, a refugee and social entrepreneur who has built a new life in America around helping other recently arrived refugees through his grassroots socioeconomic development agency.

WAKING FAMAGUSTA

WAKING FAMAGUSTA, produced and directed by VASIA MARKIDES, is currently nearing completion, and the team is set to release the project's 2026 trailer. 

Click here for an advanced viewing of the trailer.

For half a century, the seaside district of Varosha in Famagusta, Cyprus, once a glamorous resort and now known as the island’s “ghost city” has remained suspended in time. Abandoned after the Turkish invasion of 1974, its hotels and homes crumble behind barbed wire while nature quietly reclaims the streets. For filmmaker Vasia Markides, whose family fled during the war, Varosha is both a personal wound and a site of possibility. WAKING FAMAGUSTA follows her journey back to this forbidden landscape, weaving together intimate memory, archival fragments, and the poetry of soldiers who patrol its streets.

To learn more about the film, click here for an interview with producer and director VASIA MARKIDES.

Please note that donations are particularly welcome at this juncture, as additional funds are needed for color correction, sound mixing, and archival material.

ADVENTURES IN MISCARRIAGE UPDATES

ADVENTURES IN MISCARRIAGE director and producer, CHERYL FURJANIC, was recently invited to participate in Feminist Futures, an international multimedia platform hosting global feminist conversations.

Click here to read a dialogue between Cheryl and Victoria Browne, a UK-based feminist philosopher and author whose work focuses on miscarriage and reproductive loss about Cheryl’s CID-sponsored film ADVENTURES IN MISCARRIAGE.

ADVENTURES IN MISCARRIAGE is a moving and entertaining (yes, entertaining) documentary by Emmy-nominated filmmaker CHERYL FURJANIC that pulls back the curtain on miscarriage. After enduring a second-trimester pregnancy loss in a hotel bathroom three thousand miles from home, this heartbroken lesbian filmmaker navigates her ongoing grief using dark humor, surrealist vignettes, and absurdist fantasy to reveal how far we have to go to improve miscarriage care in the United States.

BEFORE THE MOON FALLS UPDATES

BEFORE THE MOON FALLS, directed and produced by KIMBERLEE BASSFORD, won the Best Made in Hawai‘i Feature award at the Hawai‘i International Film Festival in October, with the jury describing it "a profound meditation on the fragile line between creativity and madness" and "an outstanding example of Hawai‘i storytelling at its most personal, urgent, and artful." The film had sold-out screenings in Honolulu and Kapolei and at the San Diego Asian Film Festival. Watch the trailer here.

The film will next screen in competition at the Festival International du Film documentaire Océanian (FIFO) in Tahiti, DOCUTAH and Doc Edge Singapore. The project is also raising funds for an impact campaign focused on mental health awareness and education. Donations are welcome!

In May 2024, news of a murder in the Polynesian nation of Samoa rocked the Pacific. The perpetrator—Sia Figiel—was a trailblazing novelist and poet who won international acclaim for being the first to write about the difficult realities Samoan girls and women face. The victim was her friend, who was also a poet.

This film was a portrait of Sia Figiel eight years in the making when the murder happened. Now it offers an in-depth and thought-provoking look at Sia’s journey leading up to the tragedy, illuminating the complexity of untreated mental illness and the devastating toll it can exact on individuals, families and entire communities.

FATHER FIGURES UPDATES

FATHER FIGURES, directed by EMMA MILLER and produced by FLORRIE PRIEST, has reached a rough cut thanks to new funding via a Jewish Story Partners Reprise Grant, as well as several other grants / investments that will be announced soon.

In the meantime, the team is looking for completion funds to support a final pickup shoot and post-production finishing.

After retiring from a long career as an actor and theater director, Bruce Miller begins recording and sharing deeply intimate videos featuring conversations with his growing collection of ventriloquist’s dummies. For his daughter Emma, these videos offer a strange portal into her father’s psyche, making her realize how little she actually knows her dad. What is the most authentic version of Bruce, whose external-facing persona has always veered toward the performative — and why is he deriving fulfillment from long talks with invented characters that he, in fact, speaks for? FATHER FIGURES culminates as Bruce and Emma write, rehearse, and film hybridized scenes using these dummies, allowing them to share more deeply than ever before and forge a new vision for their relationship.

YOUR TOUCH MAKES OTHERS INVISIBLE UPDATES

YOUR TOUCH MAKES OTHERS INVISIBLE director RAJEE SAMARASINGHE won the Truer Than Fiction Independent Spirit award. Click here to learn more.

The film had its final screenings in LA at Vidiots Microcinema on January 16th and 17th.

The surreal tale of a spellbound Tamil factory worker who loses her son to a supernatural entity. Fusing allegorical fiction and investigative documentary, YOUR TOUCH MAKES OTHERS INVISIBLE is a lyrical investigation of missing persons in a small post-war community in northern Sri Lanka, collaboratively enacted by impacted locals.

GLENDORA UPDATES

GLENDORA, directed by ISABELLE ARMAND, was selected by Dances With Films: NY2026.

The film had its world premiere Friday, January 16, at 4:45 PM at Regal Cinemas Union Square, NYC.

In the heart of the Mississippi Delta, the village of Glendora may seem quiet and remote. But beneath its stillness lies a vibrant, tightly knit African-American community whose strength, resilience, and creativity thrive despite chronic scarcity. GLENDORA is the result of five years of close collaboration between filmmaker and townspeople—an intimate portrait of life where economic fragility meets profound cultural wealth.

