Joshua Altman is one of the premier editors in the documentary landscape and recently made the leap from editing to directing feature films. The goal of his Concordia Fellowship is to support this transition while continuing to develop and grow the vital voice that he has brought to the documentary world.

YOU ARE HERE, Altman’s fellowship project and his directing debut, is a feature documentary about young men in Chicago who are attempting to break through the cycles of personal trauma and gun violence that have plagued their communities and lives. He is co-directing the film with Bing Liu, whose 2018 feature MINDING THE GAP Altman edited.

MINDING THE GAP was one of six films Altman edited shown at The Sundance Film Festival over the years. In 2018, MINDING THE GAP won the Breakthrough Filmmaking award and (that same year) THE PRICE OF FREE won the Grand Jury Prize. In 2017, he edited THE FINAL YEAR (HBO). Other editing credits include WE LIVE IN PUBLIC (Grand Jury Prize, 2009 Sundance Film Festival), THE TILLMAN STORY (Shortlist for Best Documentary Feature, 2011 Academy Awards), and BONES BRIGADE: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY. He also wrote and edited CODE BLACK (Best Documentary Feature, 2013 Los Angeles Film Festival), which was later adapted into a CBS series that ran for three seasons.

As a storyteller, Altman is constantly asking himself the same question: Is it truthful? While he loves films that offer an escape, the ones that resonate with him the most, and the ones he strives to make, are those that paint an honest picture of who we are and challenge us to grow.

Garrett Bradley (b. 1986, New York, NY) is an American artist whose film and photography work utilizes narrative, documentary, and experimental modes to address themes such as race, class, familial relationships, social justice, southern culture, and the history of film in the United States. Often inspired by the real-life stories of her subjects, Bradley takes a collaborative and research-based approach to filmmaking. Whether through deep dives into historical archives, in-depth dialogues prompted by Craigslist want-ads, or an extended engagement with the communities and individuals she seeks to represent, her research takes multiple forms—resulting in works that combine both scripted and improvised scenes to explore the space between fact and fiction and the larger socio political significance of everyday moments.​

Bradley’s professional career as a visual storyteller began in high school as a concert photographer, during which her work was published in Rolling Stone Magazine​​, VIBE​ ​and The New Yorker​ ​. Her debut feature length film, BELOW DREAMS,​ which followed the lives of three people making their way back to New Orleans in search of a better life, premiered at the TribeCa Film Festival in 2014. Bradley became known for her lyrical, hybridized filmmaking style described by New York Magazine​ ​critic Bilge Ebiri as “a slow-burn beauty…improvisatory, glancing, gorgeous and as much about the textured quality and imagery as it is about character development or class conflict.” That same year Bradley’s subsequent feature COVER ME​ was conceived for The International Arts Biennial Prospect 3, curated by Artistic Director Franklin Sirmans and received the Artadia Prospect 3 Artist Award. COVER ME​​ later went on to premiere at The International Film Festival Rotterdam.

Bradley’s short films and feature-length projects have been exhibited internationally at museums, festivals and platforms including The Getty Museum, The Hammer Museum, The Sundance Film Festival, The TribeCa Film Festival, The New Orleans Film Festival, Festival du Nouveau Cinema Montreal, The Rotterdam Film Festival, DokuFest, Norwegian Film Festival, Nantucket Film Festival, Rooftop Films, The LA Film Festival, Hot Docs, SXSW, The US Embassy Tel Aviv, The New York Times OpDocs, Field of Vision, the OWN Network for television series QUEEN SUGAR, and more. Bradley is the co-founder of Creative Council, an artist-led after-school program supported by The New Orleans Video Access Center (NOVAC) aimed at developing strong college portfolios and applications for students attending public high schools in New Orleans.

She has been honored with the 2019 Prix de Rome and the 2017 Sundance Jury Prize for the short film ALONE​​, which became an Oscar Contender for short nonfiction filmmaking. Bradley’s work ranges across a variety of spaces including her Second Unit Directing work on Ava DuVernay’s WHEN THEY SEE US and the 2019 Whitney Biennial. Her first solo exhibition AMERICAN RHAPSODY ​was curated by Rebecca Matalon at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston (CAMH) in 2019. In January of 2020, Bradley became the first black woman to receive an award for ‘Best Director’ at the Sundance Film Festival for her first feature length documentary, TIME.​ ​Projects:​ Garrett Bradley​, will be the filmmakers first New York solo exhibition scheduled for fall of 2020 and will be presented as part of a multiyear partnership between The Museum of Modern Art and the Studio Museum in Harlem and will feature a multichannel video installation of AMERICA​ ​(2019).

