Filmmakers Stanley Nelson, Marcia Smith Selected as BLACK PUBLIC MEDIA’S 2026 Trailblazers

It’s all a part of BPM’s PitchBLACK, sponsored by Netflix and PBS, the largest pitch session for independent filmmakers and creative technologists creating Black content. The annual PitchBLACK Forum will be held on Wednesday, April 29.

Winners of up to $150,000 in production funding will be announced at the PitchBLACK Awards; NPR’s Britany Luse will moderate and Artists’ Chat with Nelson and Smith at the event.

Stanley Nelson

The married duo, documentary filmmakers and co-founders of Firelight Media, will receive BPM’s most prestigious honor at the PitchBLACK Awards on Thursday, April 30, at 6:30 p.m.

The PitchBLACK Awards ceremony celebrates the winners of the PitchBLACK Forum, the nation’s largest pitch competition for independent filmmakers and creative technologists creating Black content. The Forum takes place Wednesday, April 29, from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and creatives will take the stage to vie for up to $150,000 in production funding.

Registration is required for the PitchBLACK Forum, which can be attended in person or virtually; tickets for the awards program go on sale via Ticketmaster in March. Sponsored by Netflix and PBS, PitchBLACK returns to The Apollo Stages at the Victoria in Harlem for the second year in a row.

Director Stanley Nelson and Writer-Producer Marcia Smith have shaped modern documentary storytelling and the field around it, pairing revelatory films with lasting infrastructure that helps other artists thrive.

Nelson is widely regarded as a leading chronicler of the African American experience in nonfiction film, work that has earned him a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, a Peabody recognizing his body of work and the National Medal in the Humanities.

Smith has has helped advance documentary filmmaking as a writer, producer and nonprofit leader, earning recognition for her work and leadership including a Writers Guild Award, a Muse Award and BlackStar’s Luminary Award. Through Firelight’s Documentary Lab, they have helped launch the careers of more than 100 nonfiction filmmakers of color and built Firelight into a nationally respected home for nonfiction work by and about communities of color.

BPM’s Trailblazer Award is presented to documentary filmmakers whose body of work and commitment to mentoring emerging filmmakers producing Black stories are exemplary. Past recipients include Michèle Stephenson & Joe Brewster (2019), Marco Williams (2021) Orlando Bagwell (2022), Yoruba Richen (2023), Sam Pollard (2024), and Lillian E. Benson (2025).

“Not only has Marcia and Stanley’s prolific body of work set superior standards for the field and blessed the world with a plethora of important African American stories, their dedication to creating new opportunities for other underrepresented and underserved media makers has made it possible for the industry to grow in ways that better reflect its increasingly diverse audiences,” said Leslie Fields-Cruz, executive director of Black Public Media. “Black Public Media is thrilled to bestow our highest award on these two independent media titans.”

 

In honor of Nelson and Smith’s remarkable accomplishments, BPM will present a two-week, online retrospective of their films, Monday, April 27, through Sunday, May 10. The 2026 BPM Trailblazer Retrospective may include We Want the Funk! (2025), The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution (2015), Freedom Riders (2010), Jonestown: The Life and Death of People’s Temple (2007), A Place of Our Own (2004), The Murder of Emmett Till (2003), Marcus Garvey: Look for Me in the Whirlwind (2000), The Black Press: Soldiers Without Swords (1999) and Two Dollars and a Dream (1989). All PitchBLACK registrants will receive free, on-demand access to the slate of films on the BPM website throughout the streaming window.

Through its PitchBLACK initiative, Black Public Media has awarded more than $2 million to 26 film and immersive projects since 2015. Many have gone on to national primetime premieres on public media broadcast and streaming platforms.

Each year, the PitchBLACK Forum & Awards draw leaders from public television, commercial television, documentary film, emerging media and funding worlds. At the Forum, five documentary film teams will pitch their projects in the morning, followed by five immersive media teams in the afternoon, with projects judged by panels of industry professionals.

Winners will be announced at the PitchBLACK Awards on Thursday, April 30. The event will feature an Artists’ Chat with Nelson and Smith about their careers and the future of public media, moderated by NPR journalist and podcast host Brittany Luse.

The recipient of BPM’s 2026 Nonso Christian Ugbode Fellowship, a memorial award named for BPM’s first director of digital initiatives recognizing under-30 artists in immersive media, will also be announced. Held in-person, the PitchBLACK Awards will be broadcast at a later date by NYC Media.

Sponsors also include Andscape, PBS and Manhattan Neighborhood Network (MNN). Additional sponsorship opportunities are available by contacting Tonya Thomas at: tonyat@blackpublicmedia.org.

Since 1979, BPM has funded and helped distribute quality film and immersive work while developing creatives. The national nonprofit also produces and distributes original content, including its signature series, AfroPoP: The Ultimate Cultural Exchange and its digital offshoot, AfroPoP Digital Shorts.

Stanley Nelson

To learn more about PitchBLACK, visit blackpublicmedia.org or follow BPM (@blackpublicmedia) on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.

Nelson is the foremost chronicler of the African American experience working in nonfiction film today. His documentary films, many of which have aired on PBS, combine compelling narratives with rich and deeply researched historical detail, shining new light on both familiar and under-explored aspects of the American past.

A MacArthur “Genius” Fellow, Nelson was awarded a Peabody for his body of work in 2016. He has received numerous honors over the course of his career, including the 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Television Arts Sciences. In 2013, President Barack Obama presented Nelson with the National Medal in the Humanities.

