Margaret Mead Film Festival

2025 Mead Filmmaker Award Winner: Brink of Dreams
Special Jury Mention: The Return of the Projectionist

The Margaret Mead Filmmaker Award recognizes documentary filmmakers who embody the spirit, energy, and innovation demonstrated by anthropologist Margaret Mead in her research, fieldwork, films, and writings.  

The award is selected by a jury and given to a filmmaker whose feature-length documentary displays artistic excellence and originality in storytelling technique while offering a new perspective on cultures and communities. Filmmakers with works making their New York premieres at the festival are eligible.  

2025 Mead Audience Award: River of Grass

The Audience Award, voted on by Margaret Mead Film Festival attendees, celebrates the power of community engagement and the diverse perspectives that enrich the cinematic experience, fostering a vibrant dialogue between filmmakers and their audience. Films making their New York premiere at the festival are eligible. 

• Bright Future, Directed by Andra MacMasters 
• Brink of Dreams, Directed by Nada Riyadh and Ayman El Amir 
• Favoriten, Directed by Ruth Beckermann 
• FOLKTALES, Directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady 
• How Deep is Your Love, Directed by Eleanor Mortimer 
• Land with No Rider, Directed by Tamar Lando 
• Make It Look Real, Directed by Daniel Shah 
• Night of the Coyotes, Directed by Clara Trischler 
• Our Land, Our Freedom, Directed by Meena Nanji and Zippy Kimundu 
• Partition, Directed by Diana Allan 
• River of Grass, Directed by Sasha Wortzel 
• Remaining Native, Directed by Paige Bethmann 
• The Return of The Projectionist, Directed by Orkhan Aghazadeh 
• Seeds, Directed by Brittany Shyne 
• The Shepherd and The Bear, Directed by Max Keegan 
• Viktor, Directed by Olivier Sarbil 

Dominic Davis 

Dominic Davis returned to the Sundance Institute in 2022 as Manager of the Documentary Fund. In 2011, Dominic worked in the Artist Relations Office of the Sundance Film Festival. He went on to program for the American Museum of Natural History, Tribeca Film Festival and Rooftop Films. He has reviewed applications for Catapult Film Fund and Creative Capital and managed the Rooftop Films Filmmakers Fund. Dominic was born in Germany and grew up on military bases but adopted Kentucky and Florida as his home states. He has a degree in mass media studies and political science from the University of Kentucky. When not watching movies, he goes for very long runs. 

Milisuthando Bongela-Davis 

Milisuthando Bongela-Davis is an award-winning writer, filmmaker, cultural worker, and artist. Her career began in the fashion industry, but the last 16 years have seen her traverse the worlds of music, art, media, and film – continually turning towards Indigenous knowledge systems. 

Recently moved to New York from Johannesburg, she was arts editor for the Friday section of the South African newspaper The Mail & Guardian and host and co-producer of the podcast “Umoya: On African Spirituality” with Athambile Masola. Her first film, a personal essay documentary titled Milisuthando, had its in-competition world premiere at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival and was selected for Museum of Modern Art’s New Directors / New Films 2023 before opening the 2023 Encounters Documentary Film Festival. It was nominated and won awards for its groundbreaking form, subject matter, and approach to personal filmmaking. 

She is an inaugural fellow of the 2020 Adobe Women at Sundance Fellowship and is currently working on her second film, an experimental silent film commissioned by Neo Muyanga and William Kentridge’s The Centre for the Less Good Idea in Johannesburg. 

Natasha Raheja 

Natasha Raheja is an assistant professor of anthropology and performing and media arts at Cornell University. She received her doctorate in anthropology from New York University and her B.S. degree in biology and M.A. degree in Asian languages and literature with a focus on Urdu from The University of Texas at Austin. Her projects explore questions of migration, belonging, and majority-minority politics in South Asia. Raheja is the director of the documentary Cast in India, an observational portrait of the Bengali metal workers who manufacture New York City manhole covers, and A Gregarious Species, an experimental found-footage film featuring cross-border locust swarms in the Thar Desert region. She is the author of the forthcoming book A Selective Welcome: Pakistani Hindus in India. 

Julian Brave NoiseCat 

Julian Brave NoiseCat is a writer, Oscar-nominated filmmaker, and student of Salish art and history. His first documentary, Sugarcane, directed alongside Emily Kassie, follows an investigation into abuse and missing children at the Indian residential school where NoiseCat’s family was sent near Williams Lake, British Columbia. Sugarcane premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, where NoiseCat and Kassie won the Directing Award in the U.S. Documentary Competition. The film has been recognized with dozens of awards, including Best Documentary from the National Board of Review and the Margaret Mead Filmmaker Award for NoiseCat and Kassie, and was nominated for a 2025 Academy Award. A proud member of the Canim Lake Band Tsq'escen and descendant of the Lil'Wat Nation of Mount Currie, NoiseCat is the author of We Survived the Night, which will be published by Alfred A. Knopf on October 21, 2025. 

Ryan Krivoshey 

Ryan Krivoshey is a veteran of the independent film scene and the founder of Grasshopper Film, a leading distribution company established in 2015. Grasshopper’s acclaimed releases include Last Men in Aleppo, Pacifiction, Vitalina Varela, Leviathan, and Days. With a library of more than 500 films, the company champions both emerging and established filmmakers. Previously, Krivoshey served as director of distribution at Cinema Guild, expanding its theatrical slate and presence. He has also worked at Icarus Films and Film Forum, building a career dedicated to supporting independent cinema. 

Irene Sosa 

Irene Sosa is a Venezuelan-born documentarian and professor in the Department of Television Radio and Emerging Media and the Department of Puerto Rican and Latino Studies at CUNY Brooklyn College. Sosa has dedicated her career to exploring the intersection of media, culture, and social justice.  Her films, including Sexual Exiles, Vertical Slum and Shopping to Belong, explore the culture of marginalization and the evolving dynamics of identity and space. In 2004, she was commissioned by the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea to show her documentaries about the feminist artist Nancy Spero, which have since been featured in the MoMA PS1 and the Rufino Tamayo Museum. As a Fulbright Scholar and artist, she continues to challenge conventional narratives, using her craft to amplify voices often overlooked in mainstream media.