PARK CITY, UTAH, June 20, 2025 — The nonprofit Sundance Institute announced today the 10 emerging filmmakers selected for the yearlong Sundance Institute Ignite x Adobe Fellowship, which begins with the Ignite Lab at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts, taking place June 23–27. This year marks 10 years of the Ignite Lab, created as a program to springboard storytellers ages 18 to 25 by offering them artist-centered support and professional development throughout their creative process. 

The Ignite Lab is a weeklong residency that fosters community and connection in addition to a $3,000 artist grant and a one-year complimentary membership to Adobe Creative Cloud, providing fellows the ability to refine their craft. After the lab, the cohort will participate in monthly webinars geared toward specialized creative development, networking and relationship-building events with the Ignite community at workshops, and a curated program at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.

This year, fellows were selected from over 1,000 applicants worldwide. The Sundance Institute Ignite x Adobe fellowship originated from a shared mission of uplifting underserved groups from the next generation of filmmakers while growing new audiences for independent storytelling.

“Bespoke support for early-career storytellers is more crucial now than it ever has been — there are so many ways to grow as a young artist and finding a community to do that within is really special,” said Toby Brooks, Assistant Director, Sundance Institute Ignite. “It is an honor to be celebrating a decade of partnership with Adobe that has provided foundational support for visionary emerging voices. We look forward to gathering at MASS MoCA with the talented 2025 cohort.”

In addition, the inaugural Documentary Edit Residency Program fellows Riley Hooper and Claire Ave’Lallemant will join the Ignite Lab cohort as artists-in-residence at MASS MoCA to further develop their nonfiction project Vestibule, currently in post-production. This year, three teams will participate in residency spaces throughout the summer, including at the Sundance Institute Ignite x Adobe Lab, Sundance Institute Producers Lab, and Jacob Burns Film Center, as a way of engaging documentary storytellers with opportunities while they focus on project-specific work.

The Sundance Institute Ignite x Adobe Fellowship was founded in 2015. Fifteen alumni have had projects selected to screen at the Sundance Film Festival, with several projects winning jury awards. Former participants include Sean Wang (2023 Sundance Institute Directors and Screenwriters Labs fellow and winner of the 2024 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award: U.S. Dramatic for his feature Dìdi (弟弟)), Charlotte Regan (her debut feature, Scrapper, premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival where it won the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic and later opened the 2023 Sundance Film Festival: London), Lance Oppenheim (his feature Some Kind of Heaven premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival), Terrance Daye (his film –Ship: A Visual Poem won the Short Film Jury Award: U.S. Fiction at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival), Aurora Brachman (co-producer of Girls State, which premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival), and Olivia Peace (winner of a 2022 Student Academy Award for Against Reality). Former Sundance Institute Ignite x Adobe fellows have also won prizes at SXSW and Tribeca Festival, as well as the Short Film Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and an Academy Award nomination. Former fellows have gone on to participate in additional Sundance Institute artist programs, including the Directors, Screenwriters, and Episodic Labs, and received funding from the Documentary Fund.

For advice from Sundance Institute advisors and Ignite resources, check out the various offerings on Sundance Collab, Sundance Institute’s digital space for artists to learn from experts and build a global filmmaking community.

The fellows selected for the 2025 Sundance Institute Ignite x Adobe Fellowship are:

Omolola Ajao is an artist working within film, video, and theater. Her work repeatedly attends to the metaphysical and psychological. Her short film After Sunday premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. She holds a Master of Visual Studies degree from the University of Toronto.

Harlan Banks is a writer, director, editor, and Miles Morales fanatic from Stanford, California. He’s interested in shining new lights on often overshadowed perspectives through telling stories that subvert genre conventions while blurring lines between documentary and narrative.

Ruairí Bradley is a director from Ireland. His debut short film, We Beg To Differ, screened at SXSW, Clermont-Ferrand, and Shortfest. It qualified for the Oscars, was nominated for Best Short at the London Critics and Irish Film and Television Awards, and is a 2026 European Film Awards candidate.

Siwoo Kim is a filmmaker and animator based in New York. He graduated from Pratt Institute as a recipient of the Seeman Burse scholarship. His animated thesis, Inside My Worn Out Drawer, is an Ocean, was awarded by a panel of external jurors to screen at BAM and is in the festival circuit.

