EXCLUSIVE: Sundance Institute has named the 10 emerging filmmakers selected for the latest edition of its yearlong Sundance Institute Ignite x Adobe Fellowship.
Chosen from a pool of more than 1,100, they are Simisolaoluwa Akande, Aicha Cherif, Blake Knecht, Franciszek Korolczuk, Haneol Lee, Josiah Mendoza, Muskaan Razdan, Mia Lima Rocha, Yace Sula, and Japhet E. Velázquez.
For more than a decade, the Ignite fellowship has brought together storytellers ages 18 to 25 for professional development and community-building. This year’s program kicks off with the Ignite Lab at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts, from June 14–19, with monthly webinars to follow focused on various aspects of creative and professional development.
Fellows will also gather in person again for a curated program at the 2027 Sundance Film Festival in Boulder, Colorado. Each will receive a $5,000 artist grant through the fellowship, as well as a one-year complimentary membership to Adobe Creative Cloud to support their professional development.
“It’s with great pleasure that we return to MASS MoCA to kick off a new year with our Sundance Institute Ignite x Adobe fellows,” said Sundance Institute Ignite Director Toby Brooks. “The filmmakers selected represent an exciting cross section of perspectives, and we’re appreciative of our partners at Adobe for their collaboration in bringing the group together this week. Our team is looking forward to facilitating a dynamic cohort of emerging filmmakers and connecting them with the tools needed to build a solid foundation for their careers in this coming year and beyond. Ignite is first and foremost a community — of alumni and mentors alike — and we’re thrilled to welcome these 10 fellows into it.”
Amy While, Adobe’s Global Head of Corporate Social Responsibility, added: “Every filmmaker deserves the chance to bring their vision to life. Together with the Sundance Institute, we’re working to make sure access to tools and funding is never what stands between a creator and their story. Over 15 years as partners, we’ve seen firsthand what happens when emerging filmmakers get that support and we couldn’t be more excited to see what the new cohort of fellows brings to the screen.”
Since its founding in 2015, the Sundance Institute Ignite x Adobe Fellowship has had 19 alumni projects selected to screen at the Sundance Film Festival, with several winning jury awards. Former fellows include Giselle Bonilla (The Musical), Sean Wang (Dìdi (弟弟)), Charlotte Regan (Scrapper), Lance Oppenheim (Some Kind of Heaven), Terrance Daye (Ship: A Visual Poem), Aurora Brachman (Girls State), and Olivia Peace (Against Reality). Former fellows have also won prizes at SXSW and Tribeca Festival, as well as the Short Film Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and an Academy Award nomination.
Earlier this year, the Sundance Ignite x Adobe Fellowship expanded to include a short film fund available to Ignite alumni that will support more projects moving from concept to screen in the coming years.
Learn more about this year’s fellows below.
Simisolaoluwa Akande is a Nigerian British multiaward-winning artist filmmaker whose work spans fiction and speculative nonfiction. Grounded in queer African epistemologies, her practice challenges dominant narratives around African identity, memory, and representation.
Aicha Cherif is a director based in New York City drawn to storytelling as a means of excavation and the emotional architectures that shape how we belong to one another. Her documentary Heat screened in Film Forum’s Tenement Stories, a century-spanning New York City retrospective, where she was the youngest director.
Blake Knecht is a filmmaker from Las Vegas, Nevada. Her work explores landscapes as evolving narratives, tracing relationships between land, labor, and movement. She earned her MFA in documentary media from Northwestern University, and her work has screened at IDFA, Slamdance, American Cinematheque, and more.
Franciszek Korolczuk is a Polish student filmmaker and music video director whose work blends narrative filmmaking with documentary realism. His debut short, Princeska, is currently on the festival circuit and premiered at the Brussels Short Film Festival.
Haneol Lee (이한얼) is an award-winning filmmaker exploring 1.5 generation Korean American identity, diaspora, and generational healing through a contemplative lens. His work has screened at BFI, Palm Springs Shortfest, and True/False.
Josiah Mendoza is a filmmaker and documentarian from O’ahu, Hawai’i. His films examine the impact of memory through familial dynamics in varying communities. A graduate from Chapman University, his work has played at Hawai’i International Film Festival, Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, and NFFTY.
Muskaan Razdan is an Indian writer and filmmaker based in London. An alumna of the Roundhouse Poetry Collective and Barbican Young Poets, her work appears in Berlin Lit, Magma, among others. She received the Roundhouse Film Fund for her short film Salt, currently on the festival circuit.
Mia Lima Rocha is a Brazilian filmmaker from Rio de Janeiro. Her work explores moral ambiguity and the limits of empathy through women-centered stories shaped by discomfort comedy and occasionally breaking into musical numbers. Her latest film, TAG, tackles the discovery of sexuality in childhood.
Yace Sula is a filmmaker who often plays in the experimental arena. Their films have screened at festivals such as the New York Film Festival, Fantasia Film Festival, and Ann Arbor Film Festival. In 2025, they were named one of Filmmaker magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film.”
Japhet E. Velázquez is an LA-based filmmaker from Arroyo, Puerto Rico, and a recent graduate of the AFI Directing program. He began making horror shorts in San Antonio, Texas.
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