Isabel Castro is a Mexican-American filmmaker who aims to shine a light on civil rights injustice and into the hidden corners of the immigrant experience in America. The Concordia Fellowship is facilitating her growth from a multimedia journalist and cinematographer into a nonfiction director.

Her Fellowship project and feature-length documentary debut, MIJA, centers Doris Muñoz, a young, determined music manager from Boyle Heights. Disillusioned with an industry that didn’t reflect her community, Doris started her own company, Mija Management. What started as a scrappy startup, has blossomed into a viable business where she now supports her undocumented parents and is recognized as one of the key figures in the burgeoning Chicanx music scene.

Previously, Castro directed and lensed USA v SCOTT (2020 Tribeca Film Festival), DARLIN (2019 Tribeca Film Festival), and the Netflix docu-series PANDEMIC. Darlin was nominated for a News Emmy in 2020 as part of the New York Times’ OpDoc series “FROM HERE TO HOME.”  Her directorial debut CROSSING OVER (Participant Media/ Univision), about transgender asylum seekers from south of the border, won a 2015 GLAAD Media Award for Best Documentary Film (Spanish Language). Previously, Castro worked as a producer at The Marshall Project, as a multimedia journalist for The New York Times, on two seasons of the Emmy-award winning series VICE on HBO and helped launch VICE News Tonight on HBO as a producer covering civil rights and policy. Her work there was nominated for a News Emmy in 2017.

Ben-Alex Dupris grew up on the Colville Confederated Tribes Indian reservation in Washington State, where he is an enrolled member. His work tackles the ever-changing balance of modernity and traditionalism in the landscape of Indigenous popular culture.

The Concordia Fellowship supports Ben’s vision of directing original stories that represent a fresh and revelatory view of Indian Country, like SWEETHEART DANCERS. This short film follows Sean and Adrian, a Two-Spirit couple determined to rewrite the rules of Native American culture through their participation in the “Sweetheart Dance,” a celebratory contest held at powwows that is typically reserved for male/female couples. SWEETHEART DANCERS premiered at the 2019 Big Sky Film Festival and won the 2019 OUTFEST FUSION Grand Jury Prize.

Growing up, Dupris got tired of watching the same shirtless, horse-riding “savage” stereotypes played out over and over in pop culture. It became his mission to create cultural change and show the Native life that he knew.

Paula Eiselt is an independent filmmaker from New York currently working on her second feature film AFTERSHOCK about courageous patients, doctors, and changemakers on the front lines. This project expands her passion for women’s empowerment and birth justice, subjects first explored in her directorial debut 93QUEEN (POV, HBO Max). As an Orthodox Jew, the moment that makes her most proud of 93QUEEN was observing Haredi women who had never set foot in a movie theater return for encore screenings, bringing new family members each time to feel empowered by their representation.

Eiselt is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and a proud mother of four children. She works as a creative consultant for the Jewish Writers Initiative, sits on the Board of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance, and is a proud member of Torah Trumps Hate, a group of progressive observant Jews working to dismantle the current administration. In 2019, Paula was named one of the Jewish Week’s 36 under 36 for her role in amplifying women’s voices.

Through both her filmmaking and her activism, Eiselt hopes to stay true to her roots while also pushing past the boundaries of her own identity and community, advocating for vulnerable communities and individuals.

Nadia Hallgren is an award-winning filmmaker and cinematographer from The Bronx, New York. She directed the Emmy Award-nominated documentary BECOMING (2020) and received nominations for Outstanding Directing for a Documentary/Nonfiction Program and Outstanding Cinematography for a Nonfiction Program. In 2019, her documentary short, AFTER MARIA, was shortlisted for an Academy Award. Hallgren won the Special Jury prize at SXSW in 2018 for her independent documentary series GAVIN GRIMM Vs., which also won a Webby Award. Her work in cinematography includes the Sundance award-winners MOTHERLAND (2017) and TRAPPED (2016) and Academy Award-nominated and Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winner TROUBLE THE WATER (2008).

Hailing from a rural crossroads in eastern North Carolina, Cynthia Hill is a creative force dedicated to telling fresh stories set in rural America and in the American South.

As a seasoned director of nonfiction features, television, and limited series, Hill received support from the Concordia Fellowship to explore new creative terrain: developing her first hybrid fiction content. Hill shadowed top fiction directors and participated in a private fiction directing workshop with a Sundance creative advisor, which included a casting and rehearsing session. The support also aided her on BURDEN OF PROOF, a crime documentary series that is currently in post-production for HBO.

