Today, Chicken & Egg Films announces the 2026 cohort of its eponymous award, which will grant a total of US$450K, along with mentorship and support, to six nonfiction filmmakers poised for a breakthrough year. 

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 award year.

This year’s recipients are Amber Fares, Chase Joynt, Zippy Kimundu, Tamara Kotevska, Jules Rosskam, and Ema Ryan Yamazaki.

Created in 2016, the Chicken & Egg Award recognizes women and gender-expansive nonfiction filmmakers who are already advanced in their careers. The support provided acknowledges the structural barriers these accomplished industry veterans face, which may prevent them from pursuing a full-time career as independent storytellers.

“The Chicken & Egg Award was created to meet the complex challenges that advanced career filmmakers face by offering flexible funding and individualized support,” said Chicken & Egg Films Program Director Kiyoko McCrae in a prepared statement. “It is incredibly gratifying to support filmmakers across a wide range of journeys and creative paths as exemplified in this year’s cohort.”

In addition to the financial support provided, the 2026 cohort is offered a year-long tailored mentorship. They’ll also attend a creative retreat, participate in monthly peer-to-peer cohort calls, and travel to a major film festival, where Chicken & Egg Films will host a culminating retreat that offers high-level industry networking opportunities on distribution, funding, and more.

“A fundamental aspect of our mission is to provide filmmakers with unrestricted funding so they can build sustainable careers. This approach to artist support is perhaps more important than ever as access to public and private funding declines globally,” added Elaisha Stokes, Associate Director of Program.

Working across documentary, fiction, and hybrid forms, this year’s cohort is collectively interrogating systems of power, excavating historical narratives, and forging new cinematic languages. Moreover, each of this year’s recipients has already received support from Chicken & Egg Films for previous projects.

Additional information about the Chicken & Egg Award recipients:

Amber Fares (she/her) is an award-winning documentary director, producer, and cinematographer from Canada. Her films include Coexistence, My Ass! (2025), which won a Special Jury Award at Sundance and was shortlisted for an Academy Award, and We Are Ayenda (WhatsApp 2021), which won the Cannes Lion Grand Prix. As a producer and cinematographer, her credits include the Oscar-nominated short The Devil is Busy (HBO, 2026) and the Peabody Award-winning The Judge (2017). She was a cinematographer on the Sundance Special Jury Award winner and Emmy-nominated Life After (PBS 2025). A Sundance Momentum Fellow, Chicken & Egg Awardee, and Pillars Artist Fellow, she is based between New York and Canada.

Chase Joynt (he/him) is a non-fiction filmmaker and writer who works at the edges of genre. His award-winning feature documentaries have premiered at Sundance, TIFF, and Tribeca, including Framing Agnes, which won both the NEXT Innovator Award and the NEXT Audience Award at Sundance 2022. His work has been hailed by The New Yorker as “a genre unto itself” and by Indiewire as “the future of trans cinema.” With Samantha Curley, Chase runs the Oscar short-listed and Emmy-nominated production company Level Ground Productions. 

Zippy Kimundu (she/her) is an award-winning Kenyan filmmaker with nearly two decades of global experience spanning more than 20 countries. She co-directed A Fork, a Spoon & a Knight with Mira Nair and was assistant editor on Disney’s Queen of Katwe. Her feature documentaries include Our Land, Our Freedom (IDFA/Sheffield) and Widow Champion (Hot Docs/Tribeca). She holds an MFA from NYU and is the founder of Afrofilms International, a collective driving sociopolitical consciousness and action.

Tamara Kotevska’s (she/her) feature documentary Honeyland swept three major Sundance awards and was the first-ever documentary to be nominated for both Best Documentary and Best International Feature at the Academy Awards. Her latest feature, The Tale of Silyan, was a National Geographic selection, a Venice Muse Award winner, and a winner of the Best Documentary and Best Cinematography awards at IDA, along with twenty other global accolades. She is a Chicken & Egg Awardee, and her current film is supported by Sundance Sandbox.

Jules Rosskam (he/him) is an award-winning filmmaker, educator, and interdisciplinary artist. He is a 2026 USA Artist Fellow and a 2021 Creative Capital Awardee. His most recent film, Desire Lines, premiered at Sundance in 2024 and won the NEXT Special Jury Award. His work has screened around the world, including at the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the British Film Institute, Anthology Film Archives, Sundance, the Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival, the Provincetown International Film Festival, the Chicago International Film Festival, and dozens of LGBTQ film festivals worldwide.

Ema Ryan Yamazaki (she/her) is the director of Instruments of a Beating Heart (2024) and editor of Black Box Diaries (2024), which were both nominated for the Academy Awards in 2025. She has directed three acclaimed feature documentaries: The Making of a Japanese (2023), Koshien: Japan’s Field of Dreams (2019), and Monkey Business: The Adventures of Curious George’s Creators (2017).

Editor's Note May 14, 2026: The article has been corrected to reflect the year when the Chicken & Egg Films award was originally created.