Nelson’s latest documentaries include Sound of the Police for ABC News Studios/Hulu, and Harriet Tubman: Visions of Freedom and Becoming Frederick Douglass for PBS.

His previous documentary Attica for SHOWTIME Documentary Films was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 94th Academy Awards® and earned him the DGA Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary. In 2021, Nelson also directed Crack: Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy for Netflix and Tulsa Burning: The 1921 Race Massacre, with co-director Marco Williams for History, which was nominated for three Primetime Emmy® Awards.

Nelson’s feature for American Masters, Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2019, marking his tenth premiere at the prestigious festival — the most of any documentary filmmaker.

The film won two Emmy® Awards at the 42nd Annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards and was nominated for Best Music Film at the 62nd Grammy Awards. His film The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution (2016) won the 2016 NAACP Image Award. Other notable Nelson films include Freedom Riders (2010, three Primetime Emmy® Awards and included in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress), Freedom Summer (2014, Peabody Award),The Black Press: Soldiers Without Swords (1999, Emmy-nominated), Jonestown: The Life and Death of People’s Temple (2006, Tribeca Film Festival Special Jury Prize) and Marcus Garvey: Look for Me in the Whirlwind (2000, Sundance Premiere). The Murder of Emmett Till 2003) uncovered new eyewitnesses and helped prompt the U.S. Department of Justice to reopen the case.

Smith is co-founder and former president of Firelight Media, which produces documentary films, provides artistic and financial support to emerging filmmakers of color and builds impact campaigns to connect documentaries to audiences and social justice advocates. Under her leadership, Firelight Media was honored with a MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions. Firelight Media’s flagship Documentary Lab program has supported more than 100 emerging filmmakers over the past decade, who have premiered at festivals such as Sundance, and gone on to earn numerous festival, Peabody and Emmy awards.

She has written several films alongside documentarian Stanley Nelson including: Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story of Black Colleges and Universities; Through the Fire: The Legacy of Barack Obama; Freedom Riders; Jonestown: The Life and Death of the Peoples Temple; Marcus Garvey: Look for Me in the Whirlwind; and The Murder of Emmett Till. Smith received a Primetime Emmy nomination and won the Writers’ Guild Award for best nonfiction writing for her work on The Murder of Emmett Till, and was honored with a 2016 Muse Award from New York Women in Film & Television, as well as the 2019 Luminary Award from BlackStar Film Festival. She will also serve as the writer for Firelight’s upcoming four-hour documentary series, Creating The New World, on the transatlantic slave trade.

Smith is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, sits on the Peabody Board of Directors (East Coast) and is a member of the Board for Martha’s Vineyard Film Society.

About Black Public Media (BPM)

BPM supports the development of visionary content creators and distributes stories about the global Black experience to inspire a more equitable and inclusive future. For 45+ years, BPM has addressed the needs of unserved and underserved audiences. BPM-supported programs have won five Emmys®,10 Peabodys, five Anthem Awards, 14 Emmy® nominations and an Oscar® nomination. BPM continues to address historical, contemporary and systemic challenges that traditionally impede the development and distribution of Black stories.

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Part 3: MEDUZA Wrap-Up Summary, Plus Additional Credits. On Digital Platforms Today, February 20, 2026

MEDUZA follows Ukrainian artist-turned-sniper Pavlo Aldoshyn from the first days of the war in 2022. Pavlo played a sniper in a film prior to the 2022 invasion, and these skills led him to be recruited as a sniper when the war began. Throughout the film, Pavlo’s inner life connects to a range of stories around the globe, including a Japanese widower searching the ocean for his wife, and an Amazonian tribesman describing the loss of a mythical ladder uniting earth and sky.

This fascinating documentary stars famous Ukrainian actor Pavlo Aldoshyn (“White Raven”) who was also a contestant on Ukraine’s version of The Voice before the war. The shoot took place over two years following the invasion, with some pre-invasion footage obtained from Pavlo and his wife, Katarina

The team was Director Roc Morin and Leïla Wolf, Morin’s producer and longtime film collaborator who passed away in January. Morin had reported on the war starting in 2014 as a print journalist, and following the full-scale invasion, flew to Poland, walked across the border, and hitchhiked to Lviv because there was no organized transportation heading into the country at that time.

While in Kyiv, Wolf was introduced to Pavlo who happened to be on a brief leave from the front line. Over the course of the filming, interviews were conducted in Kyiv, Kharkhiv, and near the front line. Upon meeting Pavlo, Morin was struck by Pavlo’s unique spiritual perspective of himself in the context of the war. Witnessing Pavlo’s psychological transformation over the course of the two years of filming, and the impact of his involvement in the war on his spiritual mythology and relationships, forms the core of the film and shows the intimate costs of war. Pavlo is still fighting on the front lines for his country, even today.

MEDUZA was directed by Roc Morin (”You Are My Audience”, Producer of Werner Herzog’s “Family Romance LLC”) and produced by Leïla Wolf (”You Are My Audience”). MEDUZA has a running time of 1:30 and will not be rated by the MPAA. The film shot in the United States, Ukraine, Japan, India, and Ecuador. F is on digital platforms today, February 20, 2025, tied to the 4-year anniversary of the war in Ukraine.