Recently, Hill created and directed the documentary series ROAD TO RACE DAY, which followed top NASCAR drivers and their race teams. Her documentary work also includes the Emmy-nominated PRIVATE VIOLENCE (Candescent Award, 2014 Sundance Film Festival), TOBACCO MONEY FEEDS MY FAMILY, THE GUESTWORKER, and FEBRUARY ONE. Hill won a Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Directing as well as a Peabody Award for her PBS documentary series A CHEF’S LIFE.

She is co-founder of the Southern Documentary Fund, a nonprofit organization that advocates for powerful Southern storytelling. Hill is committed to chronicling a wide range of Southern stories and Southern storytelling, from the comedic to the dramatic and everything in between.

Jon Kasbe is a director and cinematographer of Australian and Indian descent, based in New York. Kasbe spent his childhood traveling extensively, which instilled in him a deep curiosity and desire to explore the world. At age 10, he bought his first camera in order to interview children in war-torn Serbia.

With the support of the Concordia Fellowship, Kasbe is developing his second independent documentary feature, WOODS. His process includes an opportunity to focus on intentional story design, working with a development team that includes a writer, an editor, and a producer.

Previously, Kasbe shot, directed and produced WHEN LAMBS BECOME LIONS (2018 Tribeca Film Festival, released by Oscilloscope). His short films have screened around the world, garnering an Emmy Award, two Emmy nominations, and recognition from the Webbys, SXSW, Hot Docs, Vimeo Staff Picks, and the White House News Photographers Association.

Kasbe grew up with a camera in his hand. Filmmaking has helped him make sense not only of his own upbringing and experience, but of the ambiguity and conflict that characterize life.

Bing Liu began his documentary career as a teenager, filming his friends as they skateboarded around their hometown of Rockford, Illinois. That gradually evolved into his remarkable debut feature, MINDING THE GAP, which was nominated for Best Documentary at the 91st Academy Awards, and earned another 28 awards, including the Special Jury Award for Breakthrough Filmmaking at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.

Liu’s Concordia Fellowship has supported work on his sophomore directorial effort, YOU ARE HERE, which he is co-directing with Joshua Altman. This feature documentary is about young men in Chicago who are attempting to break through the cycles of personal trauma and gun violence that have plagued their communities and lives. The Fellowship aided the filmmakers in the research and development stage of the project, shifting story design and writing from the edit stage to the early stage of the film. This has been vital to their creative process and enabled them to build and deepen the relationships with their characters.

Liu also worked as a story director and director of photography on the nonfiction episodic series AMERICA TO ME, which was directed and executive produced by Steve James. It became the first-ever episodic documentary series to screen at the Sundance Festival. Liu honed his skills in cinematography and editing while pursuing a B.A. from the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he graduated Magna Cum Laude.

MINDING THE GAP was one of the most memorable documentary debuts in recent memory, and Liu is continuing to develop his creative process and growth as a filmmaker.

Elizabeth Lo is interested in the boundaries between species, between classes, and other unequal states of personhood. Her short films have been broadcast and showcased internationally, including at the Sundance Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, Hot Docs, True/False, BAMCinemafest, New York Times Op-Docs, and PBS’ POV.

Her work includes  her debut feature, STRAY(2020), and the short films; HOTEL 22 (2015), BISONHEAD (2016), MOTHER’S DAY (2017), THE DISCLOSURE PRESIDENT (2016), NOTES FROM BUENA VISTA (2016), TREASURE ISLAND (2014), and LAST STOP IN SANTA ROSA (2013).

Elizabeth was named one of the “25 New Faces of Independent Film” by Filmmaker Magazine in 2015, and was featured in the 2015 Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors’ Showcase at Cannes Lion and the 2016 Next Director Award Shortlist in London. Elizabeth was the inaugural recipient of the 2016 Investigative Fund Fellowship by the Nation Institute. In 2018, Elizabeth was selected for the 56th New York Film Festival (NYFF) Artist Academy, and in 2019 participated in the 72nd Locarno Film Festival Filmmakers Academy.

Her debut feature documentary, STRAY, was an official selection of the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival and won the Top Jury Prize at the 2020 Hot Docs International Film Festival and has garnered glowing reviews. Her work to date has focused on people, species and communities at the margins of society.

