Welcoming 8 Above Distribution Lab Cohort 5 and The Librarians wins an Emmy!
We’re thrilled to kick off the next cohort of the 8 Above Distribution Lab, our largest and most global cohort yet. And congrats to The Librarians on their Emmy Win! More below on this.
This year, we’re welcoming 22 projects from filmmakers around the world, including, for the first time in the Lab’s history, participants from Africa.
We’re also expanding the program with outside marketing mentors for our documentary and fiction sections. Amy Hobby, acclaimed producer and co-founder of Distribution Advocates, will mentor the fiction filmmakers, while Ami Vora, Head of Marketing at Kinema, will mentor the documentary filmmakers.
The launch of Cohort 5 follows an especially strong year for filmmakers from the 8 Above Distribution Lab, with projects from recent cohorts reaching audiences at major festivals, earning prestigious awards, and forging innovative paths in distribution.
Cohort 4 filmmakers had a particularly notable 2026 festival season. Banchi Hanuse’s Ceremony will be at Camden International Film Festival this month and also won the he DGC Special Jury Prize for Canadian Feature Documentary at Hot Docs. Kade Atwood and Megan Rico’s Edie Arnold Is a Loser, (SXSW) won the Golden Space Needle Audience Award for Best Film at the Seattle International Film Festival. Fellow Cohort 4 filmmaker JJ Gerber’s documentary The Life We Leave (SXSW) won the Golden Space Needle Audience Award for Best Documentary.
Other Lab filmmakers have pursued equally varied release strategies: from festival premieres and audience awards to grassroots screenings, microcinemas, theatrical releases and direct-to-audience campaigns. That range reflects one of the Lab’s central goals — helping each filmmaking team identify a distribution and marketing strategy tailored to the particular film, its audiences, and the filmmakers’ own goals rather than relying on a single traditional distribution model.
With that, we’re incredibly excited about the filmmakers and projects joining us this year, and proud to introduce Cohort 5:
Fiction
1972— Sundance Screenwriting Fellow Marissa Chibás’s narrative feature debut is set amid a chaotic New Year’s Eve party in 1972 Manhattan, where an exiled Cuban revolutionary confronts family conflict and the fear that she may never return home. The film participated in Gotham Week and received Sundance/One House support, with producers Rui Xu — a Film Independent Project Involve and PGA CREATE fellow — and Liz Cardenas, an Independent Spirit Award winner for 7 Days whose credits also include A Ghost Story and Never Goin’ Back.
Suckers— marks Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning filmmaker Carter Smith’s return to queer horror, following earlier works Bugcrush and Swallowed. Smith’s credits also include DreamWorks’ The Ruins, Sundance selection Jamie Marks Is Dead and Blumhouse/Amazon’s The Passenger, and he is joined by producer Dan Kleinmann, whose work spans film, performance and community-engaged storytelling.
Keep Coming Back — Veteran studio director Mark Rosman (A Cinderella Story, The Perfect Man, Life-Size) turns to independent film with the deeply personal Keep Coming Back, starring Scott Foley and Amy Brenneman and examining addiction and recovery through the experience of a parent forced to confront his own need to change.
Magic Hour — Writer/director Jacqueline Christy makes her feature debut with Magic Hour, about a suburban mom who secretly returns to film school to reclaim her long-lost dream, loosely inspired by Christy’s experience attending the NYU Grad Film program in her 40s. The film played at 23 festivals including Santa Barbara, Miami and the Hamptons, and went on to win multiple audience and jury awards. Tribeca Films is distributing the film digitally and Christy is working with exhibitors directly bringing it into theaters this fall.
One Day in Sedona — Sony Directing Program alum Monique Sorgen’s debut feature, which she also wrote, follows two strangers, both at pivotal moments in their lives, who meet on a hike in Sedona and form an unexpected connection around love, legacy, and the betterment of humankind. The film stars Wallace Langham (CSI) and Alysia Reiner (Orange Is the New Black), who also joins the Lab team along with producer Sean Akers (Margin Call, All Is Lost).
Gracias Padre — is the feature directorial debut of cellist-turned-filmmaker Jen Kuhn. It follows a 40-year-old woman who, after discovering she was donor-conceived, seeks out her biological father in Mexico. Kuhn — who also writes, produces and stars — has performed on more than 200 film and television scores and worked on series including Mozart in the Jungle and Modern Love.
Stardust — from writer-director-producer David Brownstein, is a music-driven romance that unfolds over one night in a 1992 Santa Monica club, where an aspiring singer-songwriter faces a career crossroads and an unexpected creative connection. Brownstein is joined on the project by DGA Award-winning producer Chris Riddle (Veep, Barry).
LISA — Writer/director/producer Dylan Gary makes his feature debut with LISA, about a woman disappearing in the performance of her suburban life who forms a dangerous relationship with a neighborhood boy. Gary began his screenwriting career on HBO’s Tell Me You Love Me and has also worked with Sony Television, Sundance Channel, Olive Productions and Warp Films. He is joined by producers Madison Meadows and Jacob Quesenberry, whose work spans narrative film, documentary and photography. LISA is currently in pre-production.
Angels Twice Descending — Award-winning writer Cecile Callan adapts her stage play into a psychological thriller about a pregnant pastor’s wife whose husband holds a young law student captive to prevent her from having an abortion. The film explores reproductive freedom from inside the wife’s crisis of faith and conscience, asking what happens when one person’s religious belief claims authority over another person’s body. Callan is joined by producer Sami Kolko Zwick, whose short films have screened at Tribeca, Edinburgh and HollyShorts.
