The Possessed, Blair McClendon
The Possessed, Blair McClendon
The River, director Caitlyn Greene
The River, director Caitlyn Greene
Untitled, director Edwin Martinez
Untitled, director Edwin Martinez
Untitled Bobby Project, director Priscilla González Sainz
Untitled Bobby Project, director Priscilla González Sainz
1-800-TIPLINE, director Jameka Autry
1-800-TIPLINE, director Jameka Autry

Research Grant

With major support from XRM Media, the Catapult Research Grant is the newest expansion of Catapult Film Fund’s ongoing commitment to support nonfiction films and filmmakers.

This program provides a $10,000 grant plus six months of mentorship and professional development to five filmmakers in the early conception and research phase of developing a new film idea.

Too often filmmakers are expected to self-fund research and development on new projects. This can be a long and costly process. By offering research funding, the Catapult Research Grant can help sustain filmmakers during this early period while also reducing barriers to entry for a diverse slate of voices. By launching the Catapult Research Grant we hope to help contribute to filmmaker sustainability and diversity in the field.

XRM Media is an award-winning entertainment and media technology company dedicated to supporting, producing and financing diversity-driven, BIPOC content across all mediums with its global partners. XRM Media’s interests vary across all stages of the development, production, and distribution processes, including but not limited to, equity financing, co-financing, financial modeling and fund management.

2023 Granteeshide

Chris  Filippone

Chris Filippone

Chris Filippone is a documentary filmmaker whose works have screened in Berlinale, Visions du Réel, SXSW, Hot Docs, Sheffield Doc/Fest, and on The New York Times Op-Docs. His films are aesthetically immersive, exploring social issues and themes around the survival economy, marginalized perspectives, and liminal spaces. He is a graduate of Stanford University’s M.F.A. Documentary Film program.

Sofian Khan

Sofian Khan

Sofian is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker and founder of Capital K Pictures. He directed, produced and shot THE INTERPRETERS, a feature-length documentary following Afghan and Iraqi interpreters being targeted for their work helping American forces that made its broadcast premiere on the 2019 season of PBS Independent Lens. His episode of the PBS American Masters series IN THE MAKING (2021), co-directed with Joseph Patel, received a Webby Award and an NAACP Image nomination. In 2022, Sofian directed an episode of the new series TAKEOUT WITH LISA LING on HBOMax and produced AN ACT OF WORSHIP under the Capital K Pictures banner, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and broadcasted on PBS' POV series. He was one of DOCNYC’s 40 Under 40 in 2019 and a Sundance Producing Fellow in 2019-2020. His short work has appeared on Field of Vision, The Atlantic, TOPIC, Al Jazeera and NBC Digital.

R.J. Lozada

R.J. Lozada

R.J. Lozada is a Filipino-American documentary filmmaker whose works have screened at Sundance, Tribeca, The New York Times, The Atlantic, and more. Lozada focuses his work on communities in flux, from those affected by America’s criminal justice system to the breadth of experiences in the Filipino diaspora. Lozada is a graduate of Stanford University’s M.F.A. Documentary Film program.

Sam Osborn

Sam Osborn

Sam Osborn is a filmmaker of Mexican-American descent. His debut feature-length documentary, Universe, was awarded Best Music Documentary by the International Documentary Association in 2021. His short film Folk Frontera was awarded the Jury Prize for Texas Short Film at SXSW 2022 and premiered on PBS’ The Latino Experience. His second film Going Varsity in Mariachi premiered at Sundance 2023 and won the Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award for the U.S. Documentary Competition.

Alejandra  Vasquez

Alejandra Vasquez

Alejandra Vasquez is a Mexican-American director and producer. Raised in rural Texas, Vasquez directed the short films “Folk Frontera,” winner of Best Texas Short at SXSW, and “When It’s Good, It’s Good,” co-produced with Latino Public Broadcasting. She cut her teeth on the producing side as part of the teams behind the award-winning features Matangi/Maya/M.IA. (2018) and Us Kids (2020) and is set to co-produce an upcoming feature directed by Nanfu Wang. Her directorial feature-length debut Going Varsity in Mariachi premiered at Sundance 2023.

Lauren Wimbush

Lauren Wimbush

Lauren Wimbush is a documentary filmmaker and archival researcher dedicated to telling thought-provoking stories featuring underrepresented characters and communities. Her work has been featured in theaters and on multiple networks including Hulu, OWN, PBS, BET and ABC. Her current projects include a short for MTV Documentaries and a series for NBC News Studios. A Dream Displaced is her directorial debut.

