The Producer Award

Joslyn Barnes

Joslyn Barnes is a producer and writer. Among the films she has been involved with producing since co-founding Louverture Films with Danny Glover and partners Susan Rockefeller and Bertha Foundation are: Abderrahmane Sissako’s Bamako, Elia Suleiman’s The Time That Remains, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s 2010 Cannes Palme d’Or winner Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Cemetery of Spendour and the forthcoming Memoria, Deepak Rauniyar’s White Sun, Lucrecia Martel’s Zama, and Nadine Labaki’s 2018 Cannes Jury Prize winning and Oscar® nominated Capernaum. Among the documentaries are: Tia Lessin and Carl Deal’s Oscar® nominated Trouble the Water, Göran Olsson’s Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 and Concerning Violence, Eugene Jarecki’s The House I Live In, Tala Hadid’s House in the Fields, Yance Ford’s Oscar® nominated and Emmy® winning Strong Island, RaMell Ross’ Oscar® nominated Hale County This Morning, This Evening. Forthcoming documentaries include James Longley’s Angels Are Made of Light, Victor Kossakovsky’s Aquarela, and Lucrecia Martel’s Chocobar. In 2017, Barnes was the recipient of the Cinereach Producer Award and the Sundance Institute | Amazon Studios Producer Award. In 2018, she won the Emmy® Award for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking, and in 2018 and 2019 earned Oscar® Nominations for best Documentary Feature.

Effie Brown

Effie T. Brown is an award winning film, television, and digital Producer, known for her highly acclaimed, multi- platform repertoire as well as championing inclusion and diversity in Hollywood, both behind and in front of the camera.

Brown’s long and illustrious career began as a Film Independent fellow in the prestigious “Project Involve” program. During her fellowship, she gained invaluable insight into the film industry. Her incredible work ethic and creative freedom allowed her to advance quickly through ranks becoming Director of Development for Tim Burton Productions in 1995. Decades later, Brown now serves as a Film Independent Board member and mentors the new generation of fellows.

Throughout her career, Brown has produced several critically acclaimed HBO Films and award-winning projects including, Stranger Inside (directed by Cheryl Dunne, 2001, World Premiere at Sundance Film Festival), Real Women Have Curves (directed by Patricia Cardosa, 2002, winner of Sundance Film Festival’s Audience Award and Special Jury Prize for Ensemble Performance), Everyday People (2004, directed by Jim McKay), In The Cut (directed by Jane Campion, 2003) and Rocket Science (directed by Jeffrey Blitz, 2007, winner of the Grand Jury Prize for Directing at Sundance and recipient of three Independent Spirit Awards nominations, including Best First Feature, Best Screenplay and Best Actress). In 2010, her film The Inheritance, starring Golden Brooks, won the Best Actress award at the American Black Film Festival.

In 2011, Brown made a daring venture beyond television and film. With a love of multiple platforms, she re- teamed with the award winning producing/directing duo Jon Avnet and Rodrigo Garcia to focus on digital episodic content. Together they produced over 130 episodes of WIGS, an award winning, original content channel funded by Google/YouTube and FOX Broadcasting. The channel features multiple original series showcasing “A list” actors, writers, and filmmakers to present stories centered around the ever complex lives of women, and blazes the trail for scripted content released directly online. Currently, WIGS is the number one scripted channel for drama on YouTube and has recently been picked up for wider distribution via Hulu.

Effie T. Brown then went on to produce the highly acclaimed independent feature, Dear White People. The film won multiple awards, including the Special Jury Prize for Breakthrough Talent at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival and Best First Screenplay at the 2015 Independent Spirit Awards.

Given her longstanding relationship producing successful content with the network, HBO recognized Brown’s ability to mold a low budget film into a critically acclaimed success and invited her to join the controversial reboot of Project Greenlight (Executive Produced by Matt Damon & Ben Affleck). The show’s premise is to take an original screenplay and give a first time filmmaker the opportunity to work with industry professionals to create a feature film. In 2015, she served as producer and mentor to the show’s fresh new director.

