Stories We Tell

Brit Fryer is an artist and filmmaker from Chicago’s South Side, currently based in Brooklyn, NY, whose unique approach to nonfiction storytelling centers on gender and queerness through process-forward and collaborative methods. His most recent film, THE SCRIPT, co-directed with Noah Schamus, unpacks the boundaries of language and the role of performance in shaping an expansive and gender-expansive healthcare system. The film was shortlisted for the 2023 IDA Awards and won the Creative Activism Award at the 2024 SIMA Awards. It is distributed on The Criterion Channel and The New Yorker. He is also the director of CARO COMES OUT, which premiered on HBO Max after winning the Knight Made in MIA Award at the Miami International Film Festival. His other films include ACROSS, BEYOND AND OVER and TRANS·IENCE. His films have been screened in theatres and festivals internationally, including Blackstar, CPH: DOX, Newfest, and MIX NYC. He has received generous support from Sundance, the Gotham, and Points North.

Jennifer is a happy workaholic. She brings a fresh, authentic perspective to telling powerful, thought-provoking stories. She works in documentaries, comedies, and dramatic film and TV production. She writes, produces, and directs. Often on the same project! She recently directed the feature doc, Subjects of Desire, that premiered at SXSW and was a top ten audience favourite at Hot Docs 2021. The film will air on Starz in the US and TVO in Canada. She produced Stateless that won the 2020 Hot Doc’s Special Jury Prize and Jen was awarded the CMPA’s Indiescreen Established Producer of the year Award for that film. Jen is passionate about Black Canadian history and is producing the History Channel Series, BLK: An Origin Story where she will serve as a series showrunner, producer, and a director. Other TV documentaries include Speakers for The Dead (CBC), Badge of Pride (CBC & PBS), Brick by Brick (Omni), Yin Yin Jade Love (TVO). Her dramatic features Home Again and Love, Sex and Eating the Bones have won numerous festival awards, including the Best First Canadian Feature Award at TIFF. She created the TV series, Shoot the Messenger and the multiple award-winning mini-series, Guns for CBC where she won a shared Canadian Screen Award for writing on the series. Along with her creative work, Jennifer is an advocate for diversity and mentorship. Along with her creative work, Jennifer is an advocate for diversity and mentorship.

Jo Rochelle is a Jamaican-American screenwriter and filmmaker based in California, originally from Minneapolis. She attended New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts as a Drama major, where she discovered her passion for writing and directing stories and hasn’t stopped. She has written and directed award-winning short films and the feature film, “Jasmine is a Star” (streaming on FUSE+). Jo’s an alumnus of Teach for America where she taught 6th grade English and Social Studies in the Mississippi Delta. She was also a writer on seasons four and five of “Good Trouble” on Freeform/Hulu.

Luchina Fisher is the Emmy Award-winning director and producer of THE DADS, about five fathers of trans kids bonding on a weekend fishing trip. The short documentary, executive produced by Dwyane Wade and acquired by Netflix, received the 2024 Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Short Form Program and a Special Recognition Award from GLAAD. Her directorial debut, MAMA GLORIA, about a Black trans elder activist, was nominated for a 2022 GLAAD Media Award and broadcast on PBS. She is also the director of the award-winning short documentary TEAM DREAM, executive produced by Queen Latifah, and co-director of the award-winning feature documentary LOCKED OUT, about the barriers to Black homeownership. She is currently finishing a feature-length documentary with some of the dads from her Emmy-winning short and a project about the unsung history of Black queer presence in music, which won the 2023 PitchBLACK Film Forum. Luchina began her career as a journalist, writing for The Miami Herald, People and ABC News, and is a 2026 inductee of the North Carolina Media and Journalism Hall of Fame. She is a visiting professor in film at Fairfield University and has taught documentary filmmaking at Yale. She is a member of the Television Academy and serves on the board of New York Women in Film and Television.