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Chicken & Egg Announces Seven Award Recipients, One Finalist For 2025
Chicken & Egg Films, the organization that champions women and gender-expansive documentary filmmakers with funding, mentorship, and access, today announced more than $550,000 in grants to seven recipients and one finalist of its 2025 Chicken & Egg Award. Each cohort member will receive a $75,000 grant: a $50,000 unrestricted career grant and $25,000 to be applied to a project the filmmaker will work on during their breakthrough award year. The Award recipients are Rita Baghdadi, Kelly Duane de la Vega, Carola Fuentes, Angelo Madsen, Habiba Nosheen, Jenni Olson, and Anupama Srinivasan. The 2025 Chicken & Egg Award Finalist is Marcela Arteaga, who will receive a $25,000 production grant toward her film. From the press release:
The Chicken & Egg Award was created to recognize mid-career women and gender-expansive nonfiction filmmakers who are poised to reach new heights in their careers. It also acknowledges the structural barriers they face that prevent them from pursuing a full-time career as independent storytellers. “The Chicken & Egg Award is designed to address the significant challenges advanced career filmmakers face by providing individualized, holistic support and mentorship,” said Chicken & Egg Films Program Director Kiyoko McCrae. “The program is built on the idea that success should be defined by an individual’s values, and personal and professional goals. In an industry that often determines success narrowly, we embrace each filmmaker for their unique story, experiences, skills, and artistry. We are very proud of this year’s cohort, which brings a diversity of perspectives, aesthetics, and contributions to our field of documentary.”
“This is a remarkable group of talented filmmakers. Their stories span the breadth of the human experience–from investigations into corporate corruption to personal narratives on queer identity, and intimate portraits of people on the frontlines of global change,” said Elaisha Stokes, Senior Program Manager for the Chicken & Egg Award. “They have been carefully chosen, not just for their individual achievements, but so they might collaborate as a team and reach their highest collective potential during their award year. Our cohort model provides a level of support that can last a lifetime, and we are committed to fostering deep relationships between these awardees.”
The 2025 cohort of multidisciplinary filmmakers includes Emmy®, Peabody, and Guggenheim Fellowship winners. Their films have been showcased at festivals and museums worldwide, and their body of work has significantly contributed to reshaping dominant narratives and allowing us a greater understanding of the world we live in. Alongside their roles as leading documentary filmmakers, this year’s cohort members are also journalists, professors, podcast hosts, curators and programmers, historians, B-corp leaders, and beyond.
Since 2016, the Chicken and Egg Award has granted unrestricted funding to accomplished industry veterans. Each Awardee receives a $75,000 grant and year-long tailored mentorship, attends a creative retreat, participates in monthly peer-to-peer cohort calls, and travels to a major film festival where Chicken & Egg Films hosts a culminating retreat and facilitates high-level industry networking opportunities around distribution, funding, and more.
Additional information about the Chicken & Egg Award recipients:
Rita Baghdadi (US, MOROCCO)
Rita Baghdadi (she/her) is an award-winning director known for her intimate, character-driven documentaries. Her film Sirens, executive produced by Natasha Lyonne and Maya Rudolph, premiered at Sundance 2022 and was praised by critics as “utterly charming” and “narrative perfection.” Other films include Finding the Light (Disney+, 2024), My Country No More (Independent Lens, 2019), and City Rising, which won an Emmy in 2018.Kelly Duane de la Vega (US)
Kelly Duane de la Vega’s (she/her) feature documentaries have screened at film festivals, in theaters, and on broadcast worldwide, including POV and Netflix. Her work has been nominated for five Emmy Awards and won the Gotham Award for Best Documentary, WGA’s Best Documentary Screenplay Award, IDA Creative Achievement Award, Tribeca Audience Award for Best Documentary, and Best Documentary at the San Francisco International Film Festival.Carola Fuentes (CHILE)
Carola Fuentes (she/her) is an Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker and journalist. She co-directed the films Chicago Boys (SANFIC 2016) and Breaking the Brick (Sheffield DocFest 2022), which screened at major festivals and won multiple awards. Her projects have received support from Sundance, Doc Society, Ford Foundation, and Chicken & Egg Films. She was a Sundance Fellow (2014) and a Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford (2005), and she is co-founder of La Ventana Chile, a B Corporation dedicated to socially impactful storytelling.Angelo Madsen (US)
Angelo Madsen (he/him) is a filmmaker and artist whose works have shown at festivals around the world including the Berlinale, Sundance, TIFF, New York Film Festival, and Tribeca. In 2023, the Video Data Bank acquired 20 of his films to create a compilation of early works (2002-2008) called Chicago Sex Change. Madsen’s film North By Current (2021, POV) won the Cinema Eye Honors Spotlight award, the IDA Best Writing award, and dozens of festival prizes. It was a New York Times Critic’s Pick and ranked number 11 on Rolling Stone‘s top 25 films of 2021. He is a Guggenheim Fellow (2023) and a Creative Capital Fellow (2025).Habiba Nosheen (CANADA, PAKISTAN, US)
Habiba Nosheen (she/her) is a Peabody and three-time Emmy Award-winning journalist and filmmaker. Her film Outlawed in Pakistan premiered at Sundance, where it was called “among the standouts” of the festival by The Los Angeles Times. She created and hosts Conviction: The Disappearance of Nuseiba Hasan, named one of the best podcasts of 2022 by The Guardian. Her films have been supported by FRONTLINE, JustFilms, Firelight Media, ITVS, and CBC. Previously, she was on DOC NYC’s 40 Under 40 list. She has taught documentary filmmaking at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.Jenni Olson (US)
Jenni Olson’s (she/her) 16mm urban landscape essay films have been acclaimed for their unique approach to cinematic storytelling, including in a 2021 Criterion Channel retrospective of her work. Her feature films The Joy of Life (2005) and The Royal Road (2015) both premiered at Sundance and, along with her many shorts, screened internationally to awards and acclaim. Among many achievements, Jenni was honored with the prestigious Special TEDDY Award at the Berlinale for her decades of work championing LGBTQ+ films and filmmakers.Anupama Srinivasan (INDIA)
Anupama Srinivasan (she/her) is a filmmaker, film educator, and curator who has been making documentaries for more than two decades, often shooting and editing her own work. Her films have screened at global film festivals including Sundance, CPH:DOX, HotDocs, IDFA, Sheffield DocFest, and many others. Her film Flickering Lights, which she co-directed, shot, and edited, received Best Cinematography Award at IDFA 2023. Her film Nocturnes, which she co-directed and co-edited, premiered at Sundance 2024.Marcela Arteaga (MEXICO) – FINALIST
Marcela Arteaga (she/her) is an award-winning documentary director. She directed and produced The Guardian of Memory, which premiered at HotDocs in 2019, and Remembrance, which premiered at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in 2003. Marcela has won numerous awards including the Ariel (Mexico’s Oscar) for Best Documentary 2020; Best Documentary, Morelia International Film Festival 2019; Best Documentary, DocsMx International Film Festival 2019; FIPRESCI Critics Award, Guadalajara International Film Festival 2003; and the Jury’s Special Award, Málaga Film Festival, 2004.