Brown joined Lee Daniels Entertainment in 2016 to Executive Produce Season 1 of the hit series Star on FOX. In keeping with her commitment to inclusive and diverse content Effie Executive Produced Disney Channel’s Zombies which premiered in 2018. The high school musical delivers an inspirational story about tolerance, inclusion, individuality and conviction…but with zombies.

Currently, Brown returns to her love of inclusive genre film & television (Thriller, Action, Sci-fi, Horror) by securing several “big concept” IP told through an inclusive storytelling lens. Her company, Duly Noted Inc. continues to be dedicated to ground breaking narratives that use genre to challenge and advance our culture in a disruptive way. Her dream is to change the world through film and TV — celebrating our differences while bringing us all closer together.

Karin Chien

Chien is a four-time Independent Spirit Award nominee, the recipient of the Independent Spirit Producer’s Award and the Cinereach Producer Award, and the producer of ten independent feature films, including Stones In The Sun (2012), Jack And Diane (2012), Circumstance (2011), The Exploding Girl (2009), The Motel (2005) And Robot Stories (2002). Her films have won over 100 festival awards and received distribution in over 30 countries. Chien has also produced museum exhibitions, a graphic novel app, and runs a global production service company with shoots in 2018 in UK, Portugal, France, Italy, Germany, China. Chien is the founder/president of dGenerate Films, the leading distributor of independent cinema from China; the co-founder of Cinema on the Edge, a screening series celebrating Chinese independent film exhibition; the creator of the CAAM (Center for Asian American Media) Fellowship; and most recently, the creator and director of the Nevada City Film Festival Residency, focused on supporting Native and Asian American filmmakers.

Jessica Devaney

Jessica Devaney is a Brooklyn-based producer and the founder of Multitude Films, an independent production company dedicated to telling stories by and about underrepresented communities. Her latest film, Always in Season (Independent Lens), premiered in competition at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival and won the Special Jury Award for Moral Urgency. She recently produced The Feeling of Being Watched (Tribeca 2018, POV), dubbed “a real-world conspiracy thriller” by Variety; Cinema Eye-nominated Roll Red Roll (Tribeca 2018, POV), and Critic’s Choice-nominated Speed Sisters (Hot Docs 2015, NETFLIX), which The New York Times called “subtly rebellious and defiantly optimistic.” Additional credits include Love the Sinner (Tribeca 2017, Amazon), Call Her Ganda (Tribeca 2018, POV), Naila & The Uprising (IDFA 2017, PBS), Peabody Award-winning My Neighbourhood (Tribeca 2012), and Ridenhour Prize-winning Budrus (Tribeca 2010). Jessica co-founded the Queer Producers Collective, produced Doc Society’s inaugural Queer Impact Producers Lab, and was a Sundance Edit and Story Lab fellow, Women at Sundance fellow, and Sundance Creative Producing Lab advisor.

Julie Goldman

Julie Goldman founded Motto Pictures in 2009. She is an Oscar-nominated and Emmy Award-winning producer and executive producer of documentary feature films and series. She recently produced Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner One Child Nation directed by Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang which was acquired by Amazon Studios and Ringside directed by André Hörmann which just had its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival. Julie is in production on The Apollo directed by Roger Ross Williams which was the opening night film at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, Untitled Velvet Underground Documentary directed by Todd Haynes, and films by Maite Alberdi, Ramona Diaz and Ivy Meeropol. She produced Steve James’ Emmy Award-winning and Oscar-nominated Abacus: Small Enough To Jail, and The Final Year, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, was released by Magnolia Pictures and broadcast on HBO.