Edwin Martinez is a Bronx-born Puerto Rican filmmaker re-imagining power dynamics within non-fiction cinema. The Concordia Fellowship provided the opportunity for him to devise and experiment with a participant-filmmaker collaboration for his solo directorial debut. Set in Puerto Rico, THE MONSTER AND THE STORM follows a local cosplayer who embarks on a quest to heal the loss of his father by creating and becoming his life-long hero, Godzilla. Deconstructing traditional hierarchies, both on and off screen, sparked in Martinez a new creative path, which he is only just beginning.

Previously, Martinez co-directed, edited, and shot PERSONAL STATEMENT (2018 AFIDOCS, 2019 SXSW), the award winning TO BE HEARD (2012 NYT Critics’ Pick), and THE SCARS OF STOP AND FRISK (NYT Op-Doc). He also has a wide and varied body of work outside of directing: having edited CITY OF TREES (PBS), produced THE CLEMENTE EFFECT (ESPN), and as director of photography for RACHEL IS (2010 True/False), LEAVE NO SOLDIER, LAS MARTHAS (PBS), and WHAT ALICE FOUND (Special Grand Jury Prize, 2003 Sundance).

In addition, Martinez is an Assistant Professor of Film at the SUNY Purchase Film Conservatory.

Omar is driven by the idea of film as an act of prayer—something transcendent, something ineffable, something that approaches the Divine. Writing might have been easier for the intangible, or music more direct, but it is the capacity to point a camera at something seen, and from it wrestle the unseen, that to him feels like worship.

In 2013 Omar published an article about running scenes in film and the Divine, and then a month later released THESE BIRDS WALK theatrically with Oscilloscope. The film was named one of the best films of the year by the New Yorker Magazine. In 2016 it was listed as one of the best foreign films of the 21st Century at the New Yorker. The film opened and closed with a long shot of a boy running.

Since then, Omar has run through tunnels in Gaza for National Geographic, off an embed in Afghanistan across frozen lakes of the Silk Road, through Venezuela in 2018 as it caught fire, with FARC rebels in Colombia for VICE, down rivers in Appalachia poisoned by industrial coal, and then with persistence hunters who run down their prey on foot in Botswana. He has run towards Taliban and ISIS, Benghazi warlords in Libya, towards and away from revolutions in the Arab Spring, human traffickers in Romania, and all the humanity that ran away with it. Always running. And desperately pulling at the seams of tragedy for any sight of Divinity tucked down far.

And yet his best work is always the film not shot yet, the pregnant idea, the photo not taken, the things unsaid, the wordless wonder at the end of the run at the point of fatigue when he can only stand and witness, and for which the only proper response is awe.

Brent Palmer is an emerging African-American producer based in Los Angeles who wants to inspire audiences with cinematic stories of visionary, independent Black cultural movements. He’s a proud native of Detroit and on a mission to establish his own production company that fosters innovative collaborations with diverse directors, writers, and creative talent.

Palmer is the producer of a Detroit-based feature documentary film that follows students, teachers, parents, and activists as they fight for equal education in America. The Concordia Fellowship will help him develop and launch new documentary series and features centered on the importance of the Black experience in popular culture.

As a producer, Palmer has filled roles in both content development as well as physical production. His experience working across fiction, documentary, and VR has allowed him to study storytelling in many media forms and how to effectively shape each for the market. Within nonfiction he has worked alongside Academy Award-nominated director Lucy Walker, and during his time in development at Amazon Studios he also worked on projects with top documentary directors including Jim Jarmusch, Lauren Greenfield, and Jeff Feuerzeig.

Heather Rae is a director and producer with a long and acclaimed career. She is also a global leader in narrative change and Indigenous storytelling, and a field champion in independent film. She is a veteran producer of more than 25 films, including FROZEN RIVER (2008 Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner, nominated for two Academy Awards and nine Gotham and Spirit Awards) and TALLULAH (a feature film for Netflix Originals). Rae also has a first-look TV deal with Amazon Studios.

Producing and field leadership has left little time and opportunity for directing passion projects. The Concordia Fellowship has supported her return to directing with PAULETTE, a feature about Paulette Jordan, the first Native American to win a gubernatorial primary in U.S. history and her subsequent run for governor of Idaho. Previously, Rae directed other films that speak powerfully to Indigenous life and culture, including the feature documentaries TRUDELL (PBS Independent Lens, Netflix) and FIRST CIRCLE (Showtime).

Heather was the first director of the Sundance Institute Native American Program, which cultivated the ground for a generation of Indigenous filmmakers. Through everything she does, Rae is firmly committed to championing voices we might not otherwise hear, voices that reflect the complexities and distinctive nature of the world we live in today.

