NeXt Doc Presenting Artists
The presenting artists at NeXt Doc are integral to the program's mission of supporting emerging documentary storytellers. By sharing their films, leading workshops, and engaging in critical conversations, these experienced artists provide invaluable mentorship and insight into the craft and deeper purposes of non-fiction filmmaking. Their participation not only foregrounds our commitment to skill-sharing and intergenerational learning, but also fosters a sense of community and inspiration among the fellows, bridging the gap between aspiring and established filmmakers.
Next Doc Presenting Artists
Youth FX and NeXt Doc are excited to announce our 2019 NeXt Doc Presenting Filmmakers and Visiting Fellows who will be screening films, leading workshops and participating in critical field-building conversations at our opening gathering of this years Fellowship, June 1st - June 7th. We’re excited to have Jackie Olive (Always In Season), Michéle Stephenson (Changing Same, American Promise), Yvonne Welbon (Sisters In Cinema, The New Black), and Rosine Mbakam (Chez Jolie Coffuire) joining us as our 2019 presenting filmmakers. This years NeXt Doc is also introducing a new Visiting Fellows program with Jasmine Bowles (co-director, Southern Documentary Fund) and Natalie Erazo (programmer, BAMCinétek) joining us to deepen the dialogue within the intersections of filmmaking, funding and programming. We will also welcome back Kristin Feeley from the Sundance Documentary Program, one of our industry partners, to offer insights on pitching, funding and the art of non-fiction.
2024 Presenting Artists
Our presenting filmmakers and virtual mentors from South Africa, Lebanon and the United States further reflect our vision for a more international lens for this year’s programming. The 2023 NeXt Doc presenting filmmakers will be Milisuthando Bengela (Milisuthando), Damon Davis (Whose Streets?), and Dr. Kahmeelah Mu’min Oseguera (Subject) and our virtual filmmaker mentors will be NeXt Doc 2017 alum Jude Chehab (Q) and Fahd Ahmed (Q).
DR. KAMEELAH MU'MIN OSEGUERA
DR. KAMEELAH MU'MIN OSEGUERA (she/her) is a leading expert in trauma informed considerations and practices in documentary filmmaking and has served as a consultant to documentary filmmakers, directors and writers on matters related to race, religion, participant care, ethics, consent and healing centered filmmaking. Dr. Kam is the Head of Care at Multitude Films, an Executive Producer and Coordinator of Care and Wellness for the film SUBJECT. Dr. Kam is a member of the Documentary Accountability Working Group (DAWG) and Color Congress, a national collective of majority people of color (POC) and POC-led organizations aimed at centering and strengthening nonfiction storytelling. Dr. Kam is the Founding Executive Director of Muslim Wellness Foundation and Assistant Professor of Psychology & Muslim Studies at Chicago Theological Seminary.
DAMON DAVIS
DAMON DAVIS (he/him) is a post-disciplinary artist who works and resides in St. Louis, Missouri. His work spans a spectrum of creative mediums to tell stories exploring how identity is informed by power and mythology. Davis’ work is featured in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, and he has exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Saint Louis Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, and the San Diego Contemporary Museum of Art. He has been a fellow of Firelight Media, Sundance Labs, TED, and the Kennedy Center. He the is Co-Director of critically acclaimed documentary Whose Streets?, chronicling the Ferguson rebellion of 2014.
MILISUTHANDO BONGELA-DAVIS
MILISUTHANDO BONGELA-DAVIS (b.1985, South Africa) is an award-winning writer, editor, cultural worker and artist. Her career began in the fashion industry but the last 16 years have seen her traverse the worlds of music, art, media and film - continually turning towards indigenous knowledge systems. She was Arts Editor for the Mail & Guardian's Friday section and was host and co-producer of the podcast Umoya: On African Spirituality with Dr. Athambile Masola. Her first feature film, a personal essay documentary titled MILISUTHANDO had its world premier at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, was the opening film to Encounters International Film Festival in South Africa and was selected for MoMA’s New Directors / New Films programme 2023. She is an inaugural fellow of the 2020 Adobe Women at Sundance Fellowship and is currently working as a producer on a short fiction film directed by her long term collaborator Hankyeol Lee.