 

the WORD Editor Gregg W. Morris

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Part 2: MEDUZA Film Review – Opens Today on Digital Platforms. On a Rating of 1-5, This Movie Is Off the Charts

Ukrainian artist-turned-sniper Pavlo Aldoshyn from the early days of the 2022 war in Ukraine, intertwining his personal journey with stories from around the world. Roc Morin is credited as the director of this film. Opening on digital platforms Februrary 20.

The storytelling style in Meduza isn’t a conventional genre like “linear narrative” nor a classic documentary voiceover approach. Instead, it blends several techniques that give it a nunique narrative feel but it had this film reviewer stumbling for a while, so I recommend that the WORD patrons take heed of this alert.

🎥 Documentary at its core — but lyrical and associative
Although Meduza is formally a documentary — it follows real events and people, most centrally Ukrainian artist-turned-sniper Pavlo Aldoshyn — its narrative isn’t just a straightforward chronicle of events. That kind of direct storytelling is common in journalism and traditional documentary filmmaking.

🧠 Personal inner life as narrative anchor
The film tracks Pavlo’s psychological and spiritual journey, not just the facts of his military role. His inner life, thoughts, reflections, and emotional landscape become a thread through the film, and this inner focus carries as much weight as the external events of war. This means the story is organized less around a chronological progression of what happens next and more around how the protagonist experiences and interprets what happens.

🌍 Associative and thematic linking across stories
Rather than a simple cause-and-effect structure, Meduza interweaves Pavlo’s personal arc with distinct global vignettes — like a Japanese widower searching for his wife or an Amazonian tribesman reflecting on myth — that don’t necessarily follow a strict linear line but resonate thematically with the core narrative. This creates a sort of associative narrative that links ideas and emotions as much as events.

🎙️ Poetic and reflective tone
Reviews describe the film as slow-burning and reflective, meditating on war, life, and experience, rather than racing through a series of plot points. The use of voiceover, inner reflection, and thematic juxtaposition gives it a lyrical documentary feel — somewhere between reportage and poetic cinema.

Can you see the sniper?

 

the WORD Editor Gregg W. Morris

 

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Part 1 of 3: MEDUZA Film Synoptic Introduction – MEDUZA Opens Today on Digital Platforms

 

In an era saturated with war documentaries, Director Roc Morin’s MEDUZA esquistiely distinguishes itself through an approach that is both intimate and expansive, filming, Ukrainian artist Pavlo Aldoshyn as he transitions from portraying a sniper on screen to becoming one on the front lines of the 2022 Russian invasion.

The documentary’s central conceit is haunting in its simplicity: Aldoshyn once played a sniper in a movie and then became a real sniper after his hometown was invaded. This life-imitating-art narrative, anchored by Aldoshyn’s prior starring role in the 2022 Ukrainian war film SNIPER: THE WHITE RAVEN,  provides MEDUZA with a meta-textual layer that trancends conventional wartime documentation.

The film captures this transformation from the war’s earliest days, offering a longitudinal perspective on how war reshapes identity and purpose.

What sets Morin’s directorial vision apart is his refusal to let the documentary remain contained within Ukraine’s borders. Rather than treating Aldoshyn’s experience as geographically isolated, MEDUZA weaves his inner life into a tapestry of global narratives, including the story of a Japanese widower searching the ocean for his lost wife.

This structural choice suggests that the film is less interested in the specifics of military engagement than in the universal human experiences of loss, transformation, and the search for meaning amid chaos.

Morin, who previously produced Werner Herzog’s FAMILY ROMANCE, LLC and directed YOU ARE MY AUDIENCE  brings a documentarian’s eye attuned to the collision between performance and reality. Some audiences may feel challenged by what might look to them like as a sophisticated art-house approach that they (including film aficionado) are unfamiliar with. This reviewer’s suggestion is that they hang in there; those who do can be richly awarded.

The  collaboration with Herzog seems to have instilled in him an appreciation for life’s stranger-than-fiction moments and the thin membrane separating constructed narrative from lived experience. In MEDUZA, he finds perhaps the ultimate expression of this theme: a man who literally stepped from a fictional battlefield into a real one.

The film’s ambition lies in its emotional geography rather than its combat footage. By connecting Aldoshyn’s personal journey to disparate stories across continents, Morin appears to be constructing a meditation on how individuals process trauma and find continuity when their worlds are violently ruptured. The Japanese widower subplot, while seemingly tangential, likely serves as a thematic mirror—another person searching for closure, another life defined by absence and the compulsion to keep looking.

MEDUZA arrives at a moment when the world has been inundated with images from Ukraine, yet viewer fatigue threatens to numb us to individual stories. Morin’s challenge is to make us care deeply about one man’s transformation while situating it within a broader human context. Whether the film succeeds in balancing these competing impulses—the particular and the universal, the Ukrainian and the global—will determine its impact.

For those familiar with the grim ironies of the Ukraine conflict, Aldoshyn’s trajectory carries additional weight. The actor’s fictional role as a sniper was itself inspired by real Ukrainian fighters defending their homeland. Now, his real-life service completes a circle that speaks to how art and reality have become inextricably intertwined in Ukraine’s ongoing struggle. MEDUZA promises to be less a conventional war documentary than a philosophical inquiry into identity, duty, and the stories we tell ourselves to survive impossible circumstances.

