Stories We Tell

Brit Fryer is an artist and filmmaker from Chicago’s South Side, currently based in Brooklyn, NY, whose unique approach to nonfiction storytelling centers on gender and queerness through process-forward and collaborative methods. His most recent film, THE SCRIPT, co-directed with Noah Schamus, unpacks the boundaries of language and the role of performance in shaping an expansive and gender-expansive healthcare system. The film was shortlisted for the 2023 IDA Awards and won the Creative Activism Award at the 2024 SIMA Awards. It is distributed on The Criterion Channel and The New Yorker. He is also the director of CARO COMES OUT, which premiered on HBO Max after winning the Knight Made in MIA Award at the Miami International Film Festival. His other films include ACROSS, BEYOND AND OVER and TRANS·IENCE. His films have been screened in theatres and festivals internationally, including Blackstar, CPH: DOX, Newfest, and MIX NYC. He has received generous support from Sundance, the Gotham, and Points North.

Jen Holness brings a fresh, authentic perspective to telling powerful, thought-provoking stories. She writes, produces, and directs. Jen is the first Black woman in Canada to win a Canadian Screen Award (CSA) for writing on a mini-series she created, Guns. She recently produced the critically acclaimed feature, 40 Acres, that sold to Hulu and is nominated for five NAACP Awards, including Outstanding Independent Motion Picture and Outstanding International Picture. #WhileBlack, a feature documentary she co-directed premieres at SXSW this year. Her previous feature, Subjects of Desire, was a Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) Top Ten film, traveled extensively in festivals where it won numerous awards and sold to Starz and Hulu. BLK: An Origin Story, a documentary series that she created, produced, and directed on won 5 CSA, including Best Director for her episode. Jen’s films and TV shows have screened and sold globally, earning prizes from major film festivals. A CMPA Indiescreen Producer of the Year, Jen also received WIFT’s Creative Excellence Award and The Hollywood Reporter profiled her as one of the 40 Most Influential Women in International Film.

Jo Rochelle is a Jamaican-American screenwriter and filmmaker based in California, originally from Minneapolis. She attended New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts as a Drama major, where she discovered her passion for writing and directing stories and hasn’t stopped. She has written and directed award-winning short films and the feature film, “Jasmine is a Star” (streaming on FUSE+). Jo’s an alumnus of Teach for America where she taught 6th grade English and Social Studies in the Mississippi Delta. She was also a writer on seasons four and five of “Good Trouble” on Freeform/Hulu.

Luchina Fisher is the Emmy Award-winning director and producer of THE DADS, about five fathers of trans kids bonding on a weekend fishing trip. The short documentary, executive produced by Dwyane Wade and acquired by Netflix, received the 2024 Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Short Form Program and a Special Recognition Award from GLAAD. Her directorial debut, MAMA GLORIA, about a Black trans elder activist, was nominated for a 2022 GLAAD Media Award and broadcast on PBS. She is also the director of the award-winning short documentary TEAM DREAM, executive produced by Queen Latifah, and co-director of the award-winning feature documentary LOCKED OUT, about the barriers to Black homeownership. She is currently finishing a feature-length documentary with some of the dads from her Emmy-winning short and a project about the unsung history of Black queer presence in music, which won the 2023 PitchBLACK Film Forum. Luchina began her career as a journalist, writing for The Miami Herald, People and ABC News, and is a 2026 inductee of the North Carolina Media and Journalism Hall of Fame. She is a visiting professor in film at Fairfield University and has taught documentary filmmaking at Yale. She is a member of the Television Academy and serves on the board of New York Women in Film and Television.