Virtual Filmmaker Mentors
JUDE CHEHAB
Jude Chehab is a Lebanese-American filmmaker whose cinematic interests have drawn her to the exploration of the esoteric, the spiritual and the unspoken. A richly layered visual and intimate personal shooting style developed under the mentorship of Abbas Kiarostami’s final student group; Jude has been credited in collaborations with the BBC, Hot Docs, Refinery29, and Oxfam. She has worked as a DP internationally, on films in Somalia, Sudan and Pakistan and was an AP on Sesame Street’s show, Ahlan Simsim, for Syrian refugees. Her work has been awarded fellowships through: CAAM, BGDM, Points North Institute, Firelight Media and Chicken & Egg. Jude’s first feature documentary, Q, was named one of the best documentaries of 2023 by Vogue Magazine. It was supported by: IDA, ITVS, TFI, and the Sundance Institute and won the Albert Maysles award for Best New Documentary Director at Tribeca and the Grand Jury Award for Best First Feature at Sheffield DocFest. She is part of DOCNYC's '40 under 40' list and Filmmaker Magazine named her one of the 25 New Faces of Independent Film.
FAHD AHMED
Fahd Ahmed is an editor based in London. He is the founder and creative director of Studio Amorem, a studio in East London focusing mainly on nonfiction and commercial work. He is a producer on the leading Arab Ramadan show, Kannak Tarah. He was an editing fellow in the Gotham Edit Lab, Close-Up Berlin Lab as well as the Sundance Story and Edit Lab. He has edited for the BBC and is a story editor on the PBS-funded 3-part docuseries, A Town Called Victoria. He edited the award-winning feature documentary, “Q” that is shortlisted for the IDA Awards. He is currently producing a BFI-funded short set in Bradford.
Previous Presenting Artists
KAMEELAH MU’MIN OSEGUERA
ZAC MANUEL
CAI THOMAS
NATALIE ERAZO
Natalie Erazo is a Colombian-American film programmer, writer, and educator based in Brooklyn, NY. Their work focuses on films and moving image works that consider race, gender, labor, and decolonial praxis. Natalie has programmed film series for the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) and region(es), as well as organized screenings for youth audiences through The Repertory Project. Their writing has been published in Women’s Studies Quarterly, Hyperallergic, and the BAMblog.
They were a 2019 Visiting Fellow at NeXt Doc, and participated in the 2019 CreateNYC Leadership Academy, as well as the 2018 Industry Academy at Film at Lincoln Center. While studying film at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts (c/o '16), Natalie served as Co-Director and Programmer for the Fusion Film Festival.
Most recently, Natalie served as Project Manager for NO EVIL EYE CINEMA (NEEC) and participated in the inaugural Artist-Educator training cohort at Maysles Documentary Center (MDC). They hold an M.A. in Women’s and Gender Studies from the Graduate Center, CUNY and are currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology at the Graduate Center, CUNY.
JASMINE BOWLES
Jasmine Bowles! Bowles brings over 20 years of experience in business operations, Human Resources, budgeting, and event planning, along with database, implementation and management to her role as the co-director of the Southern Documentary Fund. She is an experienced facilitator and has crafted and led workshops in racial equity and media representation. In 2016, she was the Associate Producer to the Tribeca Film Festival’s animated short selection Fear curated by Whoopi Goldberg. Jasmine is also momma bear to three dynamic little girls and the rest of her time advocating for their education needs and empowering other parents to do the same.
KRISTIN FEELEY
Kristin Feeley oversees five Sundance Documentary Creative Labs annually, co-programs the Sundance Creative Producing Summit and the Fellows Program at Sundance Film Festival, which serves over 150 artists annually. She plays a staff advisory role with the Sundance Documentary Fund, oversees DFP content production and also works on DFP Creative Partnerships such as Stories of Change. Prior to Sundance DFP she worked at Tribeca Film Festival, Edinburgh Film Festival and Sundance Film Festival.
JACKIE OLIVE
Jacqueline Olive is an independent filmmaker and immersive media producer with fifteen years of experience in journalism and film. Her debut feature documentary, "Always in Season," premiered in competition at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival and was awarded the Special Jury Prize for Moral Urgency. Jackie also co-directed the award-winning hour-long film, 'Black to Our Roots," which broadcast on PBS in 2009. Jackie has received artist grants and industry funding from Sundance Institute, Independent Television Service, Ford Foundation, Firelight Media, and more. She was recently awarded the Emerging Filmmakers of Color Award from IDA and the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation. Death Is Our Business is Olive’s first FRONTLINE documentary "Death Is Our Business" airs March 2021, and is a part of her FRONTLINE/Firelight Investigative Journalism Fellowship — a Fellowship that was created to support independent filmmakers of color interested in journalistic documentary filmmaking.