TONY FOSTER: PAINTING AT THE EDGE UPDATES

TONY FOSTER: PAINTING AT THE EDGE, directed by DAVID SCHENDEL and produced by JOE PAVLO, premiered in London at the Doc’ N Roll Film Festival with two sold out screenings and was followed up by a run at the Bertha Dochouse. 

The film has so far received positive reviews in the BBC, The London Times and the Guardian. The team is currently waiting for news of an International premiere in North America. Click here to read the London Times' review of the film.

Traveling mostly on foot, by raft or canoe, English artist Tony Foster paints landscapes in the remotest of areas often risking his life to bring awareness to climate change and wilderness destruction. He is the only artist to paint Mount Everest from all three sides and nearly died in the process. As an artist he is a bit of an outsider – as an environmentalist he offers a positive spin on activism. Award winning filmmaker David C. Schendel follows Tony into the wilderness to find his source of inspiration in this exotically beautiful and timely documentary.

JULIA VINOGRAD BETWEEN SPIRIT AND STONE

Director KEN PAUL ROSENTHAL screened a 25-minute preview of his in-progress feature documentary, JULIA VINORGRAD: BETWEEN SPIRIT AND STONE, at the Splet Theater in the historic Fantasy Studios building in Berkeley, CA.

Listen to Ken describe how he prepared his film for the screening in this short video, followed by a 3-minute film excerpt about Julia’s poetry that he previewed at the event.

Iconic Berkeley street poet Julia Vinograd emerged from the 1960’s Free Speech Movement fighting state oppression with bubbles instead of bricks. Eccentric and indomitable, often subsisting on one meal a day, the “Bubble Lady of Telegraph Avenue” pushed through poverty and polio to produce more than 70 volumes of poetry, winning an American Book Award, a Pushcart Prize, and Berkeley’s first Lifetime Achievement Award. A lifelong champion of marginalized people and an enduring symbol of non-violent resistance through art, Vinograd’s untold story is presented through the vivid historical prisms of Berkeley’s People’s Park movement, the 1980’s post-Beat Bay Area literary scene, and her own witty, incisive, deeply humane poetry.

THE NATURAL STATE UPDATES

JANE CAMPION has joined the NATURAL STATE team as an executive producer. KEITH WILSON has joined as producer, and RIK CHAUBET (editor of Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat) as editor.

THE NATURAL STATE's director, MATTHEW DOUGHERTY, was recently nominated for an IDA award for best original score for a soundtrack I made for the documentary Shuffle, which also won best doc at SXSW earlier this year.

Groomed from birth in India to attain enlightenment, U.G. spent the first half of his life on a ruthless quest for self-realization. In 1967, a life-changing transformation brought his search to a sudden end, but it was not the enlightenment he had been searching for. For the next 40 years, seekers and cynics flocked to hear his unique brand of anti-discourse THE NATURAL STATE is an examination of the search for the Self in the age of home video. Juxtaposing the larger history of the search for enlightenment with U.G.’s personal story, the film confronts the aesthetic implications of portraying a self that may or may not exist.

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BOB"S QUEERS: THE LIFE AND ACTIVISM OF BOB KOHLER UPDATES

DAN GOLDES (5 Blocks, 2019) is in pre-production on BOB'S QUEERS: THE LIFE AND ACTIVISM OF BOB KOHLER, a feature-length documentary about the New York City activist (1926-2007) who, despite his middle-class upbringing, became a potent voice for LGBTQ rights, AIDS activism, and civil rights, and against police brutality. From witnessing the Stonewall Rebellion to co-founding the Gay Liberation Front, America's first radical gay rights organization, Bob was involved in every important activist movement of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. He was a mentor to dozens of activists who are still on the frontlines in today's battles. MARC SMOLOWITZ is consulting producer.

Click here to visit the film's instagram.

THE WILD GIRL OF BRUSHVALLEY TOWNSHIP

THE WILD GIRL OF BRUSHVALLEY TOWNSHIP (which is a short standalone story created from material collected from CID sponsored film THE FATE OF HUMAN BEINGS) is now streaming on PBS. The program is sponsored by Connecticut Public Television, but viewable across the country through local PBS stations. Click here to watch the film on PBS.

THE WILD GIRL OF BRUSHVALLEY TOWNSHIP tells the story of Minnie Adams, one of the estimated one million people who died in American mental institutions. Through speculative animation drawing from documentary material, the film reclaims Minnie’s story.

WATER FOR LIFE UPDATES

WATER FOR LIFE, directed by WILL PARINELLO and produced by RICK TEJADA-FLORES MARIA and JOSE CALDERON, just received the Best Feature Documentary Award at the Somos Human Rights Film Festival in San José, Costa Rica.

Bullfrog Films, the film's distributor, has made the film available for educators, students and public library collections. The film is accompanied by an education guide created with Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, our education impact partner.

Water For Life featured in Amnesty International’s 2025 Write For Rights campaign. The film is available to all 150 offices and chapters around the world to inspire individuals to write letters in defense of nine defenders featured in Amnesty’s 24th annual campaign.

The connection between WATER FOR LIFE and Amnesty International's campaign is profound. AI's advocacy seeks justice for the late Honduran environmental defender, Juan López, tragically killed in 2024. In parallel, our film highlights the courageous work of Honduran environmental and Indigenous rights advocate Berta Cáceres, who was assassinated in March 2016.

WATER FOR LIFE explores the collision of water rights, Indigenous beliefs, and resource extraction through the lives of three Latin American community leaders. The right to clean water is a global issue—in Latin America it has become a matter of life and death.

WATER FOR LIFE is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video in the US, UK and Austalia.

Watch the trailer!