Join Sundance Collab and some of the artists whose debut features are premiering at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.
This event will bring together filmmakers from an array of sections at Sundance 2025 for a candid conversation about the process of making their first feature film. The filmmakers will discuss their research and writing processes, casting their actors, and the journey to getting their first features made.
Panelists for this event will include filmmakers Alex Russell (Lurker), Evan Twohy (Bubble & Squeak), and Rashad Frett (Ricky).
You can buy tickets in person and online for the 2025 Sundance Film Festival here.
Rashad Frett is an award-winning Caribbean American filmmaker. He is a Spike Lee Film Production fellow, a Ryan Murphy HALF Initiative fellow, a Sundance Feature Film Lab fellow, and a Cary Fukunaga Production fellow. In 2023 he was named one of Filmmaker magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film.” more...
Alex Russell, a writer and producer on Emmy-winning shows Beef (Netflix) and The Bear (FX), makes his feature debut as the writer and director of Lurker. more...
Evan Twohy was raised on Hitchcock and opera on the edge of a forest outside Berkeley, California. From an early age, he found himself drawn to absurdist theater and began writing plays in New York City prior to making his first feature, Bubble & Squeak. more...
Moderator | Digital Course & Event Producer
Soheil Rezayazdi is a Digital Course & Event Producer at the Sundance Institute, where he produces multi-session courses, master classes, filmmaker Q&As, and other digital programs for Sundance Collab. Prior to Sundance, Soheil served as the Nonfiction Programs Manager at the Gotham Film & Media Institute. He oversaw the Gotham’s core documentary programs: the Documentary Feature Lab, the Spotlight on Documentaries project market, and the Documentary Development Initiative in partnership with HBO Documentary Films. Soheil has worked with emerging filmmakers since 2015, when he began a seven-year tenure at the Columbia University MFA Film Program. At Columbia he managed the Columbia University Film Festival (CUFF), the Dr. Saul and Dorothy Kit Film Noir Festival, and the Carla Kuhn Memorial Speaker Series. Soheil is also a freelance writer on film and pop culture with articles in Indiewire, McSweeney’s, Vice, Filmmaker Magazine, Documentary Magazine, Paper, Paste, and elsewhere. He has also served as an external reviewer for artist programs operated by Creative Capital, Kartemquin Pictures, Chicken & Egg Pictures, and the International Documentary Association. A native of Iran, he holds an MA in journalism and a BA in film studies from the University of Iowa. more...