About

LANA WILSON is an Emmy-winning and two-time Spirit Award-nominated director and writer. Her most recent film, Look Into My Eyes, premiered at Sundance 2024 and was released by A24. It was a New York Times Critics’ Pick, named one of the five best documentaries of the year by the National Board of Review, and nominated for three Cinema Eye Honors, including Best Nonfiction Feature and Best Directing. The retrospective Come Alive: The Films of Lana Wilson was presented by the Museum of the Moving Image (New York) in Fall 2024.

Wilson’s two-part documentary Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields premiered at Sundance 2023, was a New York Times Critics’ Pick, and broke viewership records when it launched globally on Hulu and Disney+. Pretty Baby was nominated for two Cinema Eye Honors, including Best Broadcast Film, a Critic’s Choice Award, and two Primetime Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Directing for a Documentary/Nonfiction Program.

Wilson directed the Taylor Swift documentary Miss Americana, which was the opening night film of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and a Netflix Original. Miss Americana was a New York Times Critics’ Pick, an IndieWire Critics’ Pick, and named one of the five best documentaries of the year by the National Board of Review.

In 2017, Wilson’s film The Departure was called “a work of art” by the San Francisco Chronicle and a “genuinely spiritual experience” by the Washington Post. The Departure premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and was nominated for the 2018 Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary. Wilson’s first film, After Tiller (2013), which goes inside the lives of the four most-targeted abortion providers in the country, premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. and went on to win an Emmy Award for Best Documentary. It was nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary, four Cinema Eye Honors, a Satellite Award, and the Ridenhour Prize, as well as named one of the five best documentaries of the year by the National Board of Review.

Wilson created and directed A Cure for Fear, a four-episode series for Topic, which played SXSW and was nominated for the 2019 IDA Award for Best Short-Form Series.

Wilson has been awarded artist fellowships from the Sundance Institute, MacDowell, Yaddo, and Film Independent, and has taught at Pratt Institute. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

SHRIHARI SATHE is a New York-based director and producer. Sathe won the 2019 Independent Spirit Award – Producers Award and the 2016 Cinereach Producer Award.

His credits as producer/co-producer include Jamie Sisley’s Stay Awake (2022), Francisca Alegria’s The Cow Who Sang a Song Into The Future (2022), Mostofa Sarwar Farooki’s No Land’s Man (2021), Eliza Hittman’s It Felt Like Love (2013) and Beach Rats (2017), Partho Sen-gupta’s Sunrise (2014), Afia Nathaniel’s Dukhtar (2014), Bassam Jarbawi’s Screwdriver (2018), Ritu Sarin & Tenzing Sonam’s The Sweet Requiem (2018) amongst others. Sathe’s feature directorial debut – 1000 Rupee Note (2014) has received over 30 awards.

Sathe has received fellowships from Trans Atlantic Partners (2013), Cannes Producers Network (2014, 2015, 2016), Film Independent Producing Lab (2011), Sundance Institute Creative Producing Lab (2013) and was most recently a recipient of the One House Filmmaker Fund (2023). Sathe has taught at various universities over the last decade and is currently the Head of Producing and Visiting Associate Arts Professor in the Graduate Film Department at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Sathe is a member of the PGA, IMPPA and AMPAS.

KYLE MARTIN is the founder of the independent film label Electric Chinoland. His most recent project, Dash Shaw’s animated feature “Cryptozoo,” won the Jury Prize in the 2021 Next section of the Sundance Film Festival and is currently in release by Magnolia Pictures. His latest documentary feature “Jagged” about Alanis Morissette premieres on HBO on November 18th. He’s currently in production on a two-part HBO doc about Paul Reubens with Director Matt Wolf and Executive Produced by the Safdie Brothers; a feature doc with Director Margaret Brown and Participant Media; a feature documentary about psychics with Director Lana Wilson; and a short doc with ESPN’s 30 for 30 and Director Lance Edmands.

His recent credits include the HBO Documentary series “The Vow,” and “RECORDER: The Marion Stokes Project.” His previous projects include the Independent Spirit Award nominee Donald Cried; the GKids 2017 release My Entire High School Sinking Into The Sea; and Lena Dunham’s Tiny Furniture (Independent Spirit Award Winner 2011). He is a recipient of the Sundance Institute’s Mark Silverman Producing Fellowship, the San Francisco Film Society’s Kenneth Rainin Foundation Fellowship, the IFP/Cannes Marche Du Film Producer’s Network Fellowship, the Sundance Institute/Rotterdam Cinemart Producing Fellowship, and was named one of Variety magazine’s “Ten Producers to Watch.”

Creative producer and showrunner, CHRISTINE O’MALLEY has a body of work that includes over two dozen documentaries. For her latest project, O’Malley reteamed with director Lana Wilson to produce Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields. After a world premiere at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, the two-part documentary will debut on Hulu. Previously, O’Malley collaborated with Wilson on Taylor Swift: Miss Americana. In addition to being a NY Times Critic’s Pick, it was the opening night film at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival prior to its global premiere on Netflix.

