Brazilian director Petra Costa and U.S. Latinx director Anayansi Prado have been announced as two of this year’s seven receipients of the Chicken & Egg Award. The award supports advanced-career women and gender nonconforming filmmakers with unrestricted funding. The awarded directors will receive a $50,000 grant, and for the first time ever two directors will receive a $15,000 finalist grant.
Costa is a Brazilian documentary filmmaker whose work lives on the borderlines of the personal and political. She directed The Edge of Democracy (2019), which was nominated for the Academy Award for Documentary Feature in 2020; Undertow Eyes (2009); Elena (2012); and Olmo and the Seagull (2015). Costa is associate producer of Barbara Paz’s Babenco (2019), producer of Moara Passoni’s Ecstasy (2020), and EP of Rebeca Huntt’s BEBA (2021).
Born in Panama, Prado is an award-winning documentary filmmaker whose work has focused on issues of undocumented immigration, indigenous rights, and race identity. Her feature films have aired nationally on PBS including The Unafraid (2018), Paraiso for Sale (2010), and Maid in America (2005). Prado is a Rockefeller Media Fellow and a Creative Capital Artist; her work has been supported by the MacArthur Foundation, Ford Foundation, Chicken & Egg Pictures, amongst others.
Presented by Chicken & Egg Pictures, past Latinx and Latin American recipients of the Chicken & Egg Award include Natalia Almada, Cristina Ibarra, Tatiana Huezo, and Loira Limbal.
