Catapult Film Fund Names 2026 Research Fellows; Oscar Winner Diane Becker To Serve As Lead Advisor

EXCLUSIVE: Catapult Film Fund has named its 2026 Research Fellows, a distinguished group of five filmmakers who will receive $10,000 each to develop their documentary projects.

The cohort includes Isabel Castro (Mija, Selena Y Los Dinos), Oscar-nominated producer Lauren Domino (Time), Oscar-shortlisted director Amber Fares (Coexistence, My Ass!), Emmy-winner Ivan MacDonald (Bring Them Home), and Oscar-shortlisted producer Igor Myakotin (Queendom, Welcome to Chechnya). In addition to the 10K in direct support, the fellows will receive bespoke advising as they develop their new films, with Academy Award-winning producer Diane Becker (Navalny) serving as lead advisor.

“In a field where early research is both essential and chronically underfunded—often the moment when funding is hardest to secure and considered riskiest to give—the Catapult Research Grant positions this phase as foundational to the storytelling process,” notes a release. “The program supports filmmakers while ideas are still taking shape, giving them time and space for the kind of exploration and kick-start creative discovery that ultimately determines a film’s direction, voice and impact.”

Scroll for more on the Research Fellows and their projects.

“Some of the most important moments in a documentary’s life happen long before a camera is rolling,” commented Megan Gelstein, co-director and chief program officer of Catapult Film Fund. “They happen when a filmmaker is still sitting with a question—following threads, meeting people, imagining what the story could become. The Research Fellowship exists to protect that fragile early stage. This year’s cohort will have the extraordinary opportunity to explore that moment with Academy Award-winning filmmaker Diane Becker, whose creative instincts and generosity of spirit with filmmakers will make this an especially rich year for the program.”

Becker’s credits include The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist, the feature documentary directed by Daniel Roher and Charlie Tyrell that just opened theatrically, NatGeo’s Blink (2024), King Coal (2023), Tina (2021), and Whirlybird (2020). She served as an executive producer of 2023’s Hollywoodgate.

“The early stage is where real discovery and magic happen,” Becker said in a statement. “Before a film finds its shape, its voice, and its wings, filmmakers are listening, researching, and stress testing their instincts about what direction the story wants to move in. It’s a privilege to spend time with this talented cohort as they explore these important questions and begin laying the foundations for the films ahead.”

Catapult was founded 15 years ago “to address the lack of early support and sustainability in the documentary field.” Catapult launched its artist-centered Research Grant program in 2020 “after conversations with U.S.-based filmmakers about the barriers they faced when creating new work, specifically the lack of funding, time, and sense of community during the research phase.”

2026 Research Fellows

Isabel Castro

Project: Untitled Los Angeles Film

Description: Untitled Los Angeles film is composed of a series of vignettes of migrants finding their footing in a fractured American Dream.

Bio: Isabel Castro is a five-time Emmy®-nominated Mexican-American filmmaker and photographer. Her latest documentary, Selena y Los Dinos, had its world premiere at Sundance Film Festival 2025 in the U.S. It won a Special Jury Award for archival storytelling in the Documentary Competition, multiple audience awards and premiered on Netflix. Her first feature film, Mija (Sundance Film Festival 2022) was a New York Times critics pick, on the DOC NYC shortlist, won a Cinema Eye Award and it won the Grand Jury Prize at the Champs-Élysées Film Festival. She directed, produced and filmed the Emmy®-nominated, award-winning documentary short USA v Scott (Tribeca 2020, The New Yorker), Emmy®-nominated Darlin (Tribeca 2019, NYT OpDocs), GLAAD award-winning Crossing Over (Univision/Participant Media) and on the Emmy®-nominated Netflix docu-series Pandemic. She’s worked on dozens of stories as an opinion contributor, producer, cinematographer and multimedia journalist for The New York Times, as an Edward R. Murrow-award winning producer at The Marshall Project, and as an Emmy®-nominated producer covering civil rights and policy at VICE on HBO. Castro was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film” and DOC NYC’s “40 Under 40”, and she was nominated for an Independent Spirit award. She is developing her first scripted feature with The Department of Motion Pictures and working on Untitled Los Angeles, a photography and film project.