 

Key Updates on the War in Ukraine, Recent Major Attacks

Territorial Situation:
• Russian forces continue advancing slowly, gaining approximately 182 square miles in the past four weeks
• Russia is reportedly preparing for a major spring offensive, possibly starting in late April, focused on the Slovyansk-

Kramatorsk area
• Russian forces are nearing capture of key Ukrainian towns including Pokrovsk, Huliaipole, and Myrnohrad
Casualties:
• Former MI6 chief Richard Moore reported about 30,000 Russian soldiers were killed in December alone
• Total Russian casualties are estimated at around 1 million killed and wounded since the war began
• Ukraine’s General Staff reports Russia has lost over 1.2 million troops total

Political Developments
• NATO allies pledged over $4.5 billion in US weapons purchases for Ukraine
• Reports suggest Zelenskyy may announce plans for wartime elections on February 24 under US pressure
• US military aid to Ukraine dropped 99% in 2025, though European countries increased their support
The war continues with heavy fighting and civilian casualties as it enters its third year.

 

the WORD Editor Gregg W. Morris

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Director Oriana Ng and Producer Abigail Prade Discuss Their 18-Minute Film Short Marvel WALTZ FOR THREE – Part 2 of 2

Gregg Morris-the WORD
Is there anything that you would change in the film?

Director Oriana Ng
Yes.

Gregg Morris-the WORD
Can you share that?

Director Oriana Ng
I always cringe between … So when he finishes his first dance and then the waltz, so they have these two scenes of dialogue and I don’t like the dialogue. I think we kind of get away with it because they’re such great actors that even if the dialogue isn’t necessarily the best; they sell it because they’re so amazing.

And then, we have the beautiful shots that Emilija did and the location. The production designer, Margot, did an amazing job as well. So I think we kind of get through that part, and it’s okay, and we need it for exposition to know that something happened to her husband.
But I just wish I had ridden it more elegantly. I’m also trying to be kind to myself. I’d only been in school for a little over a year, and I didn’t know how to write. I was writing from up here when you have to really write from here, and I think there’s just too much talking. It could have been much more elegant from a writer’s point of view.

Gregg Morris-the WORD
How did you get into film?

Producer Abigail Prade
Yeah. So, my background is actually in art history, and I did that for college, and all those …

Gregg Morris-the WORD
Okay … art history. What do you mean by art history? You were…
Producer Abigail Prade
Studying art history in college, but I always …

Gregg Morris-the WORD
Okay. So writing books and articles and reviews and stuff?

Producer Abigail Prade:
Yeah, more, not art itself, but painting, but it’s more studying art on an academic level. But I always wanted to make films. And my grandmother, this is like the days before IMDB, she always gave me this book like Leonard Maltin’s book, where you can see the …

He rates film by stars. Whenever we would watch a movie, we would look at what he wrote. Maybe something was a turkey and something else got five stars. My family really likes movies, but they didn’t really think filmmaking was good to do so. And then, I was like, ‘Well, I like art history, so I will study art history.’ And then, at one point, I was doing an internship at our national film museum in the Netherlands, and I thought, “This is really great, but I still want to make movies, and if I don’t do it now, I’m probably never going to do it again.

So then, I applied to go to NYU Film School, and I did the program in Singapore because I really love Asian art house films; I’m  also influenced by my grandmother,  she’s Chinese-Indonesian, and she was exploring her own roots, so she was watching a lot of Taiwanese films and ugly films. It was like, ‘Oh, that’s exciting to me.’ So then, I went to film school, but yeah, my family would still say, ‘Oh, Abby, she’s studying for unemployment.’ But …

Gregg Morris-the WORD
[inaudible 00:43:24]

Director Oriana Ng
Oh my God. Should I answer the same question?

Gregg Morris-the WORD
Oh, please, please, please.

Director Oriana Ng
I got into film because of Robert De Niro and Mart Scorsese, and this is not a joke, and that’s why I came to New York because I discovered their movies when I was 12.

My mother showed me The Godfather, and she skipped over the parts I shouldn’t watch, and I was somehow fascinated at 12 years old. And then, she was like, ‘Which actor do you like?’ I said, ‘I like this actor,’ and she was like, ‘Oh, well, that’s Robert De Niro. He’s very famous,’ but I was 12. I didn’t know better. So then, I watched almost all of his movies during my teenage years, and I got really interested in Scorsese.

And so, when I was 14, I Googled, Where did Scorsese go to school, and it said, NYU MFA Film, so I said, ‘Oh, that’s where I want to go.”

And then, it took me 11 years to get there, but I did eventually after going to business school because I was like, “I also did not want to study for my unemployment.” And then, I was like, “No, I don’t want to do this.”

My mother was really great because she didn’t know if it was a phase or not, and she was obviously worried, but she said, “Get a real degree first, and then if you still want to go to film school, I will help you pay for it.” And so, I got the real degree, and then the year I graduated, also, I got into NYU, and she supported me and also supported this movie.

Gregg Morris-the WORD
Wow. Wow. I think I’m out of questions. Wait a minute. I might not be out of questions. Is there something you would like to have talked about that didn’t come up in conversation or I didn’t ask the question or something like that? What would you like to tell critics of the world? No, I’m not making sense. Let me …

Producer Abigail Prade
Yeah. Maybe we come across a certain way, but I’ll speak for myself, but there’s times where I’m crying and I feel very bad about myself and totally insecure and unsure. I’m like, “Oh, the film industry. I get frustrated.” I don’t think that’s also good to always be super confident and super sure because I think all of us have those doubts about yourself, and am I doing the right thing? I don’t know. Did I approach it the right way? We’ve all had moments like that.

