The Momentum Fellowship: Raven Jackson, Sing J. Lee, Laura Moss & D. Smith Among 2024 Fellows
Featured prominently among the coverage from our media outlet, eight filmmakers in Raven Jackson (All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt), Savanah Leaf (Earth Mama), Sing J. Lee (The Accidental Getaway Driver), Laura Moss (birth/rebirth), A.V. Rockwell (A Thousand and One), D. Smith (Kokomo City), Aitch Alberto (Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe), and Erica Tremblay (Fancy Dance) have been selected for the 2024 Momentum Fellowship – the Sundance Institute’s incubator of sorts that helps mostly filmmakers who’ve previously delivered their feature debuts at the fest and are now gunning for the critical support for their next feature. It’s a snazzy support package.
Momentum provides participants with a full-year program of customized support around current goals they identify for themselves to level up in their craft and career, including an unrestricted artist grant; professional coaching offered by Renee Freedman & Company, supported by The Harnisch Foundation; and connection to the Sundance Institute’s ELEVATE professional development track with exclusive workshops and sessions. Application to the Momentum Fellowship is by invitation only. Additionally, as part of an ongoing partnership with Universal, the studio will provide support for select Momentum fellows working on fiction projects. Here are the mini bios:
Aitch Alberto is a writer-director born and raised in Miami, Florida. She is a Sundance Episodic Lab fellow and one of Variety’s 10 Directors to Watch for 2022. She wrote and directed Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe with Lin-Manuel Miranda producing. She has also written on Duster from J.J. Abrams and Little America.
Raven Jackson is an award-winning filmmaker, poet, and photographer from Tennessee. Her debut feature, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, made in partnership with Maria Altamirano, PASTEL, and A24, world-premiered in the U.S. Dramatic Competition at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival and was recently nominated for two Film Independent Spirit Awards.
Laura Moss is a filmmaker from New York City whose work has screened at Sundance, Tribeca, Rotterdam, and SXSW. Their debut feature, birth/rebirth, was distributed in theaters by IFC. Their short film Fry Day is featured on the Criterion Channel. Their award-winning screenplay Gordon, co-written with Brendan J. O’Brien, is currently in development.
Erica Tremblay is a filmmaker from the Seneca-Cayuga Nation. Her feature film Fancy Dance premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Tremblay has written and directed on the FX series Reservation Dogs as well as AMC’s Dark Winds. Tremblay lives in upstate New York, where she studies her Indigenous language.
Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include Tár (Todd Field), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen), Aftersun (Charlotte Wells).