Envisioning a New Class of Executive Producers on the Heels of an Oscar Nomination

Cutting Through Rocks and the Future of Philanthropic Film Funding, Lab participants take awards at SIFF and Among Neighbors wins the Robert F Kennedy award and launches at #6 on Apple TV chart.

We just wrapped up the 4th Cohort of the Distribution Lab yesterday. (see later in this post where two of the current cohort just won awards at the Seattle International Film Festival).

Another highlight of this cohort were Rebecca Celli (formerly development Chicken and Egg) and Austin Lee Brown (formerly development Sundance Institute). Both Rebecca and Austin are an integral part of the Future Film Coalition, where I have learned quite a bit about working with funders from them. Rebecca offered to write an essay about her experience working with the wonderful, Oscar nominated, Cutting Through Rocks - and of course I said YES! Here is her very wise guest post:

Envisioning a New Class of Executive Producers on the Heels of an Oscar Nomination

Guest Post By Rebecca Celli

In March, I had the honor of joining the brilliant director/producers Sara Khaki and Mohammadreza Eyni at the 2026 Academy Awards, representing their quietly groundbreaking and truly independent film: Cutting Through Rocks, which was nominated for Best Documentary. The self-distributed film, on which I served as a Consulting Producer, was shot over eight years and follows Sara Shahverdi, a motorcycle-riding community organizer who is the first woman elected to her council in a religiously conservative village in Northwest Iran. That Cutting Through Rocks, a patient, verité documentary based in rural Iran, could make it to the Oscars without the backing of a major distributor felt like a triumph — if not a miracle.

Yet, as any reader of this newsletter knows, this achievement occurred against the backdrop of an existential crisis in independent film – one that was fueled by at least three major forces: 1) A federal government with authoritarian instincts shutting off the small but critical lifelines of financial support that once protected public and independent media. 2) Corporate media consolidation is eroding the fabric of our already fragile industry. 3) A class of committed philanthropic funders, who for decades have dug deep when others wouldn’t, feeling overstretched and overwhelmed by the impossible task of covering the gap.

Interventions are required on all of these fronts and more, but I am particularly interested in this third part. Before joining Cutting Through Rocks, I was the Development Director at Chicken & Egg Films where I worked alongside many of the field’s most strategically and financially committed philanthropists. Many of these funders came into the field through Impact Partners and Sundance Catalyst, groups that built philanthropic and equity models for documentary financing and cultivated a milieu of funders during the optimistic heyday of big festival sales for small films, with the promise of a “double bottom line” – films yielding real financial returns alongside progressive social change.

Decades later, there are few financially significant documentary acquisitions at festivals, and it’s proven to be very hard to track any individual film’s influence on an intractable social change ecosystem. Some funders have left the field while others have evolved into veteran industry leaders and prolific Executive Producers (EPs).

I officially started working on Cutting Through Rocks when the film was fresh out of Sundance 2025 with the prestige of a World Cinema Grand Jury Prize, but had no competitive offers from distributors. I had been brought on in large part to lead fundraising, first to close a post-production gap, and then, during a whirlwind successful festival run with countless Audience Awards, to raise money for theatrical distribution and impact.

With the relatively modest budget we raised from new and old supporters of the project, we were able to bring on excellent theatrical bookers, publicists, and strategists, and send Sara and Mohammadreza off to travel with the film and talk to audiences at screenings all over the world. We had a wonderful run at theaters across the US (launching at Film Forum where it played for 3(!) weeks), got great press nationally and abroad, built connections with nonprofits, and moved forward with a scrappy and ultimately very successful Awards campaign.

Alongside our newly hired team members, many of the Cutting Through Rocks’ EPs worked on the ground with us over this entire year of release. We saw our EPs as uniquely-poised contributors, and we found ways to keep them informed and mobilized. Their support was business-minded as much as it was creative, emotional as much as it was practical. They attended our all-team calls, did outreach, reviewed press materials, and provided regular insight and ideas. Only some EPs are funders, but all EPs are resource-holders, and when they have the right support from a film team and the right training, they are a necessary counterweight to an exceptionally difficult field. Our success was in many ways predicated on these efforts, which are basic principles of community organizing.

The Documentary Producers Association (DPA) Guidelines define an Executive Producer as “a financier or a film professional who contributes to the creative development and production of a film, offering essential value and guidance through editorial input, fundraising, producing issues, legal matters, or distribution strategy.”