MICHÉLE STEPHENSON
Filmmaker, artist and author Michèle Stephenson pulls from her Haitian and Panamanian roots to think radically about storytelling and disrupt the imaginary in non-fiction spaces.
She tells emotionally driven personal stories of resistance and identity and draws on fiction, immersive and hybrid forms of storytelling to build her worlds and narratives. Her feature documentary American Promise was nominated for three Emmys and won the Jury Prize at Sundance. Her current documentary Stateless is nominated for a Canadian Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary. Most recently, Stephenson collaborated as co-director on the magical realist immersive series on racial terror, The Changing Same, which premiered at Sundance Film Festival’s New Frontiers and won the Grand Jury Prize at the Tribeca Film Festival 2021. Her latest film Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project co-directed with Joe Brewster, explores Giovanni's life and work through interviews, archival footage, and live readings. It premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival and won the Grand Jury Prize for U.S. Documentary Competition.
YVONNE WELBON
Yvonne Welbon, PhD, is an award-winning filmmaker and founder and CEO of the Chicago-based non-profit Sisters in Cinema, inspired by her documentary of the same name, about the history of Black women feature film directors. She has produced and distributed dozens of award-winning films, including Living With Pride: Ruth Ellis @100. Welbon’s work has been broadcast on PBS, Starz/Encore, TV-ONE, IFC, Bravo, the Sundance Channel, BET, HBO, Netflix, iTunes and screened in over one hundred film festivals around the world. She has taught at the University of Chicago, Northwestern University and chaired the Journalism & Media Studies Department at Bennett College.
Raised in an Afro-Latinx Honduran household on the South Side of Chicago, Welbon holds a B.A from Vassar College, a MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a Ph.D. from Northwestern University, and is a graduate of the American Film Institute’s Directing Workshop for Women. In 2020 she became a member of the Documentary branch of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.
SAMIA KHAN
Samia Khan-Bambrah is an award-winning filmmaker, producer, and thought leader. She is a 2024 Sundance x Doris Duke Fellow and was recently named by Forbes Magazine and the World Economic Forum as one of the top filmmakers creating compelling character-driven films on climate change. She partners with brands, celebrities, political agencies, production studios, and publications to create films that inspire, entertain, and inform. Her recent short film “Year One”, for the White House, was featured on MSNBC, CNN, Fox, and ABC. For five years, she directed the WSJ. Magazine's signature film series, "The Innovators", a suite of content that has been critical to the Magazine's success. Her first independent film, the Accidental Activist was recognized by media around the world and premiered at DOC NYC. Her work with brands has gained distribution and recognition from CNN, Sundance, and Amazon. Samia has had the pleasure of interviewing and filming with many global leaders and celebrities, including President Biden, former First Lady Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Ai Weiwei, Reese Witherspoon, Kim Kardashian, and Lil Nas X. Samia began her filmmaking career at the Emmy-award-winning studio, MediaStorm, where she also served as the Independent Film Project’s Expert in Residence. Samia regularly works with M&C Saatchi’s Majority Production Studio.
Samia’s storytelling perspective is critically informed by her experiences as a Pakistani immigrant who grew up around the world. She speaks Urdu and Spanish and lives in the woods of the Hudson Valley.
BING LIU
Bing Liu, born in China in 1989, is a Chinese-American filmmaker and cinematographer renowned for his documentary work. His 2018 feature documentary, Minding the Gap, which explores themes of domestic violence and toxic masculinity through the lives of skateboarders in Rockford, Illinois, received critical acclaim and was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 91st Academy Awards. He co-directed the 2021 documentary All These Sons with Joshua Altman, focusing on gun violence in Chicago. The film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, where Liu and Altman won the jury award for Best Cinematography in a Documentary Feature.
Liu has also worked as a segment director for the documentary series America to Me, which examines racial inequities in the U.S. education system. In 2023, he directed the short film What the Hands Do, produced with Patagonia Films, which explores the lives of rock climbers and delves into themes of passion and identity. The film premiered on December 2, 2023, during the 815HORTS film festival in Rockford, Illinois. Currently, Liu is developing a fiction film set to shoot in New York in 2025. Additionally, he is adapting Ocean Vuong's novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous into a feature film with A24.
