Join Sundance Collab and some of the artists whose films are premiering in the 2025 Sundance Film Festival’s World Cinema Documentary Competition category for a discussion around the art and craft of nonfiction filmmaking.


The World Cinema Documentary Competition category showcases nonfiction feature films from emerging talent around the world. The 10 films in this year’s category highlight some of the most courageous and extraordinary filmmaking today.


Panelists will include directors Violet Du Feng (The Dating Game), Maia Lekow and Christopher King (How To Build A Library), and Sara Khaki and Mohammadreza Eyni (Cutting Through Rocks). All three films received support from the Sundance Institute during their production.


You can view the films in this section here and buy tickets in person and online here.


If you would benefit from an accommodation to fully participate in this event, please complete this form, contact us at (435) 776-7790, or email us at accessibility@sundance.org to discuss your specific requests. Every effort will be made to accommodate advance requests; requests made within 5 days of the event may not be guaranteed.


Live event registration for this Sundance Collab online event is free of charge. A recording of this event will be posted to our Video Library the next business day following the event.  All registered attendees can watch the recording through February 3rd, 2025. After that, on-demand access to the recording can be purchased for $10.

Sara Khaki
Sara Khaki is a director, producer, and editor. Her co-directed film Our Iranian Lockdown received an International Documentary Association nomination. Her co-directed Netflix original, Convergence: Courage in a Crisis, received a 2022 Emmy nomination. Khaki is a 2020 Sundance Institute Documentary Fund grantee and Chicken & Egg alum. more...
Mohammadreza Eyni
Mohammadreza Eyni is a director, producer, and cinematographer. A co-founder of Gandom Films Production L.L.C., Eyni’s works received an International Documentary Association nomination. A 2021 Firelight Media fellow, 2020 Sundance Institute Documentary Fund grantee, and Tribeca Film Institute alum, his career bridges boundaries and elevates underrepresented voices. more...
Christopher King
Christopher King is an award-winning filmmaker originally from Melbourne, Australia, who has lived and worked in Nairobi, Kenya, since 2007. Co-directing with wife Maia Lekow, their first feature, The Letter, was Kenya‘s official submission to the 93rd Academy Awards in 2021. more...
Maia Lekow
Maia Lekow is a renowned Kenyan musician and filmmaker. Currently performing internationally with her band Maia & the Big Sky, Lekow fuses her music with a fascination of people and culture to make films as a documentary director, producer, composer, and sound recordist. more...
Violet Du Feng
Violet is an Emmy winning filmmaker, a doc branch member of AMPAS and an adjunct professor at Columbia University. She has directed, produced and executive produced 13 documentaries including the Oscar Shortlisted, Emmy and Peabody nominated Hidden Letters with broadcast in 15 countries and Harbor from the Holocaust, a CPB/PBS special program with music performed by Yo-yo Ma. Her producing credits include Night of Nights, Dear Mother, I Meant to Write about Death, Singing in the Wilderness, Confucian Dream, Maineland and Please Remember Me. She is a recipient of the 2024 Chicken and Egg Award, 2023 Sundance Momentum Fellowship, 2021 Rockwood Documentary Leadership Fellowship and 2018 Sundance's Producing fellowship. Violet has served as an advisor for institutions including Sundance, AIDC, CAAM, BGDM, CNEX and Shanghai International Film Festival. more...
Soheil Rezayazdi
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...

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