Director Oriana Ng
Oh, and I echo that. We’re talking to you, and this is great, and we feel like, “Oh, we’re filmmakers” because we’re talking to Gregg Morris-the WORD, but then as soon as we hang up, it’s like, “I’m going to try to apply for a job. I’m going to try to do this, and then my movie gets rejected from yet another festival.”

This is the glamorous part, but it’s a struggle. I mean, I think we really have to love it to accept the struggle, but I also wanted to touch on something you said about being powerful. To me, what I was kind of implying earlier when I say I’m the least talented person in the room is I cannot make a movie by myself. You can write by yourself, and you have this autonomy and carry a project through alone, which I really envy because I can’t even write a script by myself.

Like for this, I actually had the actress come in and rehearse around it, and then I would be like, “No, no, that sounds terrible.” Then, I would go and rewrite it. I had them do improv. So the part, his solo dance, came from an improv where I was just throwing things at him, and he started to sing and dance. I was like, “Oh, this is great. I’m going to put it in a movie.”

And the moment where she breaks down in the waltz scene, that happened on set. And the way I wrote the script wasn’t like that. I wrote the script, and originally, she was dancing with him, and she put the jacket on him. She found her husband again, and she was enjoying that. But then, she, on set, started to cry. And then, I was like, “Oh, this is so much better than what I wrote.” So then, I just adjusted, and I was like, “Can you just do two turns where you’re really remembering your husband and you’re happy?” Because she had started to cry immediately.

I said, ‘Just don’t cry immediately.’ I mean, she’s such an incredible actress. I never had to tell an actor not to cry because she was so emotional and she has such incredible depth, so it’s the first time in my life ever that I had to tell an actor to hold back. So I said, “Just hold back for two turns, and the third turn, you can let go.”

But that was something she did. Also, when she puts her hand on him at the end, that was something she did. That wasn’t planned, and this is what I’m trying to tell you. When I’m saying I’m the least talented person in the room, it’s because all these people are so talented and everything that I write, my imagination will never live up to what Ophelie and Mikael, the actors, can do, or the way Emilija planned that shot, it was an accident.

We had another plan for the shot. We’re supposed to use a steady cam. The steady camera had the flu. It was like with fever, couldn’t do anything, and we had a tripod. I was kind of freaking out, but not showing it because I’m on a film set. I’m supposed to be the captain of the ship, right? But internally, I’m trying to push the shoot. It was the last day of filming was the last few hours.

I’m like, “Can we do it tomorrow? Can we?” And then, the AD mode, who was just really amazing, kind of came up to me. She’s like, “No, we have to do it.” Emilija looks at the room, and she stays for maybe a minute looking, and I’m not saying anything. Emilija’s like, “I think we can do it with a tripod, with a pan.” I was like, “What?” And then, she showed me the shot, and I didn’t get it.

And then, suddenly, I was like, “Oh, this is better than everything we had.” So this is what I’m saying. It’s like I don’t feel powerful because these people are better than me. If I’m good at anything, it’s just seeing those moments where they’re inspired and inspiring them. And then, when they’re on an instinct, I’m like, “Oh, go for it. Go for it. Give me more of that. Yeah, yeah, let’s keep that.” So if I have any, that’s my talent, but it’s completely dependent on all of their talents.

Producer Abigail Prade
Yeah. I will add to that. I think, Oriana and I talked about this, I felt quite bad during NYU Film School because I felt that I was like, “I know how to write papers, and now, I have to write and do something creative.” And now, I’m like, “I don’t know if it’s good. I think it might be bad.”

And with a paper, I know when it’s finished, and with something more creative, I don’t know when it’s finished because you can keep working on it forever trying to improve it. And so, I was really having a hard time in film school, and I think as you go through it, you also learn things that work for you. So for example, NYU, I would say it’s like… Well, I think maybe now they changed a little bit compared to when I was there, but the instinct …

Producer Abigail Prade
… is really more a traditional three-act structure, and I knew I don’t really want to make films like that, or I know I need to have some kind of structure, but I really like films that are mature and more languid and more atmospheric and moody and not necessarily have a huge plot. So I was really struggling with that.

But as you go through the program and as you grow older also, you just find things that work for you. So you just have to find the way that works for you, and it doesn’t matter if someone says like, ‘Oh, this is good or this is the only way to do it,’ because you have to find what works for you.

Gregg Morris-the WORD
Okay. So there we go. I got a second recording. So we’re good. We’re good. Wow. Yes. I mean, it’s probably one of the heaviest, deepest interviews I’ve done in a while. I mean, it’s fired up all my cells and stuff. So I’m lucky that you guys can send it to … I feel very fortunate that you allow me to interview you and pick your brain and listen to your concerns and your fears.

I said powerful, but it’s… I see it as a power that’s athletes because basketball was so big. I mean, I’ve got to spend some time trying to flesh out. There’s got to be another way for me dealing with this power thing. I think it’s sort of like has something to do with strength, but I haven’t figured it out yet. I will tell you, probably 15 minutes after, I’m not saying go, but I was probably saying a few minutes after we break off, I’ll go, ‘Ah, that’s what I meant. I was using the wrong word.’ Yeah, anyway, sorry.

Director Oriana Ng
But I think it’s funny because when you said that, we both picked up on it …

Producer Abigail Prade
Yes, we were like …

Director Oriana Ng
… and I guess we’re not powerful, but I think it depends. The image, because when I made this movie, it was shot six years ago. We shot it in January 2020, and it took me four and a half years to finish it, which is something I hope to never do again.