RABAB HAJ YAHYA
Rabab Haj Yahya is a Palestinian-American documentary editor based in New York, renowned for her work on award-winning feature documentaries. She edited The Feeling of Being Watched (Tribeca, 2018; POV, 2019), which earned her the Best Editing Award at the Woodstock Film Festival in 2018. Additionally, she worked on the Critic's Choice-nominated Speed Sisters (Hot Docs, 2015; Netflix). More recently, Rabab edited Another Body, which received the Special Jury Award for Innovation in Storytelling at SXSW in 2023. She also contributed to HBO's The Legend of the Underground (Tribeca, 2021; HBO Max) and the Emmy-nominated Apart (Hot Docs, 2021). Beyond her editing work, Rabab serves as a Sundance Institute Documentary Edit and Story Lab advisor (2023) and has mentored for organizations such as Brown Girls Doc Mafia, Chicken & Egg, and the Karen Schmeer Film Editing Fellowship (2022-2024).
LYRIC CABRAL
Lyric R. Cabral is an award-winning director and artist whose work spans film, animation, and photography. Her directorial debut, (T)ERROR, is notable for being the first film to document a covert FBI counterterrorism sting operation as it unfolds. The documentary received critical acclaim, earning a Special Jury Prize for Breakout First Feature at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival and an Emmy Award for Outstanding Investigative Documentary.
Cabral's films have been featured on platforms such as Netflix, VICELAND, PBS, and BBC. He has been recognized in Filmmaker Magazine's "25 New Faces of Independent Film" and is a recipient of the International Documentary Association’s Emerging Filmmaker Award. In addition to his filmmaking, Cabral is an accomplished photojournalist, with her work held in collections at institutions like the Studio Museum of Harlem, the New Orleans Museum of Art, and the Gordon Parks Foundation.
KHALIK ALLAH
Embarking on his creative journey at 19, Khalik Allah directed his first feature film, Popa Wu: A 5% Story (2010), a documentary about Popa Wu, the spiritual advisor to the Wu-Tang Clan. In 2010, he expanded into still photography, capturing the essence of Harlem's streets. His 2015 documentary, Field Niggas, offers a poignant glimpse into the lives of individuals at the intersection of 125th Street and Lexington Avenue in Harlem. This work was followed by his 2017 photography book, Souls Against the Concrete, which further explores the same community.
In his film Black Mother (2018), Allah turns his camera upon his mother’s own motherland of Jamaica to map out a bracing and immense study of the nation. The film’s tripartite structure—built around the trimesters of one woman’s pregnancy—conjures the multitudinous identities that comprise modern-day Jamaica. IWOW: I Walk On Water (2020), is a 3-hour and 20-minute documentary that delves into his personal experiences and relationships, offering an introspective look at his life and creative process. Allah's work is often described as "street opera," characterized by its visceral and hauntingly beautiful depictions of urban life. He refers to his approach as "Camera Ministry," emphasizing the spiritual dimension of his art and his commitment to capturing the essence of his collaborators with empathy and respect.
CECILIA ALDARONDO
Cecilia Aldarondo is an award-winning director, producer and writer from the Puerto Rican diaspora who works at the intersection of poetics and politics. Her films have screened internationally at festivals such as Tribeca, South by Southwest, IDFA, and many others, and been distributed on major platforms such as HBO / Max and POV / PBS. Aldarondo’s films have received support from funders such as The Sundance Institute, ITVS, Cinereach, Tribeca Film Institute, Chicken and Egg, and the International Documentary Association, and won awards at top film festivals such as DOC NYC, Indie Memphis, New Orleans, Florida, Milwaukee, and others. Among her fellowships and honors are the Guggenheim, a three-time MacDowell Colony Fellowship, a 2023 Yaddo residency, the 2022 IDA Emerging Filmmaker Award, the 2021 New America Fellowship, and Women at Sundance 2017. In 2019 she was named to DOC NYC's 40 Under 40 list and is one of 2015’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film.
Her third feature YOU WERE MY FIRST BOYFRIEND (2023) was co-produced in partnership with HBO Documentary Films, had its World Premiere at the 2023 South by Southwest Film Festival, and is now streaming internationally on Max. Her second feature LANDFALL (2020) was executive produced by Field of Vision, co-produced by the award-winning PBS series POV, premiered at the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival, and received many awards including the 2020 DOC NYC Film Festival Viewfinders Grand Jury Award for Best Documentary, as well as Cinema Eye and Film Independent Spirit Award nominations. Her first feature MEMORIES OF A PENITENT HEART (2016) also aired on POV and premiered at Tribeca, and was called ‘exceptional… the best of Tribeca’ by the Village Voice.
Aldarondo has a PhD in Cultural Studies from the University of Minnesota, an MA in Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmiths College, an MA in Gender Studies from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, and a BA in English from the University of Florida. She is based in Catskill, NY and teaches at Williams College.
