RIDEPLAY tv Celebrates Sundance’s 2026 Documentary Fund and the Rise of Impact Storytelling

The 2026 Documentary Fund Grantees are:

DEVELOPMENT

Alcatraz is an Idea (U.S.A.)

Director: Julian Brave NoiseCat

Producers: Peter Bratt, Benjamin Bratt, Alpita Patel, Daniel Kilroy, Tom Mackintosh

In November 1969, a scrappy band of Natives seized Alcatraz Island from the most powerful government on Earth. Confronting the Nixon administration, the activists held the notorious former prison for 19 months, igniting a movement — America’s greatest civil rights story never told.

Shape of Silence (Canada)

Director & Producer: Varun Trikha

Amid changing forests, a blind Polish linguist searches for sounds that might heal what human language cannot.

Shooting Stars (Iran, France, Denmark, Netherlands, Norway)

Director: Parsa Ansari

Producer: Milad Khosravi

Co-producers: Thibaut Amri, Maria Rostad, Steven Rubinstein Malamud, Anita Norfolk

While investigating mysterious UFO sightings from his childhood, a boy begins to question who the real aliens are. His search gradually shifts from extraterrestrial fantasies toward the invisible outsiders living among us on Earth.

Wahnish Keeps Me Free (U.S.A.)

Director: Jamil McGinnis

Development Producer: Resita Heavenly Cox

As stories emerge from centennial trees on campus, members of the Marching 100 kinetically compose the memories of Florida A&M University. Wahnish Keeps Me Free frames Black Southern life as “stillness in musical motion” — where band, diaspora, land, and sound converge.

PRODUCTION

All Fixed Up (U.S.A., France, South Korea)

Director: Hao Zhou

Producers: Tyler Hill, Jenny Wu, Dominique Barneaud, Heejung Oh

After struggling to “straighten out” their queer descendant, a rural family pursues a dramatic masquerade that pushes the boundaries of care, identity, and cross-generational understanding.

All Shall Be Saved (U.S.A.)

Directors: Jason Sussberg, David Alvarado

Producer: Kate McLean

There’s a church in San Francisco where the internet lives. All of it. Brewster Kahle and the Internet Archive keep our shared memory (everything from cat GIFs to great literature) humming in servers above the pews. Now copyright lawsuits, hackers, and surveillance states threaten to burn it down.

Anatomy of Indifference (U.K., Romania)

Director & Producer: Ilinca Calugareanu

Producers: Anamaria Antoci, Lucila Moctezuma

This is not the story of a crime, but of everything that happens after it is reported.

Artificial Horizon (U.S.A.)

Director: Elizabeth M. Webb

Producers: DaManuel Richardson, Maggie Corona-Goldstein, Solomon Turner

Artificial Horizon traces the layered histories of former plantation land in Alabama — an origin point for the filmmaker’s family who live on either side of, and sometimes cross, the color line. Looking to plants as teachers, what does repair mean for land, relationships, and the systems we inherit?

God of the In-Between (India, U.S.A.)

Director: Archana Phadke

Producers: Aman Mann, Shaunak Sen

A fabled island of ruins has been sustained for generations by an unlikely savior: seaweed. Panchavarnam and her “seaweed sisters” have spent a lifetime collecting this treasure. Panchavarnam now fights to preserve the sisterhood, even as her daughter chooses a different life.

Supported by the Sundance Institute | Free People Creative Spirit Fund

Matrescence (U.K.)

Director: Kathryn Ferguson

Producers: Rosie Crerar, Eleanor Emptage

A genre-defying documentary exploring the transformative journey of motherhood, adapted from Lucy Jones’ bestselling book. With powerful visual storytelling, the film interweaves groundbreaking science and personal testimony to offer a radical and profound examination of maternal metamorphosis.

None of This Matters (U.S.A.)

Director: Shaina Feinberg

Producers: Judith Mizrachy, Elisabeth Durkin

Struggling filmmaker Shaina Feinberg travels to Maine to interview trailblazing director and teacher Joan Darling. Over years, the intended biopic transforms into a portrait of two artists at different points of their lives and a meditation on the messy, beautiful act of creating until the very end.

Supported by the Sundance Institute | Free People Creative Spirit Fund

Penny & Koko (U.S.A.)

Director & Producer: Tasha Van Zandt

Producers: Sebastian Zeck, Anna Barnes, Chai Vasarhelyi

Told through Koko the gorilla’s eyes and a lifetime of never-before-seen archival footage, Penny & Koko reveals the extraordinary 47-year bond between a gorilla who forever changed how we understand communication across species and the pioneering scientist who devoted her life to listening to her.

Salt of the south (Tunisia, France, Denmark, Qatar)

Director: Rami Jarboui

Producers: Ramzi Laâmouri, Julien Coquet, Marie Schmidt Olesen

On the polluted shores of Gabès, where a vast chemical complex looms over a coastal village, a resilient clam harvester fights to preserve her family’s way of life as her son risks everything on a perilous journey to Europe, only to discover that exploitation knows no borders.

Speaking For Earth (U.S.A.)

Director & Producer: Cody Ball

Producers: Carter Oakley, Cleo Abram, Owen Kibby

For decades, the world’s leading expert in interstellar communication has worked toward an ambitious dream: making contact with another intelligent civilization. Science meets humanity in this pursuit of unlocking a new era of space exploration.

The People’s Network (U.S.A.)

Director: Alyse Shorland

Producers: Sara Archambault, Darcy McKinnon

From bold experiment to an essential civic institution, C-SPAN revolutionized access to power. Now, nearly 50 years later, its dedicated staff finds itself at a turning point just when America needs them most.

YOSI (U.S.A., Mexico)

Director: Jimmy Goldblum

Producers: Vero Kompalic, Justin Gonçalves, Esteban Zuluaga, Darren Aronofsky

Queer poet and playwright Yosimar Reyes transforms the absurdities of his undocumented life into hilarious, defiant theater. But after the death of the grandmother who raised him, Yosi journeys back to Mexico, confronting what it means to belong on both sides of the border.

POST-PRODUCTION

My Friend the Bear (U.S.A.)

Director: Drew Xanthopoulos

Producer: Bennett Elliott

Showing the unprecedented, decades-long relationship between a severely dyslexic researcher and a bear he rescued and released, the film reveals an unseen world of bears and challenges our modern ideas of how humanity fits into the rest of nature.

Nine (U.S.A.)

Directors & Producers: Rachael DeCruz, Jeremy S. Levine

Producer: Rajal Pitroda

After being sent to prison at 18, Gerald met Henry, who raised him into the man he is today. Now Gerald is on a mission to bring his 83-year-old “Pops” home from prison while there’s still time. Nine is a poetic exploration of the enduring bonds of friendship forged across generations and decades.

Unfiltered (w/t) (U.S.A.)

Director: Chelsi Bullard

Producer: Julia Pontecorvo

In a poetic blend of reality and imagination, a vivacious Brooklyn teenager strives to reclaim her own fleeting childhood while helping raise her four younger sisters. Through her original poetry, she conjures a world where Black girls get to simply be kids.

Supported by the Sundance Institute | Free People Creative Spirit Fund

The Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program is made possible by founding support from the Open Society Foundations. Generous additional support is provided by John Templeton Foundation, Sandbox Films, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Free People, The Asian American Foundation (TAAF), The Charles Engelhard Foundation, Nion McEvoy & Leslie Berriman, Nancy Blachman, and Roger and Carin Ehrenberg.

Congrats to all the Filmmakers!!