But the thing is, I was really still in film school and learning, and the beauty about the NYU Grad Film program is kind of, they trust you, they give you these great means, and they’re like, ‘Go and make your film,’ but you’re learning as you go. I think the image that I have of myself when I’m directing now would be something like a table where the meal happens or a tray. I’m holding the tray or maybe if we’re in a room, on the walls of the room, but then what happens in the room is what Emilija, Mikael, everybody else is doing that.

I really think maybe when I was younger, and even when I made Waltz for Three, I didn’t fully own that, but now, I’m just trying to be like, I’m trying to create this space. I’m trying to create the context where magic happens, but I also don’t have to control everything. I don’t have to be the one, “Can you do this like that?

Can you move your head this way?” I’m creating the environment, and I’m trusting that the people I’ve chosen are talented enough that they will make it happen. I love being surprised on the film set. Something that I will take credit for on this film is that I really wanted to shoot chronologically. And for the most part, we shot chronologically. So there’s only one little part where we didn’t, but that scene, the waltz scene, which now, everybody’s like, “I think it’s the best scene in the movie.” And as I told you, a lot of it came up to other people’s contributions, and it wasn’t how I had envisioned it.

But the one thing that I think I did properly was I didn’t shoot it the first day. We shot it the last day. I think all the actors had been through this emotional journey and the crew, we had all been through it together, and I don’t think we would have had this moment of connection if we’d shot it on the first or the second day.

That’s a little bit, I guess, following theater methods, which I hadn’t done theater before, but I was always fascinated because you kind of rehearse and you rehearse and you discover, and there’s an order in which you rehearse. What I don’t like about filmmaking sometimes, it becomes very choppy. It’s like, “Okay, well, let’s shoot this first because efficiency and time is money and all that.” and I get that to some extent. But what Abby was saying about finding your process, to me, you cannot shoot that scene at any random time.

Producer Abigail Prade
Yeah. I think also, for me, it’s something that you learn because I think when people start out direct… I think actually, and there’s different kinds of filmmakers, but what I enjoy, and I think what Oriana also enjoys is embracing some of the uncertainty in some of the just being open to what might happen because other people will contribute, you’re choosing your team, and also really trusting the people that you choose because you chose them for a reason.

But I think when you start out, you’re a little bit more like, “Oh, it needs to be a certain way.” Again, there’s different types of directors, but what I found to be my trajectory as well is just learning to let go a little bit more so that …

Also, you can enjoy the process, and you can enjoy all the things that people bring to it because filmmaking is collaborative, and I don’t like it when… Well, I guess that’s my personal opinion, but I don’t like if a director is too much like, “It needs to be exactly this way because that’s the way I have it in my mind.” They bring their own things to the material, whether it’s cast or crew.

Director Oriana Ng
I was asked one time, “Are you a control freak because you’re the director?” And I said, “No, I don’t direct animation. If I was directing animation, maybe I would be a control freak, but between action and cut, I’m completely powerless.” If the actor decides to do something else and doesn’t want to say my line or the camera decides not to do the movement or whatever, I can’t action and cut. Everybody has free rein except me. I’m like, “I’m just sitting back and watching,” and I think you have to embrace that in a way.

Gregg Morris-the WORD
Wow. I can’t think of anything else.

Producer Abigail Prade
There’s a documentary that I watched yesterday at Dances With Film that maybe you’re interested in because it explores some of the themes that you mentioned in your own work that you were interested in. It’s called Glendora.

Gregg Morris-the WORD
What is that? Glendora?

Producer Abigail Prade
Glendora. It’s a documentary about this community in the Mississippi Delta that was important. It was close to where Emmett Till was killed, and the community has been really overlooked just by the government. And even though they’re dealing, they’re struggling, the documentary showed how they are also, the communities uplifting each other. So I thought it was interesting.

Gregg Morris-the WORD:
Is that spelled L-E-N-D-O-R-A-D-O-R?

Director Oriana Ng
Yeah.

Producer Abigail Prade:
I think when you’re a filmmaker, you have an obsessive nature. So I see plays multiple times, and I’ve seen my favorite movies. I must have seen like 500 times. If there’s a screening, I’ll go to the theater, and if there’s a play, I’m going to watch it again and again if I really like it. “Oh, today, the actor did this different at that moment.” I remember all those things for no reason, but I like that you’re also kind of fascinated and try to see things over and over again when you love them because I have that, too.

– 30 –

 

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Director Oriana Ng and Producer Abigail Prade Discuss Their 18-Minute Film Short Marvel WALTZ FOR THREE
–Part 1 of 2

The filmmakers’ 18-minute short film WALTZ FOR THREE has that quintessential magic of a superb full-length feature. It was one of the many superb screenings at the 2026 Dances with Films Festival that recently wrapped.

WALTZ FOR THREE is an 18-minute short film directed by Oriana Ng. French subtitles. The story tells of a wealthy woman, Agnès who drives into a forest where prostitutes and their patrons hook up. She approaches Jean, a male prostitute, but she’s not seeking sex — she’s looking for companionship.

Jean complies and accompanies her to her mansion. Once there, while Agnès changes into comfortable clothes, Jean notices a ballerina statue and offers to dance with her. The film explores the transactional nature of paid intimacy while examining deeper themes of human connection, loneliness, and the emotional emptiness both characters carry.