Lauren Domino

Project: Butts: A Backstory

Description: Whether we love them or hate them, think they’re sexy, think they’re strange, consider them too big, too small, or anywhere in between, humans have a complicated relationship with butts. Part deep dive reportage, part verité film following the creation of a museum exhibition, Butts: A Backstory is an entertaining, illuminating, and thoughtful examination of why certain silhouettes come in and out of fashion—and how larger ideas about race, control, liberation, and power affect our most private feelings about ourselves and others.

Bio: Lauren Domino is a writer and Peabody, PGA, and Grammy award-winning producer with a focus on the healing power of film. Her work as a producer includes the Academy Award® nominated TIME (Amazon Studios), and BAFTA and Oscar® Shortlisted American Symphony (Netflix), as well as Alone, The Earth is Humming, Black Folk Don’t, Like, and America.  She has produced branded content and live events for The New Yorker, Elle Magazine, the Oscars®, Microsoft, and Essence Festival. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences Doc Branch, Producers Guild of America, The Documentary Producers Alliance and the Writers Guild of America. Butts: A Backstory is her first foray into Directing.

Amber Fares

Project: Untitled Alberta Project

Description: An exploration of political identity and ideology in Alberta, Canada.

Bio: Amber Fares is an Academy Award®–nominated documentary director, producer, and cinematographer whose work explores power, identity, and political narratives through character-driven storytelling. Her latest film, Coexistence, My Ass!, premiered at Sundance 2025 and was shortlisted for an Academy Award®. Her directing credits include Speed Sisters (Hot Docs 2015), We Are Ayenda (Amazon, 2023), Reckoning with Laughter (Al Jazeera Witness, 2021), and Convergence: Courage Under Crisis (Netflix, 2021), which she co-directed. As a cinematographer and producer, she has worked on the Peabody Award–winning The Judge (PBS, 2017), the Sundance Special Jury Award–winning Life After, and the Academy Award®–nominated short The Devil is Busy (HBO, 2025). She is a Sundance Momentum Fellow and Pillars Artist Fellow, and is based between New York and Montreal.

Ivan MacDonald

Project: Blackfeet Heavy Metal

Description: Suicide is one of the leading causes of death for indigenous youth. A small group of high school students on the Blackfeet reservation use heavy metal music as a way to heal, address trauma and highlight their resiliency. Their work is set against the backdrop of a heavy metal music festival that takes place on the reservation. 

Bio: Ivan MacDonald is an Emmy® Award-winning filmmaker and an enrolled member of the Blackfeet tribe. His most recent documentary project, Bring Them Home, which is about his tribe’s efforts to establish the first tribally managed wild bison herd, aired nationally on PBS in the fall of 2025. Bring Them Home is executive-produced and narrated by Oscar®-nominated actress Lily Gladstone. He was an inaugural fellow for the Netflix and Illuminative Producers fellowship and was an inaugural recipient of the Hulu and Firelight Kindling fund. He was also the 2024 Mark Silverman honoree for the 2024-2025 Sundance Producing Lab. With his sister Ivy, he is directing When They Were Here which is a feature-length documentary about the missing and murdered indigenous women and girl’s crisis told through the lens of their family and community. Sundance, ITVS, and IDA have supported his work.

Igor Myakotin 

Project: The Russia Solution

Description: Confidential.

Bio: Igor Myakotin is an Emmy®-nominated, BAFTA- and Peabody-winning filmmaker drawn to stories of queer survival and liberation in restrictive and dangerous environments. His work follows people who refuse the roles imposed on them, finding beauty, defiance, and political force in acts of becoming.

He produced Queendom, shortlisted for the 97th Academy Award for Documentary Feature, and Welcome to Chechnya, shortlisted for the 93rd Academy Awards® for Documentary Feature and Visual Effects, the first documentary ever recognized in the Visual Effects category.

Igor is currently directing his debut feature documentary. A 2025 Berlinale Talents participant, 2022 Sundance Creative Producing Lab fellow, and NextDoc alumnus, his films have screened at Sundance, Berlinale, BFI London, CPH:DOX, True/False and others. He has served on the international juries of DOC NYC and the Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival, and was named one of DOC NYC’s “40 Under 40.”