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.

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 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 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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.

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.

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 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 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 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 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.”