The film is both poetic and lyrical and unfolds like an intimate chamber play, relying on silences, glances, and body language rather than dialogue. It’s a meditation on the tensions between connection and isolation, intimacy and restraint. It has screened at numerous festivals including St. Louis International Film Festival, Dallas International Film Festival, and Dances With Films 2025, and has been recognized in multiple Oscar-qualifying competitions. WALTZ FOR THREE filmmakers at the time of this the WORD Q&A were planning on overseas screenings.

 

 

WALTZ FOR THREE: Edited for Style, Context, Clarification.
The Interview below rolled with Director Oriana Ng describing festivities at the prestigious 2026 Dances With Films Festival which recently wrapped.

Dances With Films (DWF:NY) 2026 was the 4th annual New York City edition of the bi-coastal independent film festival that champions creative, filmmaker-driven cinema with a focus on truly independent work — films made without major studio ties. It took place January 15–18 at Regal Union Square in Manhattan, featuring a diverse lineup of about 157 films across formats including narrative features, documentaries, shorts, midnight genre films, family films, and television/web pilots.

The festival showcases world premieres and premieres of indie films by emerging talents from around the world. DWF:NY has quickly become a notable platform for launching new voices in cinema, attracting audiences, critics, and industry professionals alike. Filmmaker-driven cinema is independent films where the creators’ artistic vision comes first, rather than studio-driven, mass-market priorities. The best of the derring-do filmmakers who sneer at the risk of making films on their terms, – a bit of an exaggeration this reviewer admits but not that much.

 

 

On with the Q&A

Director Oriana Ng
I mean, it’s really great. I’m really enjoying all the films. They’re very different, but the movies in our block were really exceptional. I was just blown away. Dances With Films is a really great festival for filmmakers. I also really like their selection process because of Lindsey Smith-Sands, festival director. She watches every single submission, and that’s very rare because sometimes festivals will take from the Sundance or whatever big festival, and then they’ll take those films, which is fine, of course, but I just appreciate that she and her team have their own taste and watch every single submission.

Gregg Morris-the WORD
Okay. So my big question is, why did you make this movie?

Director Oriana Ng
The WALTZ FOR THREE one, right? {Note: The filmmakers had another superb short that screened but in the course of the conversation the focus was THE WALTZ. This reviewer luv-ed both of them.}

Gregg Morris-the WORD
There were only two characters in the film, so I kept wondering about where the third dancer was. I mean, that’s what was going in my head, but the thing that I liked about it, that my buttons were being pushed, and I could empathize and sympathize the awkward moments that weren’t all … I mean, it pulled me right into the movie …

Gregg Morris-the WORD
… and kept me there. It’s also a movie that you have to see. For me, you have to see at least three or four times because I pick up on stuff that I didn’t see the first time.

Director Oriana Ng
You’ve watched it more than once?

Gregg Morris-the WORD
This time, I’ve done it two and a half times.

Director Oriana Ng
Oh my goodness …

Gregg Morris-the WORD
No, no, no. It’s okay …

Director Oriana Ng
It’s so long. It’s 18 minutes.

Gregg Morris-the WORD
Oh, that’s nothing. I mean, I did the 18 minutes. It was 18 wonderful minutes. (So engrossing because time seemed to pass fast).

Director Oriana Ng
Oh, thank you.

Gregg Morris-the WORD:
But I miss stuff. I mean, I want to write a review or something, and one of the gripes I have with other reviewers is they watch the film and then they interpret what they believe is going on and it has nothing to do with what the director or the filmmakers had in plan. So for me, to try to deal with that kind of dynamics, I have to see it more than once …

Gregg Morris-the WORD
… because I don’t want to write a review unless I’ve seen the film three to four times. Oh, believe me, that’s the only way I … Well, one, that’s the only way to really enjoy it because, “Wow, I didn’t see that, and wow, I thought that …” And if you’re with the right people at the right time that you’re watching this, it’s just a really glorious experience.

How’d you come up with the idea?

Director Oriana Ng
It was a mixture of two things. I was dealing with my … I found out my grandmother was very sick and had cancer at the time, so I was just thinking about grief, and I had grief in my life before and just thinking about that and loneliness because I think grief is something that… I think joy brings people together, and I think grief, even if you’re very close to someone, it kind of separates people because we all deal with it in different ways.

So I was thinking about grief and loneliness. And then, I’m very close friends with the actor, Mikael Mittelstadt, and I wanted to work with him because he’s such a close friend, and we had done little exercises together and we just get along really well.

The problem was I didn’t know what to cast him as, and at the time, he would get kind of typecast as this bad boy, edgy guy. I knew he had all this sensitivity that he, at the time, wasn’t cast as. Since then, his career has kind of skyrocketed, and he’s doing very well, and he’s done a lot of deeper roles, but I just wanted to find a role that could keep his kind of edginess like sexy edginess or whatever he has going on for him, but also where he would be able to show a sensitivity that, a vulnerability he hadn’t shown before.

He kept quoting Marcello Mastroianni. To me, he was saying, because Marcello Mastroianni, the great Italian actor, said that an actor is a, whether or not you agree with that statement.

And so, one day, he was saying that to me, and I looked at him, and I thought, “Oh, this could be interesting for you.” I’m also interested in gender reversals in movies. Even in Subway Crush, it’s like the guy who’s being objectified, whereas most of the time, it’s the woman. So with this, having a male prostitute picked up by a woman is something that I hadn’t seen before or very rarely. And so, I was thinking, ‘Oh, that could just be interesting as how to explore that.’

