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Ilana Coleman

Los Angeles, CA

Ilana Coleman is a director, writer, editor and producer, working in both documentary and fiction. She is interested in exploring the construction of language; cinematic, written, and spoken, to define and imagine other realities. Coleman works between Mexico and the U.S. Her feature directorial debut, The Inventory, has received support from Sundance Institute, Field of Vision, and Ibermedia and participated at the Berlinale’s Doc Station, DocMontevideo, True/False Prism, and Open City’s Assembly Lab. She is a recipient of the Jovenes Creadores scholarship from the Mexican National Fund for Culture and Arts (FONCA) in 2017 and 2021. Works she has collaborated on as a producer or editor have been selected by Sundance, San Sebastián, IFFR, FICUNAM, Ambulante, DOKUFEST, Habana, the Lincoln Center of New York, and True/False. She was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film” in 2017. In 2020, Coleman was invited to the Rotterdam Lab, where she represented Sin Sitio Cine, a collective she co-founded which strives to champion filmmakers working within their own communities. She received her MFA in Film Directing from California Institute of the Arts. She is a professor in the Filmmaking Undergraduate Program at University of North Carolina School of the Arts.


Collaborator

Jamie Gonçalves is a Brazilian-American producer of art films. He is based between LA and Mexico City.

The Inventory


Ilana Coleman is a filmmaker whose work explores sociopolitical microcosms as a way to expose injustice and imagine new realities. Her practice is primarily concerned with issues around identity, language and its misnomers.

Artist Bio

Jamie Gonçalves is a Brazilian-American producer of art films. He is based between LA and Mexico City.

Artist Bio

The Inventory is a feature film born out of the murky line demarcating criminal organizations and The State, which is a relationship that’s resulted in more than 80,000 disappearances. When a committee of bureaucrats realize they’ve lost a word for the upcoming edition of the dictionary, they work through a series of Kafkian protocols to find it. Set against the lived realities of mothers recounting their own experiences of searching for their children, and the subsequent deadends and undying trauma brought on by a broken bureaucratic system. As the committee treks further into their obligation they face waves of panic, fear and, eventually, indifference. Their reckoning and untactful approaches start to bleed with the world of the mothers, who, initially unseen and unheard, now interrupt the lives of the bureaucrats.

The film aims to guide the viewer to examine how language is used to manipulate and shape realities by deconstructing it in social and historical contexts.


Award Year
2022
Status

In Progress

Mustached man staring above the camera. He has a white collared shirt with blue floral designs, and is looking into the lens. He is outside but the background is out of focus.

Jamie Gonçalves

Los Angeles, CA

Jamie Gonçalves was a Sundance Institute Creative Producing Fellow and Impact Partners Producing Fellow, both in 2018. His first documentary, Killing Them Safely (IFC) by Nick Berardini, premiered in competition at Tribeca in 2015. He has multiple Juan Pablo González’s films: Las Nubes (IFFR 2017), Caballerango (IDFA 2018), and his scripted feature debut Dos estaciones (Sundance World Narrative Competition 2022). He also produced Nathan Truesdell’s Balloonfest and The Water Slide, the most watched films on The Atlantic at 17 million views. Features he is currently producing include: The Monster and the Storm by Edwin Martinez and supported by Sundance and Concordia Studios, Eight Mysterious Qualities of the Ocean by Chy Chi a Sundance Intensive Screenwriting Lab project, and The Inventory by Ilana Coleman supported by Sundance, and the Berlinale. Previously, he served as a programming associate at the True/False Film Fest. Filmmaker Magazine named him as one of the “25 New Faces of Independent Film” in 2015. He is a co-founder of Sin Sitio Cine, a collective based in Mexico and the US, focused on producing works by directors working within their own communities.


Collaborator

Ilana Coleman is a filmmaker whose work explores sociopolitical microcosms as a way to expose injustice and imagine new realities. Her practice is primarily concerned with issues around identity, language and its misnomers.