Film

Creative Capital supports filmmakers creating bold, risk-taking, and genre-stretching projects—including narrative, documentary, experimental, and animated forms. Films we have supported include: Garrett Bradley’s Love, Ry Russo-Young’s Nuclear Family, Jules Rosskam’s Desire Lines, Alison O’Daniel’s Tuba Thieves, Nikyatu Jusu’s Nanny, and Todd Chandler’s Bulletproof.

Featured Film

Ry Russo-Young’s “Nuclear Family”: a Docuseries About a Monumental Case for Same-Sex Families

Ry Russo-Young

Nuclear Family

Through this three-part HBO documentary series, Ry Russo-Young examines how the power of love, the terror of loss, and the universal pull of family sent a shockwave through her life as a young girl—and how its echoes have reverberated all the way up to today.
Bulletproof

Todd Chandler

Bulletproof

What does it mean to be safe in school in the United States? Safe from what, and from whom? Bulletproof explores the complexities of violence in schools by looking at the strategies employed to prevent it.
A HS tuba band.

Alison O’Daniel

The Tuba Thieves

The Tuba Thieves fictionalizes real events and lived experiences through a cinematic language that mirrors the experience of being hard of hearing: overlapping narratives, obscured visual framing, and captions that present a third narrative equal to image and sound.
A duplicate image of the artist swimming in a pool smiling overlaid with an AI rendering of the artist staring straight ahead.

Martine Syms

Dumb World

A feature-length film exploring how athleticism, race, and fame congeal around the violent ideologies embedded within the objects of technology with which we are most intimately connected.
Love

Garrett Bradley

Love

Love is a practical, object-based product provided free of charge to those suffering the negative effects of missing loved ones as a result of incarceration.
Nikyatu Jusu NANNY

Nikyatu Jusu

NANNY

Nikyatu Jusu's directorial debut is the first horror film ever to win Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize. As an Upper East Side nanny prepares for the arrival of the son she left behind in West Africa, a violent presence invades her reality, threatening the American dream she is painstakingly piecing together.
Still from Jules Rosskam's Desire Lines, 2024. Credit: Marie Hinson.

Jules Rosskam

Desire Lines

Situated at the intersection of sex, gender, and desire, Desire Lines is an immersive feature-length essay film comprised of one-on-one interviews, erotic encounters, observational footage, performed scenarios, and a fictional narrative presenting an abbreviated history of the bathhouse.
I Didn’t See You There

Reid Davenport

I Didn’t See You There

Spurred by a circus tent that goes up outside his Oakland apartment, a disabled filmmaker connects the ostensibly antiquated institution of the Freak Show with his own life.
King Coal

Elaine McMillion Sheldon

King Coal

The cultural roots of coal permeate the rituals of daily life in Appalachia, even as its economic power wanes. The journey of a coal miner's daughter reveals the region's dreams and myths.

Awardee Stories

Film

Elaine McMillion Sheldon Documents the Dreams and Myths of Appalachian Coal Country

Elaine McMillion Sheldon Documents the Dreams and Myths of Appalachian Coal Country

Elaine McMillion Sheldon’s film King Coal, featured at Sundance Film Festival in 2023, meditates on the complex history and future of the coal industry and the communities it has shaped in Central Appalachia.
How Maquilápolis Led the Way As Documentaries Became Important Tools for Justice and Change

FIlm

How Maquilápolis Led the Way As Documentaries Became Tools for Justice and Change

How Maquilápolis Led the Way As Documentaries Became Tools for Justice and Change

In the early 2000s, Vicky Funari and Sergio de la Torre found themselves at the vanguard of a new wave of filmmakers that used the documentary medium to galvanize support for a range of issues, from environmental justice to women’s rights.

Creative Capital relies on donations to support the creation of new film/moving image works. Help us amplify our support of filmmakers.

Support Awards