Colombian-American director Ilse Fernández and Brazilian-American director Denise Zmekhol have been announced as two of the 21 winners of the Logan Nonfiction Program Fellowship in its fall 2021 edition. Each fellow will work on long-form print, documentary or audio projects during one of the Institute’s two fall sessions beginning Oct 11. Each five-week session will include one-on-one mentorship, peer-to-peer workshops, self-care programming and frank discussions with industry professionals.
During its six years at the Carey Institute for Global Good in the upstate village of Rensselaerville, New York, the Logan program has hosted more than 200 fellows from around the world. Their print and documentary work has been recognized internationally — including the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction.
Fernandez is a Colombian-born U.S. immigrant documentary filmmaker and docu-series showrunner. She has produced and directed over 200 hours of nonfiction and long-form documentaries for ABC, NBC, Vice, MTV, Netflix, Discovery, A&E, National Geographic and The History Channel. Ilse began tackling pressing social issues via documentary as a director and story producer on five seasons of A&E’s “Intervention” series, including the 2009 Emmy Award-winning season. Her “Rachel” episode, about a homeless New Yorker suffering from drug addiction, was nominated for both an Emmy and Producers Guild Award. As a showrunner on Viceland’s cutting-edge eight-part documentary series “Cyberwar,” she explored geopolitical-digital conflicts, from NSA whistleblowers to Anonymous hackers.
On Spotify’s “Music Happens Here” documentary series, she served as both director and showrunner; the series won three Clio awards. She is a 2019 SFFilm/Catapult Documentary fellow, 2020 WIF Mentorship fellow, and a 2019 LPB Current Issues Fund and 2020 LPB Public Media Content Fund grant recipient. Ilse holds a B.A. from Concordia University in Montreal. Her short film Sueños luminosos screened at Sundance 2000.
As a Logan fellow, Ilse will work on her first documentary feature, Exodus Stories, which follows the stories of three Central American immigrants seeking U.S. asylum.
Denise Zmekhol (2021) is a Brazilian-American journalist, an award-winning producer and director of documentary films and media projects that span the globe. Her feature documentary Children of the Amazon was supported by ITVS and broadcast on PBS, as well as on European and Latin American television. The film won multiple awards at film festivals around the world. Denise co-produced and co-directed Digital Journey, an Emmy Award-winning PBS series exploring emerging technologies in their social, environmental and cultural contexts. Denise co-directed Bridge to the Future, a short for PBS/TED Talks, and was co-producer on Amir Soltani’s Dogtown Redemption that was exhibited on the PBS series ‘Independent Lens.’
As a Logan fellow, Denise will work on the documentary Skin of Glass, which follows the story of São Paulo’s tallest high-rise favela—a 24-story glass office tower and the architectural masterpiece of her late father.