Rahul Koul is an Indian American filmmaker exploring spirituality and cultural identity. His debut short, Yajñopavīta, written and directed with Ford Cowan, is in the festival circuit. A Vanderbilt alum based in Seattle, Koul draws from his South Asian heritage to craft meditative, poetic narratives.

Giles Perkins is a Brooklyn-based writer and director from Baltimore, Maryland. A graduate of NYU Tisch, his work explores interpersonal conflict shaped by misguided American ideals. His latest short, Expiration Date, premiered at the 2025 Tribeca Festival.

Cloe Raffo Velarde, born in Lima and raised on Costa Rica’s Pacific Coast, draws inspiration from nature and the surf-beach culture. With a BA in film and TV, she focuses on directing and cinematography — telling stories that explore human experience, female perspectives, and cultural depth with visual emotion.

Leon Ristov is a Macedonian filmmaker based in New York. He is currently completing the film MFA at Columbia University as a Miloš Forman fellow. His films have screened at the Sarajevo Film Festival, NFFTY, and over 30 international festivals. He is an alum of Clermont-Ferrand Euro Connection.

Anooya Swamy is a New York–based Indian filmmaker born and raised in Bangalore pursuing her MFA at Tisch School of Arts in film/TV production. She is an Ang Lee Scholar, a BAFTA Scholar, and Spike Lee’s current assistant. Her films are for women and people who live life in pursuit of love.

Brittany Alexia Young is a Florida-born, LA-based filmmaker making coming-of-age, genre-blending films following Black and queer protagonists. She is currently developing a feature for her latest short, Munchies, which was backed by the WAVE Grant and screened at Palm Springs International ShortFest, Frameline49, and NFFTY.

Sundance Ignite is supported by Adobe and Arison Arts Foundation.

Sundance Institute

As a champion and curator of independent stories, the nonprofit Sundance Institute provides and preserves the space for artists across storytelling media to create and thrive. Founded in 1981 by Robert Redford, the Institute’s signature labs, granting, and mentorship programs, dedicated to developing new work, take place throughout the year in the U.S. and internationally. Sundance Institute Collab, a digital community platform, brings a global cohort of working artists together to learn from Sundance Institute advisors and connect with each other in a creative space, developing and sharing works in progress. The Sundance Film Festival and other public programs connect audiences and artists to ignite new ideas, discover original voices, and build a community dedicated to independent storytelling. Through the Sundance Institute artist programs, we have supported such projects as Beasts of the Southern Wild, The Big Sick, Bottle Rocket, Boys Don’t Cry, Boys State, Call Me by Your Name, Clemency, CODA, Dìdi (弟弟), Drunktown’s Finest, The Farewell, Fire of Love, Flee, Fruitvale Station, Half Nelson, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Hereditary, The Infiltrators, The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Little Woods, Love & Basketball, Me and You and Everyone We Know, Mudbound, Nanny, One Child Nation, Pariah, Raising Victor Vargas, Requiem for a Dream, Reservoir Dogs, RBG, Sin Nombre, Sorry to Bother You, Strong Island, Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), Swiss Army Man, A Thousand and One, Top of the Lake, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, and Zola. Through year-round artist programs, the Institute also nurtured the early careers of such artists as Paul Thomas Anderson, Wes Anderson, Gregg Araki, Darren Aronofsky, Lisa Cholodenko, Ryan Coogler, Nia DaCosta, The Daniels, David Gordon Green, Miranda July, James Mangold, John Cameron Mitchell, Kimberly Peirce, Boots Riley, Ira Sachs, Quentin Tarantino, Taika Waititi, Lulu Wang, and Chloé Zhao. Support Sundance Institute in our commitment to uplifting bold artists and powerful storytelling globally by making a donation at sundance.org/donate. Join Sundance Institute on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, YouTube, and Bluesky.

About ADOBE

Adobe is changing the world through digital experiences. For more information, visit www.adobe.com.

# # #

MEDIA CONTACTS: Tiffany Duersch, tiffany_duersch@sundance.org; Sylvy Fernández, sylvy_fernandez@sundance.org, Alex Courides, alex_courides@sundance.org