Universal Film and Focus Features have signed a two-year extension of their exclusive partnership with the Sundance Institute to continue supporting emerging filmmakers through the organization’s Breakthrough Fellowship.
Universal’s Filmmaker and Content Strategies group will guide the overall sponsorship, and the companies will oversee the Sundance Institute Breakthrough | Focus Features Fellowship which provides grants, mentorship, and career guidance each year to a class of filmmaker fellows.
In addition to renewing the partnership, the organizations announced the program’s fellowship class of 2026, a group of four writer-directors selected from the Sundance Institute Screenwriters Lab and Directors Lab. This year’s fellows are Roberto Fatal, Joanna Rothkopf, Said Zagha, and Renee Zhan.
Focus will provide each fellow with a financial grant and mentorship to support their creative development, while Universal’s Filmmaker & Content Strategies group will program enrichment opportunities designed to expand the fellows’ professional networks and provide greater insight into the studio ecosystem, through direct engagement with leaders and executives across the filmmaking pipeline, including development, production, marketing, distribution, and more. The fellows are also automatically eligible to be considered for the Universal Writers Residency, which partners writers with Universal’s term deal producers to develop original film ideas.
“Universal’s exclusive partnership with the Sundance Institute for nearly a decade has been a source of pride across the Studio. They’ve consistently demonstrated an exceptional ability to identify top-tier filmmakers on the verge of breakthrough success,” said Janine Jones-Clark, executive vice president of filmmaker and content strategies for Universal Film. “The alignment with Focus Features opens up even more opportunities for filmmakers. With a proven track record of elevating visionary auteur filmmakers and bringing distinctive stories to audiences, Focus is uniquely positioned to champion emerging talent with their powerful platform.”
“Focus are enormous fans of the Sundance Institute, and so happy to be able to support their Directors Lab fellows. Together they create a world in which filmmakers are allowed to dream deeply and freely, ultimately leading to films we’ll all be talking about for years to come,” said Kiska Higgs, president of production and acquisitions at Focus Features.
This extended partnership continues a longstanding collaborative relationship between the companies. Universal Film has partnered with the Sundance Institute since 2016, when Universal Pictures became a founding sponsor of Sundance Institute’s FilmTwo, which later became the Sundance Institute Momentum fellowship program. Alumni from the two iterations of the program include BAFTA winner Charlotte Wells (“Aftersun“); Stephen Caple Jr. (“Creed II“); Film Independent Spirit Award winner Andrew Ahn (“Spa Night“); Actor Award winner Clea Duvall (“Happiest Season“); and Erica Tremblay (“Fancy Dance“).
Building on its longstanding history of identifying emerging voices at Sundance Institute, Focus joined the partnership in 2025, with select projects from last year’s fellowship class currently in production or pre-production at the studio. Focus has distributed numerous films premiering at Sundance Film Festival, including A.V. Rockwell’s Grand Jury Prize winner “A Thousand and One,” Sean Wang’s Audience Award winner “Dìdi,” Cory Finley’s Independent Spirit Award nominee “Thoroughbreds,” and Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre’s Independent Spirit Award nominee “The Mustang.” Focus has also collaborated with numerous Sundance Institute Labs alumni, including Academy Award-winners Chloé Zhao and Paul Thomas Anderson.
2026 Sundance Institute | Focus Features Breakthrough Fellows:
Roberto Fatal [they/them/ellos] is a Meztize Chicana filmmaker and storyteller. They come from Rarámuri, Genízaro, and Spanish ancestry. Their Queer, gender-fluid, Mestize/Mixed identity informs the sci-fi films they make. Their work centers on humans who sit at the intersections of time, space, and culture. From this unique vantage point, these characters can bridge divides, see all sides, find new paths forward, and recall multiple histories long forgotten. The mixed people of Fatal’s stories can connect us deeply to an undercurrent of humanity that we often overlook in a world that is increasingly divided. Survival, intersectional identity, perseverance, love, empathy, community, connection, and creation are at the heart of their characters and films. Fatal is a Sundance Institute Native Lab alum and an imagineNATIVE Director’s Lab alum. Their debut feature script, “Electric Homies,” was included in the 2025 Sundance Institute Screenwriters Lab and the Directors Lab, and their newest short film, “En Memoria,” was selected to screen in competition at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival Shorts program.
Joanna Rothkopf is a writer and filmmaker living in Brooklyn. Since 2019, she has worked as a senior writer on HBO’s “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver,” through which she has won multiple Emmy Awards, WGA Awards, and a Peabody. Her short documentary, “Pet Store,” which she wrote, directed, and produced, played a variety of festivals in 2024, including the Hamptons International Film Festival and the Austin Film Festival, where it was nominated for the Documentary Short Jury Award. Her writing has also appeared in New York Magazine, Dwell, Esquire, The New Republic, the New York Times Magazine, and on Jezebel. She holds a master’s degree from Columbia University, where she was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation fellow, and a BA from Middlebury College.
Said Zagha is a UK-based Palestinian British screenwriter and director whose work fuses genre storytelling with a political edge. His 2025 short film “Coyotes” premiered at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival and went on to win Best Short Film at the BFI London Film Festival and the Red Sea International Film Festival. Since its premiere, it has won 8 international awards and received over 60 festival selections, including at Sitges, AFI Fest, BFI Flare, Chicago IFF, Clermont-Ferrand, and many others. Zagha is in advanced development on his debut feature, “Black Harvest,” a Palestine-set revenge thriller supported by major public film funds across the Arab world. Previously, he directed the first two episodes of “Crashing Eid” (2023), a Netflix Original miniseries set in Saudi Arabia that reached Netflix’s global Top 10 in more than 30 territories. His earlier shorts, “Lovesick in the West Bank” (2021) and “Five Boys and a Wheel” (2016), screened widely on the international festival circuit, including at Academy-qualifying events such as Tampere, Urbanworld, Portland, and Dubai. Born in Jerusalem and raised in Ramallah, Zagha holds a BA in English from Kenyon College and an MA in Screenwriting from the London Film School. He is an alumnus of the Sundance Institute Screenwriters and Directors Labs (2026) and Berlinale Talents (2020).
Renee Zhan is a Chinese-American director and animator from Houston, Texas. In her films, Renee is primarily interested in exploring topics of female identity, nature, and sexuality — all things beautiful, ugly, and squishy. She is an alumnus of the Sundance Institute Screenwriters and Directors Labs, BAFTA Crew x BFI Network, and Berlinale Talents, and her short films have screened and won awards at festivals internationally, including AFI Fest, Locarno, TIFF, Telluride, SXSW, an Annie Award nomination, BAFTA LA shortlist, and the Jury Prize for Animated Short at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. She is developing her first feature film with BBC Film.
