Sundance Institute Selects 12 First-Time Feature Filmmakers for Screenwriters Intensive

Twelve screenwriters, including playwright Young Jean Lee, have been selected to participate in Sundance Institute's eighth annual Screenwriters Intensive in Los Angeles, to take place March 4-5, 2020. The Intensive, a two-day workshop for select emerging writers and writer/directors from underrepresented communities, focuses on the development of first fiction features. Fellows at the Intensive will advance the art and craft of their work under the guidance of experienced filmmakers and the Institute's Feature Film Program, led by that Program's Founding Director Michelle Satter and Deputy Director Ilyse McKimmie.

Advisors for the 2020 Intensive include Gregg Araki, Lee Isaac Chung, Shana Feste and Susanna Fogel. Previous alumni of the Intensive include Andrew Ahn, Natalia Almada, Reinaldo Marcus Green, Tina Mabry, and Roger Ross Williams.

"We're thrilled to be supporting a remarkable group of writers at a crucial stage in the development of their work," said McKimmie. "By providing dynamic dialogues with advisors and a rigorous creative process, we hope the Intensive will have significant impact on the advancement of these projects, and will offer the fellows an inspiring expanded artistic community."

The Sundance Institute Screenwriters Intensive is made possible with leadership support from the Will & Jada Smith Family Foundation.

The 2020 Sundance Institute Screenwriters Intensive Fellows are Young Jean Lee, Rosa Tran, Benjamin-Shalom Rodriguez, Francesca Sloane, Jesse Short Bull, Daniel Antebi, Robert T. Herrera, Kiran Deol, Jason Park, David J. Lee, Razelle Benally, and Alex Heller.

Young Jean Lee is a playwright, director, and filmmaker who has been called "the most adventurous downtown playwright of her generation" by The New York Times and "one of the best experimental playwrights in America" by Time Out New York. In 2018, Lee became the first Asian-American woman to have her play produced on Broadway with her show Straight White Men. Lee has written and directed ten shows in her New York-based Young Jean Lee's Theater Company, which has performed in more than eighty cities around the world. Lee has written a screenplay commission for Plan B Entertainment, and her short films have been presented at the Locarno International Film Festival, the Sundance Film Festival, and BAMcinemaFest. Among many other distinguished recognitions, Lee was also the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2011. She is currently working on a Broadway play commission for Second Stage and a screenplay commission for Cinereach.

She shares her project with Jesse Short Bull. In "Mistress Hand," a Lakota family is terrorized by a demon that maneuvers its way into their home by exploiting their matriarch's blindly devout Catholicism.