Angel Lady — from writer-producer Sheri Leigh Myers and director Edgar Pablos, is a gritty, music-filled fable about faith, community and second chances set along the Texas border. The producing team includes Maria Elena Rodriguez and Emmy-winning Costume Designer Dan Moore, whose credits include Wild Bill and Geronimo: An American Legend.
Documentary
Mexicanamerican — 2026 Tribeca Audience Award winner Mexicanamerican, the feature directorial debut of Eddie Sánchez, uses interviews and VHS home movies to explore his parents’ migration from Mexico and their attempt to reconcile two cultures across two generations. The film was also named one of The New York Times’ highlights of the festival.
In Loco Parentis— a film by award-winning filmmaker Joel Fendelman and producer James Chase Sanchez, investigates decades of sexual abuse — and alleged institutional cover-ups — at two prestigious Connecticut boarding schools. Their previous collaboration, Man on Fire, won the IDA David L. Wolper Award and aired nationally on PBS’s Independent Lens. They are joined by producer and impact specialist Luke Robins, whose documentary Sabor y Amor screened at festivals across the U.S. and Mexico and aired on Vermont PBS.
In the Name of Green— Former CNN journalist Emily Probst Miller chronicles the battle over Rivian’s proposed multibillion-dollar EV plant in rural Georgia, where promises of green cars and next-generation jobs collide with family farms, grassroots resistance and questions about what progress costs.
The Grass Ceiling— director Sarah Strauss revisits her own abandoned dream of playing professional baseball as she follows four girls fighting for their place in the sport as a historic women’s professional league prepares to launch. Joined by Sundance Fellow Drew Dickler and former CBS News producer Jennie Kamin of Deep Dive Films, who previously produced Berlinale Amnesty International Film Award winner What Will I Become?.
CT High Fives (Working Title)— follows a senior women’s basketball team whose members have played together for 25 years, from filmmaker Jenny Schweitzer Bell, whose work has premiered at SXSW and been featured by The New York Times, The New Yorker, National Geographic and The Atlantic, earning three Vimeo Staff Picks along the way.
Left Lane Straight: A Greek-Jewish Odyssey — follows first-time filmmaker Caroline Kaye as she embroiders her way through five centuries of exile and her family’s fractured history to find belonging and reclaim a culture nearly erased, alongside veteran producer Deana Morenoff. The film premiered at the Thessaloniki International Documentary Film Festival.
Antytila: The Score of War — the feature directorial debut of David Peter Hansen, follows Ukrainian rock band Antytila as its members use music and celebrity in the fight for their country, culminating in an epic Kyiv arena concert. Hansen, who was notably a Student Academy Award finalist for The Militiaman, is joined on the project by producer/editor Alyse Ardell Spiegel (I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory) and producer Alison Joy, whose credits span HBO, Netflix, The New York Times and Story Syndicate.
Magic Town— Filmmaker and Jeopardy! champ Pete Johnston takes us inside Colon, Michigan — the “Magic Capital of the World” — where magicians have gathered every summer for nearly 90 years. Johnston is joined by Emmy-nominated filmmaker Curtis Matzke and award-winning filmmaker/editor Emma Thatcher, whose debut feature Provo premiered at Mill Valley.
SALA — Intimate conversations with Holocaust survivor Sala Kirschner reveal how a teenager enslaved for five years in Nazi labor camps rebuilt her life while never allowing those past experiences to define her. The film marks the feature documentary directorial debut of acclaimed cinematographer Eddie Marritz, DP of the Oscar-winning Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision, and is produced by longtime documentary filmmaker Sian Evans, with editor/producer Tim Messler, whose credits include American Experience and Finding Your Roots.
The Last Witch — chronicles the remarkable campaign by a middle-school teacher and her eighth-grade students to exonerate Elizabeth Johnson Jr., the last person still convicted from the Salem Witch Trials. Director Annika Hylmo co-produced previously Academy Award-nominated Daniel Raim’s documentary Image Makers, and is joined by producer Nikit Doshi, whose credits include The Journey Is the Destination and Brut Force, and marketing strategist Bergitte Joergensen.
LEFA: The Boys We Left Behind– Filmmaker Ansley Sawyer joins veteran South African production executive Lumka Stone and marketing strategist Shanei Born on a documentary addressing gender-based violence in South Africa. Stone’s credits include The Woman King, Mission: Impossible, The Witcher, Outlander and Black Sails.
Following Pál — Hanh Nguyen recovers the nearly forgotten legacy of cellist and composer Pál Hermann, whose career and life were cut short by the Nazis, as his grandson works to complete Hermann’s unfinished cello concerto. Nguyen’s debut feature Caffeinated premiered at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.
Interested in learning more about the 8 Above Distribution Lab? We are holding monthly info sessions where you can learn more about how the Lab works, what participants can expect, and whether it might be a good fit for your project.
The Librarians Wins an Emmy
8 Above’s box office dynamo, Kim A. Snyder’s The Librarians, has won the 2026 Primetime Emmy for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking. The film, which follows librarians confronting book bans and censorship across the country, has had an extraordinary journey — from Sundance and a theatrical release in more than 200 theaters across the globe, to its PBS/Independent Lens broadcast and now an Emmy. We were fortunate to have Kim and the Librarians team join us for a case study earlier this year to share their distribution experience, and it has been incredibly rewarding to watch the film continue to build audiences, momentum and impact.
https://jonreiss.substack.com/p/the-8-above-distribution-lab-has