Farihah Zaman

Farihah Zaman

Farihah Zaman is a queer Bangladeshi-American filmmaker, critic, educator, and curator, whose award-winning work includes directing the films Remote Area Medical, To Be Queen, which is part of the Emmy-nominated New York Times Op-Doc series From Here to Home, and producing the Netflix Original, Ghosts of Sugar Land, which won a Grand Jury Prize at its Sundance Premiere in 2020 and was subsequently shortlisted for an Academy Award nomination. She is the Director of Grants and Fellowships for Brown Girls Doc Mafia, a nonprofit supporting women and nonbinary people of color working in nonfiction.

2023 Advisorshide

Sara Dosa

Sara Dosa

Sara Dosa is an Indie Spirit Award-nominated nonfiction director and Peabody award-winning producer whose film work explores the human relationship to non-human nature often through tropes of allegory, myth and magic realism. Her work has been shown at festivals worldwide such as Sundance, SXSW, New Directors/New Films, CPH:DOX and Visions du Réel and has screened in partnership with museums such as the MOMA, BAMPFA and The Louvre. Most recently, Dosa directed Fire of Love, which premiered on Opening Night of Sundance 2022 where it won the Jonathan Oppenheimer Editing Award and was acquired by National Geographic Films and Neon for a 2022 release. Other directing titles include the Indie-Spirited Award nominated The Last Season a verité portrait of two Oregon veterans turned wild mushroom hunters; and the Golden Gate Award-winning The Seer & The Unseen, a magic realist fable about and Icelandic woman in communication with spirits of nature. Dosa's producing credits include the Peabody winning Audrie & Daisy (Sundance / Netflix 2016) and the Peabody and Emmy-nominated Survivors (IDFA / POV 2018). Dosa co-produced the Academy Award-nominated The Edge of Democracy (Sundance / Netflix 2019) as well as An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power (Sundance/Paramount 2017). In 2018, Dosa was named to the inaugural class of DOCNYC's "40 under 40" and was also inducted into the Academy of Motion Picture's Documentary Branch. She graduated with a high honors degree in anthropology from Wesleyan University and with a joint masters in cultural anthropology and international development studies from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Dosa lives and works in Berkeley, California.

2022 Granteeshide

Adaeze Elechi

Adaeze Elechi

Adaeze Elechi is an award-winning filmmaker, audio storyteller, and author focused on telling African and Black diaspora stories. Her works are influenced by her desire to better understand the ways individual and collective histories influence our present understanding of ourselves, as well as a desire to explore spaces of intimacy and softness within and between people.

Caitlyn Greene

Caitlyn Greene

Caitlyn Greene is an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker from the American South. She creates films that push boundaries to tell stories of our beautiful and bizarre existence.

Tracy Jarrett

Tracy Jarrett

Tracy Jarrett is a Peabody and Emmy-award winning documentary filmmaker whose vérité style storytelling has documented some of the most high-profile stories of the last decade.

Blair McClendon

Blair McClendon

Blair McClendon is a filmmaker, editor and writer living in New York.

Yvonne Michelle  Shirley

Yvonne Michelle Shirley

Yvonne Michelle Shirley is a filmmaker based in Newark, NJ. She is Co-Founder of The Newarkive, an arts initiative centering the archives of Newark’s Black communities. She is also a member of the collective, New Negress Film Society.

2022 Advisorshide

2020 Granteeshide

Jameka Autry

Jameka Autry

Jameka Autry is a producer, director, and 2020 Women at Sundance | Adobe Fellow. Past fellowships and honors include the 2019 Sundance Creative Producing Lab Fellowship, 2017 Impact Partners Creative Producing Fellowship, and 2018 Double Exposure Investigative Film Fellowship.

Reid Davenport

Reid Davenport

Reid Davenport makes films about disability from an overtly political perspective. He was named to DOC NYC’s “40 Filmmakers Under 40” in 2020.

Jon-Sesrie Goff

Jon-Sesrie Goff

Jon-Sesrie Goff is a multidisciplinary artist, curator, and arts administrator. He has an MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts from Duke University. He is in production for his feature-length documentary, "After Sherman."

Priscilla González Sainz

Priscilla González Sainz

Priscilla González Sainz is a Mexican-American documentary filmmaker and writer based in Southern California. Her documentary ROOM 140 was nominated for an IDA Award, and her most recent film STATUS PENDING won the IF/Then Shorts Pitch for the American West, receiving funding and distribution mentorship. The film was supported by Tribeca Film Institute and NALIP.

Edwin Martinez

Edwin Martinez

Edwin Martinez is a Bronx-born filmmaker whose award-winning first feature documentary TO BE HEARD was named a New York Times critics pick and “one of the best documentaries of the year.”

2020 Advisorshide