As elucidated in this definition, independent film is perhaps the only art form where tax-deductible patronage can bring a supporter so integrally into the fold of art-making and distribution. Yet, at the same time, this incredibly broad definition sometimes creates situations in which filmmakers – working from a place of financial scarcity – promise titles in exchange for grants without holistically integrating their new team members, never taking the time to discuss and activate each person’s unique contributions beyond the transaction. This kind of hasty onboarding can lead to mismatched expectations, not to mention isolation, resentment, and burnout for the funder.

Anthony Kaufman recently wrote about how often disappointed film funders jump ship, and withhold agreed upon money, leaving filmmakers “in the lurch.” And in an Instagram story written during a film festival earlier this year, Zara Meerza (Documentary Minus) advocated for better funder training, writing: “there’s a large lack of empathy among certain funders and also just bad manners. We all go through a lot as people - it’s not hard to be kind and respectful, particularly in stressful places and in times of war.”

We are in the height of a major generational wealth transfer — a historic movement of assets in the US from the Baby Boomer Generation to Millennials and Gen X (by modest estimates, an inconceivable $84 trillion by 2048). As this money enters younger hands, I have been imagining the possibilities of a future generation EP’s. They are not just kind and respectful, but smart, trusting, and collaborative partners, bringing insights from working in the field but also from different professions like business, academia, law, and other art worlds. They are ready to support film projects directly in ways that extend far beyond a grant. They are prepared to be part of this underdog industry that is engaging with some of the most important issues of our time with exciting groups on the ground: policy reform and coalition-building (via Future Film Coalition); the ethics of generative AI (Archival Producer’s Alliance); and perspective, storytelling, and authorship (more organizations than I could possibly list). As a class of older EPs starts to retire from long, dedicated careers in the field, these prospective younger EPs are well within reach. I work with a few of them already and know others. We just have to organize them.

These days, I have been less interested in tracking exactly how systemic change comes from a single film and more interested in how film changes individual people. I know this orientation is shared by others in the field, and think of Darren Walker who left a pioneering career in institutional philanthropy as the President of Ford Foundation to work as the CEO of film production company Anonymous Content, or Lesli Klainberg (former head of Film at Lincoln Center) who started the fledgling Art House Alliance to vitalize independent theaters and experiment with audience-building across NYC. I am excited by the possibilities of rallying cinephile funders around theatrical distribution, wider visibility, film for film’s sake – social change by way of what Roger Ebert famously called “the empathy machine.”

During Cutting Through Rocks’ release, we often talked about how our grassroots efforts took inspiration from the revolutionary organizing work of the film’s protagonist Sara – who managed to get a conservative small town to support her vision for shared land ownership and an end to child marriage. I now think about another important layer to Sara’s success. Before a political run, she delivered more than 400 babies as a working midwife. Then, just in time for her run for office, they became first-time voters – a mobilized progressive base of young people with new power.

Rebecca Celli is a consultant, fundraiser, and producer, and formerly Development Director at Chicken & Egg Films and Director of Sales & Acquisitions at Cargo Film & Releasing. Rebecca is a Consulting Producer of Cutting Through Rocks, which was nominated for the 98th Academy Awards for Best Documentary Feature, and has worked with dozens of films and organizations, including Future Film Coalition, UFO, Resource Generation, NewFest, Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), BOFFO, and P·P·O·W Gallery. Rebecca is based in Brooklyn, NY.

Among Neighbors Wins the 2026 RFK Book & Journalism Awards International Television Award

We are handling the entire release of Among Neighbors which not only reached #6 on the Apple’s Documentary charts this weekend but yesterday was named the 2026 RFK Book & Journalism Awards International Television Award winner. The film’s exploration of memory, betrayal, survival, and historical truth continues to resonate deeply. Congratulations to director Yoav Potash, Anita Friedman, and Headfirst Arts & Media on this well-deserved recognition and the continued impact of the film.

8 Above Lab Filmmakers Honored with Golden Space Needle Audience Awards

Two members of the current cohort of 8 Above Distribution Lab (one in the fiction section, one in the doc section) who were honored at this year’s Seattle International Film Festival. Kade Atwood and Megan Rico’s Edie Arnold Is a Loser won the Golden Space Needle Audience Award for Best Film, while JJ Gerber’s The Life We Leave won the Golden Space Needle Audience Award for Best Documentary. Congratulations to Kade, JJ, and their teams on this well-deserved recognition.

As you may know by now - the next cohort of the Distribution Lab starts this summer.