SAM POLLARD
Sam Pollard, Director, is one of the most respected names in the world of documentary cinema, the recipient of an Oscar nomination and multiple Emmy awards. He produced the HBO documentaries Four Little Girls, When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, and If God is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise. Sam directed the acclaimed documentary Slavery by Another Name, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and subsequently aired on PBS. He also directed four episodes of PBS’s American Masters-- including, most recently, August Wilson: The Ground on Which I Stand--and two installments of the groundbreaking series Eyes on the Prize. In 2017 Sam premiered three new films: ACORN & The Firestorm, Maynard & Sammy Davis, Jr: I've Gotta Be Me. His latest film MLK/FBI was shortlisted for an Academy Award in 2020.
SABAAH FOLAYAN
Sabaah combines nuance and optimism with cultural relevance to tell stories that inform, uplift, and engage audiences.She made her directorial debut at the Sundance film festival, with the feature length documentary Whose Streets? Supported by Ford, MacArthur and other foundations and, and nominated for Peabody, Critic’s Choice, Gotham and NAACP Image awards, as well as numerous festival honors worldwide, the film chronicles the experiences of activists living in Ferguson, MO when Michael Brown Jr. was killed.Whose Streets? was distributed theatrically by Magnolia Pictures, broadcast for television by POV and is now streaming on Hulu.Sabaah wrote the series finale of HBO’s betty, a critically acclaimed comedy series about a crew of young female skateboarders in NYC.Her second feature documentary Look at Me: XXXTENTACION premiered at SXSW and is now streaming on Hulu.Following the film’s premiere, Sabaah took on the role of Interim director at the Firelight Media documentary lab, which serves BIPOC directors making their 1st or 2nd feature documentary.Sabaah was born in Los Angeles and raised in Hawaii . She graduated from Columbia university as a pre-medical student. The desire to work at a larger scale evolved into a unique storytelling practice that is informed by principles of behavioral science and social justice.Sabaah is a 2022 Pew fellow and a 2023 Chicken & Egg Breakthrough awardee. She spends her time writing, directing, consulting, and sharing her personal ethos through speaking and mentorship.
IVA RADIVOJEVIĆ
Iva Radivojević was born in Belgrade and spent her early years in Yugoslavia, Cyprus and NYC. She is an artist and filmmaker who currently divides her time between Athens and Lesbos. Her work presents itself as a collection of fragments {observations, poetry, images, sounds, melodies, languages} which collage together to connect into a ruminating whole. The work circles around dislocation, migration and belonging, seeking to connect to the metaphysical or the magical.
Iva's films have screened at the New York Film Festival, Locarno Film Festival, New Directors/New Films, Rotterdam IFF, CPH:DOX, Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, DocLisboa, Museum of Modern Art (NYC), and were commissioned by ARTE La Lucarne and Field of Vision. She is the recipient of the Sundance Art of Non-Fiction Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, NYFA Fellowship, Jerome Foundation Fellowship, Princess Grace Special Project Award and Film Fellowship.
When not working on her own films, Iva enjoys collaborating through writing and editing. A film she edited MA premiered at the Venice Film Festival, All That Passes By Through A Window That Doesn’t Open, a film she co-wrote and edited, won the Regard Neuf Award at Visions Du Reel in 2017 and A Machine To Live In premiered at True False in 2020, and most recently King Coal premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2023 - a NYT Critics Pick.
Signatures, or the Bass Line of a Freighter Ship, her chapbook of poems was published by Bottlecap Press. Iva’s three channel installation Enter The Aleph was commissioned and installed at the Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art in 2023. Her first art book, Avenue of The Living, is published by Big Black Mountain press in Athens, Greece.
She’s a PhD candidate at Villa Arson in Nice, France. Her new film When The Phone Rang received the Special Mention Award at the 77th Locarno Film Festival.
SAM POLLARD
Sam Pollard, Director, is one of the most respected names in the world of documentary cinema, the recipient of an Oscar nomination and multiple Emmy awards. He produced the HBO documentaries Four Little Girls, When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, and If God is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise. Sam directed the acclaimed documentary Slavery by Another Name, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and subsequently aired on PBS. He also directed four episodes of PBS’s American Masters-- including, most recently, August Wilson: The Ground on Which I Stand--and two installments of the groundbreaking series Eyes on the Prize. In 2017 Sam premiered three new films: ACORN & The Firestorm, Maynard & Sammy Davis, Jr: I've Gotta Be Me. His latest film MLK/FBI was shortlisted for an Academy Award in 2020.