Gregg Morris-the WORD
What do you want your viewers to get out of this film? Or …

Director Oriana Ng
Yeah. Yeah, go for it.

Gregg Morris-the WORD
Is that okay?

Director Oriana Ng
Yeah, yeah. I think if you can kind of connect to that sense of, if you’ve lost someone, which most people have, and there’s that moment of brief fleeting joy where you find them again, but then lose them again. I think that was what we were trying to recreate with the actors and also just the intimacy.

I don’t know if they try to connect, and maybe they do, maybe they don’t, but that fragile moment when you’re really opening up to someone, you’re really with someone. If, as an audience, you watch that and you feel that, I think that would be great. Yeah. I don’t know. Abby, I don’t know if you want to add anything to that. She’s worked on it. She has held me and she’s also a great writer, director, and she has held me through the process, logistically, emotionally, everything, so she knows. She was like through every rewrite of the script, so maybe you have a more objective point of view.

Producer Abigail Prade
Well, no, I think, of course, I think it fits because we were working on the film and you’re going through that situation with your grandmother. I think that grief and I think I also felt it in my life, I think it kind of permeates the film, that melancholy.

So I think what you were interested also in exploring was working with the actors and kind of really getting to know two characters really well and also work with them and improvise with them, so it was really about those two characters that are maybe in a more transactional relationship if they’re able to find that point of intimacy, and I think they do reach that moment. But as you said, it’s fragile because then they get back to normal life, and then they go their own way.

Gregg Morris-the WORD
Wow. Okay. I’m going to bounce something off you. I did some background research and to find out what other reviewers were saying and what they thought they were saying and stuff. There’s this one line, “The film has been described as a meditation or human connection and an exploration of how closeness does not always equate to understanding.” What do you think about that? Is that…

Director Oriana Ng
An exploration of how close –

Gregg Morris-the WORD
I’m sorry. I’m going to keep going with that. The film has been described as a meditation on the human connection and an exploration of how closeness does not always equate to understanding.

Director Oriana Ng
Yeah, I kind of like that. I like that. I would say it depends what understanding means because I think he doesn’t understand her circumstances and she does not understand his circumstances, but at the same time, there’s like a primal …

Gregg Morris-the WORD
Primal?!

Director Oriana Ng
…emotional understanding that they have in one moment, and it goes beyond context, background, who you are. It’s just like empathy. I think when he holds her, I think he’s really lost, and he did that so well because I kind of let them find what to do in that scene.

A lot of it came from them and you can really see he’s lost, but he’s there for her and he’s maybe taking on something bigger than he can take on or he thinks he can take on. So I kind of agree. I think he doesn’t understand what’s going on, but he somehow still manages to connect with her, but maybe you disagree, Gregg. I don’t know.

Gregg Morris-the WORD
Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Producer Abigail Prade
I think it’s very beautiful, actually, the way, and it’s like that reviewer said it very eloquently, maybe more eloquently than we can put it, but that’s also kind of the fun for us to see when people are getting out of the film, what they’re taking away from it. But I think I agree that there is a moment where they connect and they are close.

And actually, maybe it’s also an interesting question. Maybe you don’t need to understand each other in that moment. Maybe being there for each other, even if you don’t fully understand someone’s circumstances, maybe that could be enough at least for a moment.

Gregg Morris-the WORD
I hope I say this right. One of the really powerful things about that, there were a lot of what I call powerful things, was that it was 18 minutes, it’s considered a short film. So my understanding, and this is my understanding, so I know there might be holes in it, is that talking to other filmmakers who make short films, they make the short film in order to be able to make a feature film.

So if you were thinking about making a feature film, how would you do that? Because this felt like a feature film but it was in 18 minutes. And so, after the second time I watched it. .. What are your plans for the film?

Director Oriana Ng
I don’t know. I mean, I think when you have something that’s more or less working, which hopefully this is, it’s always fragile to kind of want to make it a bigger thing, but if a good idea came along, if, when I did think of it, I was thinking either I would choose her or him and make the feature all about either her or him, and then this Waltz encounter would just be kind of maybe in the middle or a little bit between the middle and the end like maybe two-thirds.

And maybe if we were following Jean, like his character, maybe we would see different encounters he’s having with different clients and a little bit more of the banter with the women at the beginning, the other prostitutes. And then, at one point, he would meet this mysterious woman, and that would somehow change his life. And then, we would get a sense that how things have changed for him and then maybe the movie would end, so I don’t know.

Gregg Morris-the WORD
Okay. So I guess the way that I asked the question is I assumed or thought you were already working on a feature, but you’re not. You’re accommodating my question speculating about what you do, but you haven’t already made a decision about whether you’re going to do it or not.

It’s a possibility, but it’s not like what with other (short) filmmakers, ‘Yeah, we did this and we know what we’re going to do this, and then we aren’t going to tell you what it is about, but you can say that it’s going to be a full feature film.’ So …

Producer Abigail Prade
Yeah, this film wasn’t made as a proof of concept for a feature film. It really was just as short on its own in the way at least it was conceived.

Gregg Morris-the WORD
So what are you guys planning on next? Oh, well, first, where do you go from here? You’re here in New York City with Dancing. Where does the film go from here? Where are you going to be showing it or screening somewhere else?

 

End of Part 1

 

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