Julie is the producer of Life, Animated and executive producer of Weiner, both of which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Life, Animated won the US Documentary Directing Award, was nominated for the 2017 Best Documentary Feature Academy Award, and won three Emmys, including the award for Best Documentary in 2018. Weiner won the US Documentary Grand Jury Prize and was shortlisted for an Academy Award. Julie executive produced the Emmy-nominated Facebook series Humans of New York, Emmy Award-winning, Oscar-shortlisted Best of Enemies, and several Emmy-nominated films: 3½ Minutes, Ten Bullets, The Kill Team, Art and Craft and 1971. Julie also produced and executive produced: Emmy Award-winning The Music of Strangers, Emmy Award-winning Solitary, Enlighten Us, Southwest of Salem, Gideon’s Army, Manhunt, God Loves Uganda, Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry and Buck. Julie received the Amazon Studios Sundance Institute Producer’s Award and the Cinereach Producer Award.

Lars Knudsen

Ari Aster and Lars Knudsen launched Square Peg in the spring of 2019 following their collaboration on Ari’s critically acclaimed directorial debut Hereditary, which grossed over $80M worldwide. They have since collaborated on Ari’s second film Midsommar, which will be released worldwide this Summer. They have an exciting and diverse slate of projects lined up for 2019 and beyond. 

Lars has produced over 30 films, including: Ari Aster’s Hereditary and Midsommar, Andrea Arnold’s American Honey, Robert Eggers’ The Witch, Ira Sach’s Little Men, Love Is Strange, and Keep the Lights On, David Lowery’s Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, Andrew Dosunmu’s Mother of George, Shaul Schwarz’s Narco Cultura and Trophy, Mike Mills’ Beginners, and Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy, among others.

Ari Aster wrote and directed Hereditary, his debut feature, which stars Toni Collette, Gabriel Byrne, Ann Dowd and Alex Wolff. The film premiered at Sundance and was released wide by A24 last summer. Hereditary was acclaimed by critics and was A24’s biggest-ever opening weekend, as well as A24’s highest-grossing film worldwide. Ari recently finished his second feature, Midsommar, which he wrote and directed. A24 will release the film wide in July. It stars Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor, William Jackson Harper and Will Poulter. Ari lives in NY and is a graduate of the AFI conservatory.

Alexandra Lazarowich

Alexandra Lazarowich is an award winning Cree Producer, Director and Screenwriter whose work has premiered at film festivals around the world. She is passionate about telling Indigenous stories. Her most recent documentary Fast Horse recently premiered and won the Special Jury Award for Directing at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.

Scott Macaulay

Scott Macaulay is a film producer, journalist and president of the New York-based production company, Forensic Films. Among his recent producing credits are Kitty Green’s hybrid documentary, Casting JonBenet, Elisabeth Subrin’s dramatic feature, A Woman, A Part, and Candice Breitz’s Venice Biennale-premiering art installation, Love Story.

Macaulay’s previous producing credits with Forensic co-founder and partner Robin O’Hara include Peter Sollett’s Raising Victor Vargas; Harmony Korine’s Gummo (co-producer) and julien donkey-boy; Alice Wu’s Saving Face; Tom Noonan’s Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning What Happened Was and his follow-up feature, The Wife; Jesse Peretz’s The Chateau; Bryan Barber’s Idlewild; John Leguizamo’s Undefeated; and James Ponsoldt’s debut, Off the Black. Forensic has also been involved as a co-producer in many European productions, including Olivier Assayas’s Demonlover and Clean.

Macaulay is currently producing Kitty Green’s dramatic feature, The Assistant (in post-production), and is executive producer on Jazmin Lopez’s Argentina-set drama, My Darling Valentin.

Macaulay is also the co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Filmmaker Magazine, a quarterly print publication and daily website published by IFP that recently celebrated its 25th year of publication. He has taught and lectured extensively on independent film production at places such as the Sundance Documentary Film Program, the Venice Biennale College Cinema, CPH:DOX, and the Dubai International Film Festival. Prior to his work in film, Macaulay was for five years the Performance Curator and Programming Director of New York’s experimental art space, The Kitchen.

In 1998, he and O’Hara were awarded an Independent Spirit Award for their work in independent film, and in 2018 Macaulay was awarded the Cinereach Producer Award.

