Navigating Alternative Distribution with Rashad Frett and Simon TaufiQue (RICKY)
About this Spotlight
Spotlights feature conversations with high-profile film and television industry professionals who share helpful advice and insights on their career experiences and creative processes.
Join Sundance Collab for an exclusive conversation with the award-winning filmmakers of Ricky as they share their experience making and distributing their film.
Written and directed by Rashad Frett and produced by Simon TaufiQue, Ricky began as a short film, premiering at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. The short was then expanded into Frett’s feature directorial debut of the same name, premiering at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival and winning Frett the Directing Award.
The film follows 30 year-old Ricky, who is released from prison after being locked up in his teens, as he navigates the challenging realities of life post-incarceration, and the complexity of gaining independence for the first time as an adult.
In this event, Frett and TaufiQue discuss making independent films with impact, navigating film festivals, and carving your own path, offering their advice on how filmmakers can share their stories with audiences outside of the traditional networks.
Visit this site to see where Ricky is screening near you.
SpotlightTeam
Simon TaufiQue
Simon Sohel TaufiQue is an Emmy-nominated, award-winning British-Indian producer and film composer based in NYC.
A dedicated alumnus of the Sundance Film Festival, his films include the Dramatic Directing Award-winner Ricky (2025) and the 2026 Nominee Run Amok. His recent slate includes the studio film The Alchemy of Being Okay, directed by Sundance fellow Sarah Mohk. TaufiQue's festival accolades also include the Berlinale Forum Prize-winner She’s Lost Control and the Tribeca Untold Stories grand prize-winner, Land of Gold.
As a producer and composer, his credits span auteur-driven work, including the Emmy-nominated documentary The Interpreters, to studio projects such as Imperium (starring Daniel Radcliffe and Toni Collette) for Lionsgate/Universal, Amazon Originals (The New Yorker Presents), and HBO MAX (Weight of Gold). He has collaborated with acclaimed directors including M. Night Shyamalan, Cary Fukunaga, Reinaldo Marcus Green, Mary Harron and 2022 Oscar-nominee Jessica Kingdon.
Simon is a fellow of the ASCAP/Columbia Film Composing Lab and the Gotham Episodic Producing Lab. He currently teaches producing at NYU and leads the Core Producing course for the Sundance Institute’s Collab program. An Oscar-qualifying festival juror and BAFTA diversity committee member, he is a member of the Producers Guild, the Television Academy, and serves on the board of the Composer Diversity Coalition. TaufiQue is represented by IAG and records for the Warner-Chappell label. His work has been profiled by NPR, Medium and NBC News.
Rashad Frett
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.”
Erica Elson
Moderator | Digital Course & Event Producer, Sundance Collab
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.