Randy Redroad is a storyteller from West Texas whose father was an Irish Cowboy and whose mother is a Native American. As he describes it, this means there are cowboys and Indians fighting over the same horse in his heart.

The Concordia Fellowship supports Redroad’s ongoing creative development as an editor of documentary films, building on and sharpening this particular tool in his multi-hyphenate toolbox. His documentary work as an editor includes THE INIFILTRATORS (Audience Award and Innovator Award, 2019 Sundance Film Festival), FIRST CIRCLE, and OUT OF THE BLUE: A FILM ABOUT LIFE AND FOOTBALL, EARTH MEETS WIND, and EVERBODY HAS AN ANDY DICK STORY. His fiction editing includes the features EDGE OF THE WORLD, WIND WALKERS, BEAUTIFUL WAVE, IBID, and AMONG RAVENS. Redroad has also edited extensively in the worlds of marketing, branded content, and advertising.

As a writer/director, his debut feature, THE DOE BOY, premiered at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival, winning the prestigious Sundance/NHK Award. The film went on to win 14 other festival awards and earned an IFP/Gotham nomination for outstanding directorial debut. He was the first Native American participant to be invited to the Sundance Filmmakers Lab. Redroad is a founding member and lead editor of the award-winning StyleHorse Collective, a group of Indigenous artists who work with tribal organizations to create inspiring and educational film and video projects.

The complexity and nuance of identity is crucial to how Redroad sees the world; as he puts it, there are tornado warnings in his dreams and sandstorms in his eyes. This unique intersectionality informs the perspective he brings to the editing process and to the larger documentary landscape.

Dominique Ulloa is a proud single mom of two from the Crenshaw District of South Los Angeles. Growing up, she had a unique relationship to Hollywood: her house was in BOYZ ‘N THE HOOD, her high school choir was the inspiration for the movie SISTER ACT 2, and the sitcom MOESHA (starring Brandy Norville) was based on her school and neighborhood. That meant that the world of television and film was all around her, and yet it was inaccessible at the same time.

The Concordia Fellowship is helping Ulloa translate her editing experience from television and reality programming to editing documentary features and limited series. She studied cinema verité editing traditions under the tutelage of Joshua Altman, and archive-driven documentary under the tutelage of Pedro Kos and with practicum on his new feature film.

Previously, Ulloa worked on the six-part docu-series SURVIVING R. KELLY, which aired on Lifetime and was nominated for a Peabody Award. She also edited the television documentary IN GOD WE TRUST: 9/11 TRIUMPH FROM TRAGEDY, as well as the 2018 WINTER OLYMPIC GAMES. She is an ACE Fellow, A Karen Schmeer Diversity in the Edit Fellow, and chair of the Ujima Entertainment Coalition, a nationwide collective of African American post-production professionals with 700 members. She began her career in post-production operations at the Oprah Winfrey Network.

Growing up around television and film, Ulloa always knew she wanted to work in entertainment, and after launching her editing career, she’s never looked back.

Jeff Unay is a director, cinematographer and visual artist. His driving passion is telling immersive stories of ordinary people in extra/ordinary circumstances. Jeff’s independent directorial debut was the 2018 feature film THE CAGE FIGHTER. The film was released theatrically and streaming by IFC Films/Sundance Selects and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. The Independent magazine recognized Jeff as a 2017 Filmmaker To Watch. Jeff first cut his teeth helming the direct-to-fan feature documentary FREE TO PLAY. Co-shot and edited by Jeff, it was produced and distributed by Valve and received 5.5 million online views in its opening weekend release. Jeff also works as a cinematographer, most recently on the documentary film SATAN AND ADAM (2019 Cargo Film). 

Jeff grew up in a small town an hour outside of Baton Rouge, Louisiana where the only things to do were draw, play baseball and watch movies. Jeff’s early love of visual art and film led him to become a Visual Effects Society award-winning character designer and face sculptor on major motion pictures including AVATAR (2009) and KING KONG  (2005). He credits much of his success to research by psychologist Dr. Paul Ekman on facial expressions, emotion and deception. This research has influenced the way Jeff photographs the faces of his subjects to discover the emotional truths revealed. Jeff is a Sundance Institute, Tribeca Film Institute and Points North Institute Fellow and a member of the Full Sail University Hall of Fame. Based in the Pacifc Northwest with his wife and children, Jeff is developing a slate of films that unleash the size of the fight in the underdog.