Heather Rae

Heather Rae has worked as a producer and executive for more than twenty years. She has been named one of Variety’s Ten Producers To Watch and produced Frozen River, for which she won the Paiget Producer Award. Frozen River won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, was nominated for two Academy Awards, won two Gotham Awards and was nominated for seven Spirit Awards, winning two. Rae also produced such films as The Dry Land starring America Ferrera which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, Magic Valley starring Scott Glenn and Kyle Gallner, which premiered at Tribeca, and Sundance hit Ass Backwards, written by June Raphael and Casey Wilson (Bride Wars) who star alongside Alicia Silverstone, Vincent D’Onofrio, Brian Geraghty and Jon Cryer. Rae also produced festival darling I Believe in Unicorns from writer/director Leah Meyerhoff. Rae produced Netflix Orifinal Tallulah, written and directed by Orange is the New Black writer Sian Heder. Tallulah premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Rae recently wrapped on Olivia Milch’s Blacklist script, Dude, starring Lucy Hale, Austin Butler, Alex Wolff, and Alexandra Shipp. Rae is currently in production on Akicita, the documentary feature directed by Cody Lucich that tells the story of Standing Rock.

For Six years Rae ran the Native Program at the Sundance Institute. She has sat on the Board of Trustees for the Sundance Institute and advised to such organizations as The Rockefeller Foundation, IFP, Film Independent, The Ford Foundation, The Tribeca Institute, and First Americans in the Arts. Rae is working with both her settler and indigenous heritage to deepen the dialogue of reconciliation and responsibility in the Americas.

Kishori Rajan

Kishori Rajan is a creative producer who develops work under her newly formed banner, Reverse Osmosis Films. She’s an Executive Producer of the critically acclaimed HBO series Random Acts of Flyness. The show received a 2019 Peabody Award for “breaking the mold of what TV can be,” and was renewed for a second season. Kishori views the independent film world as her professional home, and has produced several feature films including the upcoming The Short History of the Long Road (Tribeca Film Festival 2019), The Price (Samuel Goldwyn Films), and American Fable (IFC Films); credits also include the Spirit-nominated films Four and Gimme The Loot (IFC Films). She’s a 2017 Cannes Producers Fellow, a 2017 Tribeca All Access grantee, and the first ever American producer to be selected for the EAVE European Producers Network. Kishori contributes as a writer to Filmmaker Magazine and has guest lectured on feature film producing at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and the Made in NY Media Center. She’s served as an industry panelist at several conferences, including SXSW and IFP’s Screen Forward Conference. Kishori received a BA in Film Studies from Columbia University, and resides in New York City.

Shrihari Sathe

Shrihari Sathe is a New York and Mumbai-based director and producer. Sathe most recently won the 2019 Film Independent Spirit Award – Producers Award. He produced Jaron Henrie-McCrea’s Pervertigo, which world-premiered at the 2012 Warsaw and Mumbai film festivals and was a part of the 2011 IFP Independent Filmmaker Labs. Sathe’s follow up production, Eliza Hittman’s It Felt Like Love, premiered at 2013 Sundance Film Festival and 2013 International Film Festival Rotterdam to great reviews.

Sathe is a 2011 Film Independent Producing Lab fellow and a 2013 Sundance Institute Creative Producing Fellow. He has received fellowships from the HFPA, PGA, IFP, Film Independent and The Sundance Institute to name a few. He is a Film Independent Spirit Award (2015) nominee and a Gotham Award nominee (2014). In 2016, Sathe received the Cinereach Producer Award.

