Following a call for projects open to Makila members and non-members, eight emerging and mid-career creators were selected for the 2022 edition of the Inkubator. Already in its second year, our project development lab takes place over a six-month period, includes hours of personalized mentoring, and culminates in a pitching workshop and a pitch & networking event Cuban Hat style with partners and industry professionals. Here are the selected participants making up the Inkubator 2022 cohort:

Florence M. Rosalie, artistic director and screenwriter, is developing We The Daughters, a web series surrounding the untold, Montreal-based story of John Trim and his daughters to shed new light on the history of Montreal's Black, Asian, and Indigenous communities while exploring magical realism as a vehicle for these voices.

Cuban-Canadian director Tamara Segura explores the psychological thriller with her feature film Three-Legged Buffalo which follows a young couple living in an isolated town. She is heavily pregnant and he is a music composer suffering from schizophrenia. Focusing on an outcast couple living on the razor's edge of their psychological endurance, Three-Legged Buffalo questions the preservation of love in circumstances of isolation and grief.

Danielle Kouhio Depri is an emerging artist who writes and directs films on issues and themes that particularly resonate with her: motherhood, self-sacrifice and self-giving, citizenship on the margins, and migration issues. NORA. 29 ANS. 39 SA is the story of Nora, who gives birth alone in her apartment, unaware she was even pregnant. A sordid and terrifying summer night that will force her to make a Cornelian choice.

Felipe Pio, a Brazilian-born filmmaker, is preparing to write his first short fiction film after focusing on reality. He is now inspired to create Robert and Clarisse, the story of an elderly couple and their daily lives following Robert's stroke: an adventure on the road, a story of resilience, acceptance and love.

Journalist with twenty years of experience, Camila Novais takes a turn in 2019 to the realm of documentary. Afghane is a documentary that follows the daily life of an Afghan prosecutor who helped arrest dozens of men who committed crimes against women, forcing her to flee the fundamentalist Taliban regime. Now in Montreal, she is trying to overcome her sense of helplessness in the face of her compatriots' reality and her new life.

Andrés Molina and Charbel El Melhem, producer-directors and our first duo of collaborators, contemplate friendship and family building through sponsorship. Karma follows Lebanese Joe and Lebanese-Canadian Mike as they find themselves in a relationship while Joe attempts to immigrate to Canada.

Director Giulia Frati draws on her own experiences with her seed of humour and irony to write the short fiction film The Phone Call, a bittersweet pause that wants us to reflect on ourselves and the "other" while thinking about our common challenge: our mortality.

And finally, Jesse Freeston, a seasoned documentary filmmaker, has always been interested in the social and ecological future of our species. In That Which Cannot Be Split, he questions two movements: by having us revisit the archive of anti-nuclear activists from the 1970s and 1980s who sought to prevent humans from splitting atoms and juxtaposing them with today's pro-nuclear movement that strives to replace fossil fuels with emission-free atomic energy, Freeston asks us: can we trust humans and do we have a choice?

We can't wait to invite you to our pitch & networking event at the end of the year, when all these great projects have grown and matured!

The group incubation sessions are moderated by : Philippe Grégoire and Yousra Benziane.

Each participant will be paired with a mentor from this list of seasoned professionals: Eva Kabuya, Kat Baulu, Katherine Jerkovic, Ky Nam Le Duc, Majdi El Omari, Marie Potvin, Miryam Charles and Raymonde Provencher.

Thanks to our sponsors and funding partners for their support:

Canada