Pitching Your Documentary for Production Funding

Kavery Kaul is an award-winning director and producer whose documentaries reframe who "we" are. Through an intimate lens, she crafts stories which boundlessly straddle different worlds. The founder of riverfilms, her works have been featured at DOC NYC, Telluride, London, Sydney and other major festivals; at the Museum of Modern Art (NY), the Kennedy Center (DC), National Museum of Women in the Arts (DC), Jameel Arts Centre (Dubai), and American Center (Kolkata and Delhi, India). 

The Alliance of Women Film Journalists calls The Bengali "a lyrical and poetic documentary that shows how stories and presumptions can change, forging connections that are rich and real --- not just to the past, but to the world at large." The Academy Film Archive and the Women's Film Preservation Fund restored her early film One Hand Don't Clap for 4K theatrical release in the US and internationally. Hailed as “a film classic” by The Guardian (UK), Overly Honest Reviews calls it “a symphony of sight and sound that brings the heart of Calypso and Soca to life”. Kavery’s other credits include Cuban Canvas, Long Way From Home, and First Look, narrated by Harry Belafonte. 

An India-born American, her work has been supported by the Ford Foundation, Doris Duke Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts, She has garnered a Fulbright Senior Fellowship and an Imagen Award nomination as well as a New York City Proclamation of Excellence. In her highly acclaimed Tedx Talk, she speaks to the power of storytelling as a way to connect people across divides. As arts speaker on the occasion of Fulbright's 75th anniversary, she reminded us that "Stories Matter".

Erica Elson is a Producer, Writer and Educator based in the mountains outside Los Angeles. Her short film, WING NIGHT, premiered at Method Fest in Los Angeles. She is the co-author of the book THE AWKWARD HUMAN SURVIVAL GUIDE and co-hosted a podcast by the same name on the 5by5 network for five years. Elson's articles have been published by HuffPost, Lifehacker, and Reader's Digest. Prior to working in education, she worked in television development and writers’ rooms such as VH1’s HINDSIGHT, where she had the chance to write for the spinoff web series PLANET SEBASTIAN.

Elson joined the Sundance Collab team in October 2021 and produces courses, Master Classes, and events in the areas of screenwriting, television writing, directing, producing, and documentary filmmaking. She has moderated conversations with Sofia Coppola, Richard Linklater, Alexander Payne, and Susannah Grant, among others.

Prior to Sundance, Elson was the Thesis Production Supervisor at the American Film Institute for five years. She oversaw several award-winning graduate thesis films, notably the 2021 BAFTA student film winner APART, TOGETHER and the 2023 Sundance Film Festival short WE WERE MEANT TO. While at AFI, Elson developed a passion for sustainable production and created the Green Film School Alliance, which includes forty schools on four continents. She holds a BA in Communication and Film Studies from Concordia University and an MFA in Screenwriting from the American Film Institute.