Sathe is a Trans Atlantic Partners Fellow (2013) and Cannes Producer’s Network Fellow (2014, 2015, 2016). He co-produced Partho Sen-gupta’s Arunoday (Sunrise), which premiered at the 2014 Busan International Film Festival, and Afia Nathaniel’s Dukhtar (Daughter), which premiered at 2014 Toronto International Film Festival and was Pakistan’s Official Submission for Foreign Language Film at the 87th Academy Awards®. Sathe’s feature directorial debut – Ek Hazarachi Note (1000 Rupee Note) – won the Special Jury Award and Centenary Award for Best Film at the 2014 International Film Festival of India and has received over 30 awards. Sathe produced Elisabeth Subrin’s A Woman, A Part which world-premiered at the 2016 International Film Festival Rotterdam and co-produced Eliza Hittman’s Beach Rats, a 2018 Sundance Film Festival award winner, Anthony Onah’s The Price which world-premiered at SXSW in 2017 and Michael Tully’s Don’t Leave Home which world premiered at SXSW in 2018. His latest productions are Bassam Jarbawi’s Screwdriver (Mafak), which premiered at Giornate Degli Autori in Venice, and Ritu Sarin & Tenzing Sonam’s The Sweet Requiem, which premiered at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival.

He is an Adjunct Assistant Professor and Senior Production Advisor at Columbia University’s School of the Arts. He is a member of the Producers Guild of America (PGA), Indian Motion Picture Producers Association (IMPPA) and Screenwriters Association – India (SWA).

Anish Savjani

With filmscience, Anish Savjani has produced feature films by Kelly Reichardt, Jeremy Saulnier, Joe Swanberg, Ritesh Batra and Macon Blair, among others. These films have been nominated by Film Independent for six Spirit Awards, and they’ve screened at film festivals around the world, including Cannes, Sundance, Berlinale, Toronto and Venice. filmscience currently has a number of projects by emerging and established independent filmmakers in development and production, including Reichardt’s First Cow.

Jay Van Hoy

Jay Van Hoy co-founded Parts & Labor in 2004. Across 30 award-winning films, the company’s legacy has been built by establishing new auteurs with successful first and second features and bringing expertise to proven filmmakers. The directors whose early films were produced by Parts & Labor include David Lowery, Robert Eggers, Mike Mills, Kelly Reichardt, Andrew Dosunmu, Julia Loktev, Adam Rapp, So Yong Kim, and Shaul Schwarz.  Add to these Ira Sachs, Andrea Arnold, and Alan Ball. Films produced by Parts & Labor have won awards at every major festival and ceremony: multiple awards at Sundance, Berlin, and Cannes; Independent Spirit and Gotham Awards; a BAFTA award and an Oscar.

In 2013 Parts & Labor combined with directors Lone Scherfig, Ole Christian Madsen, Dagur Kari, and Per Fly to found Creative Alliance:  an artist-led production company that creates features and series for Scandinavian and international audiences.

In 2017, Jay relocated the company to Los Angeles. While overseeing Parts & Labor operations, Jay joined Operam, a technology-driven entertainment marketing company, as an advisor. He has worked across Strategy, New Business and has overseen creative operations, including managing the integration of Operam’s Creative Studio with Media and Analytics.

Parts & Labor continues to maintain a diverse, original slate of features, series, digital shorts, and podcasts, many of which will go into production in 2019 and 2020. In production, they currently have Uncle Frank, written and to be directed by Alan Ball. They are in post-production on The Lighthouse, Robert Eggers’ second feature following The Witch.

Jay has been a keynote speaker at the Sundance Film Festival Producer’s Lunch, at the Sundance Producer Summit, and has been an advisor at the Sundance Creative Producer Lab for 10 years. In his capacity as an expert in entertainment marketing and in crowd behavior, he recently spoke at the 2018 Richemont’s Retreat for Maison’s Public Relations Executives in Paris.

Jamund Washington

Jamund Washington is an NYC based filmmaker. His producing work includes the 2016 Emmy Award-nominated television film, Silenced, South by Southwest Grand Jury Prize winner and Independent Spirit Award-nominated, Gimme the Loot, and the Netflix original, Tramps, which he also co-wrote. He is an Executive Producer, Writer, and Director on the Peabody Award-winning HBO series Random Acts of Flyness, which was recently renewed for a second season.