2026 Residents
Zhuoyun Chen is a Chinese filmmaker based in Los Angeles who sculpts experimental narratives from personal histories and fragmented identities, attentive to what remains unsaid, unresolved, or half-remembered. Her films trace how broader sociopolitical forces—migration, gender roles, and generational expectations—settle into everyday life and become internalized. Her most recent film, “It Must Be Because I Decided to Leave” (2025), takes the form of a visual diary, drifting between dream and reality, memory and absence. Her work has screened at FIDMarseille, Vancouver International Film Festival, DOK Leipzig, Beijing International Short Film Festival, Anthology Film Archives, Bienal de la Imagen en Movimiento, Festival de Cine de Lima, and Atlanta Film Festival, among others.
Alexandra Cuesta
Alexandra Cuesta is a filmmaker who has mainly lived and worked in the US, Ecuador, and Mexico. Her 16mm films and videos explore the Latin American diaspora, displacement, migratory landscapes, and the archaeology of the ephemeral, evoking an embodied experience of time. She holds an MFA from CalArts and a BFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in Film and Video. Her work has been shown at major festivals and institutions, including Cinema Du Reel, New York Film Festival, FID Marseille, Courtisane, FICValdivia, Viennale, Anthology Film Archives, Image Forum, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, MOCA, Museo Tamayo, Open City Documentary Film Festival, Docs Kingdom, and Art of the Real at Lincoln Center, among others.
Jessica DiCosta
Jessica DiCosta is an Australian–Italian writer, director, and visual artist based on Gadigal Land (Sydney, Australia). Her practice is informed by an interdisciplinary approach that integrates fine arts techniques with narrative filmmaking. In 2020, she completed a Master’s degree at Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola with the support of the San Sebastián International Film Festival. Since returning to Australia, her work has been widely screened and exhibited nationally and internationally, garnering accolades including the TWT Excellence Award, the Tony White Memorial Art Award, and the Homiens Spring Art Prize.
In 2023, she was selected for the PlayLab Film’s Creator’s Lab with Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Her film, “See Me Living”, which she developed through the lab was subsequently selected for international distribution, resulting in her representation of PlayLab Films at the Cannes Film Festival in 2025. In the same year, she was awarded the Power Institute Fellowship Grant for a residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris 2025. Currently, Jessica is undertaking a commissioned collaborative video work for the Sydney Opera House, serving as Second Unit Director on a major international documentary, and developing her debut feature film.
Efthimis Kosemund-Sanidis
Born with dual Greek–German nationality, Efthimis Kosemund-Sanidis studied Informatics Engineering in Athens and Contemporary Arts at Le Fresnoy – Studio National in France. His short films have been screened and awarded at major festivals including Venice, Locarno, and Clermont-Ferrand, as well as at art institutions such as Forum des Images, Centre Pompidou, and Haus der Kulturen der Welt. His work has been distributed on platforms including Festival Scope and MUBI. He is a member of the Hellenic Film Academy and an alumnus of Berlinale Talents and Sarajevo Talents. He is currently completing his debut feature film.
Flomaria Papadaki is a Greek actress based in Athens. She graduated with honors from the National Theatre of Greece Drama School. Her film credits include “Animal” by Sofia Exarchou, “Arcadia” by Yorgos Zois, “Gym” and “They Come Out of Margot” by Alexandros Voulgaris, “Nothing Holier Than a Dolphin” by Isabella Margara, the upcoming “Uchronia” by Fil Ieropoulos, and Efthimis Kosemund-Sanidis’ debut feature. Her work has been showcased at major international film festivals, including Locarno, Berlinale, Karlovy Vary, Clermont-Ferrand, and Sarajevo. For her performance in Animal, she received the Best Supporting Actress Award from the Greek Film Academy. She is a Sarajevo Talents alumna. She is currently preparing her next film role in a French–Algerian co-production.
Jacquelyn Mills
Montréal-based filmmaker Jacquelyn Mills creates immersive, sensorial works exploring our relationship with the natural world. Her films have garnered over 50 awards worldwide, including three at the Berlinale and top prizes at Hot Docs, Jeonju IFF, West Lake IDF, VIFF and Mar del Plata for her feature documentary “Geographies of Solitude” (103’, 2022). Her work has been showcased at major festivals and institutions including: IDFA, TIFF, AFI, BFI, Camerimage, Lincoln Center, Visions du Réel, Cinéma du Réel, the Centre Pompidou, the Museum of the Moving Image, the Redford Center, and the Harvard Film Archive. A recipient of the Sundance Documentary Fund and a New York Times Critic’s Pick, Mills was also awarded the Outstanding Artistry in Filmmaking Prize at the Smithsonian (2023). She also shares her practice through mentoring and consulting as well as collaborating as editor, sound designer, director, and cinematographer.
Marcelo Pereira
Marcelo Pereira was born in Barcelos, Portugal. He graduated in Cinema from Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema, in Lisbon, and since 2016 he has worked in film editing, production, and screenwriting with production companies such as Rosa Filmes, Terratreme, Fado Filmes, Uma Pedra no Sapato, among others; and at film festivals such as IndieLisboa, DocLisboa, and LEFFEST. In 2020, he co-founded the production film collective Fátima Filmes with Patrícia Neves Gomes, and in 2025 he premiered his first film, “A Emancipação de Mimi”, in several international film festivals. He is now finishing post-production on his second film, “Banho Santo”.
Suneil Sanzgiri
Suneil Sanzgiri’s research-driven practice considers questions of inheritance and indebtedness in relation to histories of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggle across the Global South. Spanning experimental video and film, animations, essays, and installations, his work explores image-making, collective memory, and testimony, and are often in dialogue with the works of filmmakers, revolutionaries, and poets, drawing together a slippage between the living and dead. His first institutional solo exhibition, “Here the Earth Grows Gold,” opened at the Brooklyn Museum in Fall 2023. Other solo exhibitions include “An Impossible Address” at Mercer Union in Toronto, Canada (2025), and at EMPAC (Electronic Media and Performing Arts Center) in Troy, NY (2025). Sanzgiri’s award winning films and installations have screened and been exhibited extensively at festivals and arts venues around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, 18th Istanbul Biennial, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Toronto International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, BFI London Film Festival, Viennale, Whitechapel Gallery, de Appel, Jameel Arts Center, Menil Collection, Block Museum, MASS MoCA, moCa Cleveland, e-Flux, Carnegie Museum, Wexner Center for the Arts, Le Cinéma Club, Criterion Collection, and many more.