Sundance Institute announces inaugural Cultural Impact Residency fellows

The eight inaugural fellows of the 2025 Sundance Institute Cultural Impact Residency, honoring the legacy of Michael Latt. Top row (left to right): Caron Creighton, Jennifer Huang, Kaelo Iyizoba, Alejandra López. Bottom row (left to right): Caitlin McCarthy, A.D. Smith, Kristal Sotomayor, Wendi Tang. Photo: Sundance Institue

PARK CITY, Utah — The Sundance Institute has announced the inaugural cohort of fellows selected for its newly launched Cultural Impact Residency, a six-month online program created to honor the legacy of the late social justice advocate Michael Latt.

Eight early-career storytellers were chosen across three creative tracks—fiction, nonfiction, and episodic writing-directing—through the Institute’s digital community platform, Sundance Collab. The residency, which runs through August 2025, aims to support underrepresented artists working at the intersection of creativity, culture, and social impact.

Each fellow will receive mentorship from Sundance Institute advisors, bimonthly cohort check-ins, and meetings with senior staff, including Michelle Satter, founding senior director of artist programs. Participants will also receive a Sundance Collab Library Pass, offering access to the platform’s extensive archive of master classes and events and two On Demand courses of their choosing.

The program features a roster of notable advisors, including Rita Baghdadi (“Sirens”), Patricia Cardoso (“Real Women Have Curves”), David France (“How to Survive a Plague”), Claudia Llosa (“The Milk of Sorrow”), Reinaldo Marcus Green (“King Richard”), LaToya Morgan (“Duster”), Rodrigo Reyes (“Sansón and Me”), Jessica Sharzer (“A Simple Favor”), and Justin Simien (“Dear White People”).

Latt, an award-winning entertainment marketer and founder of Lead with Love, was known for using storytelling to drive national impact campaigns. His work centered on creating a more just, equitable, and compassionate society through art and policy.

The 2025 Cultural Impact Residency fellows are:

Documentary Fellows:

• Caron Creighton, a journalist and filmmaker exploring displacement in the African diaspora, presents Wood Street, a portrait of two chosen brothers navigating addiction and displacement in the face of community eviction.

• Jennifer Huang, co-founder of Hyphen magazine and filmmaker for PBS and Lucasfilm, offers The Long Rescue, a nine-year chronicle of Filipina teen sex trafficking survivors reclaiming their lives.

• Kristal Sotomayor, known for films like Expanding Sanctuary, investigates immigrant surveillance systems in Untitled PARS Project, focusing on Philadelphia’s Preliminary Arraignment Reporting System.

Writing-Directing Fellows:

• Alejandra López, the first Latina to direct for Marvel, presents Salmon Run, about a Puerto Rican mother uncovering a dangerous secret in a remote Alaskan factory.

• A.D. Smith, a Memphis-based artist blending realism and fantasy, shares r.e.g.g.i.n, following a Black-appearing android confronting racism in the 1950s American South.

• Wendi Tang, a Chinese filmmaker and NYU Tisch graduate, develops Fishtank, a surreal tale of a woman who vomits live goldfish and must uncover the trauma behind it.

Writing Fellows:

• Caitlin McCarthy, a Métis-descended writer from Massachusetts, explores identity and justice in A Native Land, where a Black Native American policewoman tracks a serial killer amid personal and societal tensions.

• Kaelo Iyizoba, a Nigerian American filmmaker based in Lagos and New York, brings Birthright, a 19th-century epic about a man torn between ancient gods and colonial oppression.

For more information visit sundance.org.