BAVC Media (fka Bay Area Video Coalition) has announced its selection of seven filmmakers for the 2026 MediaMaker Fellowship, one of the longest-running programs in the U.S. dedicated to supporting diverse voices in documentary filmmaking. Each year, the fellowship provides early- and mid-career filmmakers with $10,000 in unrestricted funding, mentorship, industry access, and a nine-month program of workshops, feedback sessions, and artist development opportunities. The program will begin with an in-person convening in San Francisco, followed by a series of virtual workshops and mentorship sessions. Fellows will also attend the 2026 Camden International Film Festival and present their projects at a culminating pitch event at the Roxie Theater later in the year.
This year’s fellows are Samantha Berlanga (Pleasure Seekers), Roni Jo Draper, Ph.D. (We Arrive With Fire | Ne-Kah Nuue’m Mehl Mech), Daryl Jones (Allensworth: The Town That Refuses to Die), Elisa Leiva Anderson (película sin fin, 1995), Jason Rhee (Untitled EJ Lee Documentary), Amada Torruella (Vena Acuática), and Sara Yang (KUNIMORI).
Since its establishment in 1991, the MediaMaker Fellowship has served as an early supporter of socially engaged documentary projects, backing films at critical stages of development. As program co-director Dawn Valadez tells Documentary, this cohort “explores stories that are both historical and current, personal and community-centered, and use a variety of visual languages.” Valadez also addressed the difficulties faced by documentary filmmakers at this time, and how BAVC, now in its 50th year, hopes to combat these challenges through this program:
“As the documentary community faces blow after blow of reduced funding sources, platforms disappearing, and increasing scrutiny from a federal government which doesn’t appear to want to know the truths of our communities, we believe that supporting these filmmakers is a radical move. Our organization was founded on the belief that storytelling is an important part of positive social change, and we continue to be grounded in this purpose.”
BAVC has supported several critically acclaimed projects. Previous films that received the MediaMaker fellowship include Brittany Shyne’s Seeds (2025), Contessa Gayles’s Songs From the Hole (2024) (both IDA Enterprise Fund grantees), and Paige Bethmann’s Remaining Native (2025), an IDA Logan Elevate grantee.
The 2026 BAVC MediaMaker Fellowship was selected by BAVC MediaMaker Fellowship co-directors Brittney Réaume, Jin Yoo-Kim; Dawn Valadez, Daniel Díaz, Maria Santos (IDA Funds Program Officer), Rivkah Beth Medow, Patrick G. Lee, and Celia Byrne.
The fellows’ condensed biographies and information about their projects are below.
Amada Torruella is a Salvadoran filmmaker, producer, and film curator working between El Salvador and the United States. Rooted in collaborative storytelling, Amada’s work explores the relationship between people and home, grief and cultural dissonance, and has been supported by Chicken & Egg Films, Firelight Media, and Sundance Institute. Her short documentary la isla (2023) was acquired by The New Yorker, and her films have screened at BlackStar, New Orleans Film Festival, and Femme Frontera.
Project: Vena Acuática
A tender mosaic of El Salvador, Vena Acuática flows through the joys and perils of lives deeply bonded with water and land, shaped by the kinship among women protecting a landscape haunted by environmental negligence and forced Migration.
Daryl Jones is a filmmaker whose work includes Tender (2019), a short film that centers on Black trans women navigating the housing crisis in San Francisco. His oral history project and documentary, The New Roxy Theater (2024), is archived at Jackson State University. He holds an MFA in social documentation from UC Santa Cruz.
Project: Allensworth: The Town That Refuses to Die
Residents of a rural community in California’s Central Valley confront infrastructure challenges, drought, and flood as they work to sustain themselves and thrive at this historic site of Black and Latino migration.
Elisa Leiva Anderson is a filmmaker and editor from Santiago, Chile. Rooted in a family history of political struggle, her work often engages with legacies of resistance, the poetics of exile, and the unstable boundaries of nonfiction. She is the editor of Towards the Sun, Far from the Center (2024) and the director of VISTAS (2015).
Project: película sin fin, 1995
A woman inherits an unfinished film about her grandmother, a Chilean human rights lawyer. Reassembling the Hi‑8 archive, she confronts a legacy of public resistance and private loss, revealing how history is both recorded and reimagined.
Jason Rhee is a Korean American filmmaker and writer with a passion for telling stories centered around underrepresented communities and his childhood. With a background in screenwriting and comedy, he helped produce three one-woman shows with comedian Kellye Howard, including directing a sold-out run at the Steppenwolf Theater as part of its LookOut series.
Project: Untitled EJ Lee Documentary
EJ Lee, a Louisiana legend nicknamed by Sports Illustrated as the “Korean Magic Johnson of NCAA women’s basketball,” has been overlooked her entire career. But finally, at 60, EJ receives her first opportunity to become a college head coach and lead an underdog team of young women in West Texas.
Roni Jo Draper, Ph.D., is a member of the Yurok tribe from the village of Weitchpec on the Klamath River. Her experience as a queer Yurok woman has influenced her work as a teacher, scholar, and artist. Roni’s storytelling practices include poetry, watercolor, and film. Her films include Scenes From the Glittering World (2022) and Fire Tender (2023).
Project: We Arrive With Fire | Ne-kah Nuee’m Mehl Mech
Since time immemorial, Yurok people have placed fire on the land to maintain a balanced ecosystem. In the past century, settlers banned fire and the environment, and people have suffered. Now, Yurok people are returning fire medicine to heal the land.
Samantha Berlanga is a Puerto Rican–Ecuadorian American writer, director, and cinematographer from Queens, New York. She is currently based in San Francisco, where she is a second-year SFFILM Artist-in-Residence and youth mentor. Her artistic practice centers on building bridges across Latine, queer, and BIPOC diasporas through moving images, mutual aid, and art-based fundraisers.
Project: Pleasure Seekers
In Brooklyn, two lifelong best friends and a first-generation mother confront their desires, fears, and longings around love, intimacy, and autonomy. As their lives intertwine, they discover unexpected parallels.
Sara Yang is an independent researcher, design strategist, and documentarian whose work is rooted in storytelling as a healing and liberatory practice. She is currently cultivating Seeing Our Stories, an ancestral storytelling collective dedicated to knowing where we’ve come from and how we fit together. She has been awarded support from, among others, Wolf Willow Institute, Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation (VONA), and Rooted & Written.
Project: KUNIMORI
Masami Kuni became a pioneering modern dancer, performing and teaching across Japan, Germany, Denmark, the United States, and Brazil. Passing in 2007 at age 99, he left a dance institute in Tokyo, a widowed life partner, and five children around the world who never really knew their father. Perhaps no one fully did. 10 years after his passing, they learn he died with a secret: that he was Korean, not Japanese. Previously unknown to each other, his descendants and kin begin to unearth the traces he left behind.
The full bios of the 2025 MediaMaker Fellows will be posted at this link.