O’Malley has produced several films through her company O’Malley Creadon Productions, with her longtime partner, Patrick Creadon. Wordplay, the first film she produced through her company, was nominated for both a Critics’ Choice Award and a National Board of Review Award. O’Malley and Creadon’s follow up film I.O.U.S.A., premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and was shortlisted for the Oscars. Other projects include If You Build It, Ski Bum: The Warren Miller Story, Hesburgh and most recently, The Loyola Project. Her work has screened at film festivals around the world and has been distributed by IFC Films, Roadside Attractions, HBO, ESPN, Netflix, Nat Geo and Hulu among others.

In addition to serving on panels and juries in the independent film community, O’Malley served as Festival Director for AFI DOCS during its transitional year in 2014. Currently, O’Malley is developing several projects both fiction and documentary and she is in post-production on a documentary series. She is a proud member of the Producer’s Guild of America and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

She is married to and collaborates with director, Patrick Creadon. Besides making films, they are raising 3 daughters in Los Angeles.

FRANCES DEWEY joined Drifting Cloud Productions in 2022. She assists filmmaker Lana Wilson and was an associate producer on Wilson’s feature documentary Look Into My Eyes (Sundance 2024, CPH:DOX 2024, New York Times Critic’s Pick), which A24 theatrically released in September 2024. Frances was also an associate producer on filmmaker David Osit’s forthcoming Predators (Sundance 2025); and a researcher on the Emmy-nominated two-part documentary Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields (Sundance 2023). Frances was previously the Festival Manager at Double Exposure, a film festival and symposium that explores the intersection of documentary filmmaking and investigative journalism. She holds a B.A. in Classics from Georgetown University with a minor in Film and Media Studies.

DAVID TEAGUE is an Emmy-winning documentary film editor and writer. His work as a writer includes the HBO special Between The World And Me, which he adapted for the screen based on the book by Ta-Nehisi Coates. He wrote the forthcoming feature film Cassandro with director Roger Ross Williams and Julián Herbert, starring Gael García Bernal. His work as a documentary editor includes the Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning Life Animated, the Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning Cutie And The Boxer, and The Departure, nominated for the 2018 Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary. Most recently he edited Spaceship Earth, nominated for two Critics Choice Awards and The Cage Fighter, also nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. Other editing work includes the Oscar-winning short documentary Freeheld. He was the story consultant for the NY Times Critic’s Pick Miss Americana and he was the supervising editor for the Emmy-nominated Becoming, based on Michelle Obama’s memoir.

SARAH FINEMAN (she/her) was a Story Associate Producer on the Drifting Cloud Productions’ psychics project, helping seek out and build relationships with psychics around the city to participate in the film. Previously, she was an assistant editor on the ACLU multimedia team and worked on projects for directors Anna Barsan and Shalini Kantayya. She is currently working as a Production Assistant at Multitude Films. Sarah graduated from the University of Chicago where she studied anthropology and neuroscience. In a past life, according to one of the readings she received, Sarah was an 18th-century Spanish woman living in the Netherlands who was extremely afraid of water.

HANNAH BUCK is a film editor with a focus on creative non-fiction and experimental forms. Her background in visual arts largely informs her approach to editing. Her films have screened at festivals all over the world, including Sundance, Berlinale, CPHdox and many others. Recent editing credits include Searchers (Sundance 2021) directed by Pacho Velez, Vision Portraits (SXSW 2019) directed by Rodney Evans, The Proposal (Tribeca 2018) directed by Jill Magid and executive produced by Laura Poitras, Chef Flynn (Sundance 2018) directed by Cameron Yates, and Chico Colvard’s Black Memorabilia (MoMA Doc Fortnight 2018). Earlier credits include Memories of a Penitent Heart (POV, 2017), directed by Cecilia Aldarondo, Terence Nance’s documentary series Triptych (PBS, 2015), and Nance’s acclaimed debut feature, An Oversimplification of Her Beauty (Sundance, 2012).

DAVID OSIT is an Emmy and Peabody Award-winning director, editor and composer. He is the director of Predators (2025), which premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. His most recent film Mayor won Peabody and Emmy Award, was a New York Times Critics’ Pick, and holds a 100% Certified Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. David directed, produced, edited, filmed composed the feature documentary Thank You For Playing, which broadcast on POV in 2016, and was nominated for three Emmy awards, winning for Outstanding Arts & Culture Documentary. He also edited and produced Off Frame, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and Berlinale in 2016, and he edited, produced and composed No Man’s Land, which premiered at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival and broadcast on PBS Independent Lens in 2018. David’s feature directorial debut, Building Babel, premiered at True/False in 2012 and broadcast as the series premiere of PBS’s America Reframed in 2013. His work as an editor and consulting editor includes Procession (Netflix), Crime + Punishment (Hulu) and The Vow (HBO). He holds a BA in Middle Eastern and North African Studies from the University of Michigan as a Wallenberg Fellow and studied Refugee Law at the American University in Cairo.

EMILY TOPPER is a cinematographer. She earned a Bachelors from Swarthmore College in Literature in 1999 and a Masters of Fine Arts from University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts in 2004. Her most recent films include “Miss Americana: Taylor Swift” (2020), “Rebel Hearts” (Sundance 2021), “Framing Britney Spears” (2021), and “Bulletproof” (2021). Emily lives in Los Angeles.

STEPHEN MAING is an Emmy-award winning filmmaker based in New York City. He is the director of photography for Drifting Cloud Productions’ forthcoming untitled psychics project. Stephen’s filmmaking merges an interest in underrepresented individuals and communities confronting complex power structures, and the nuanced storytelling of observational and visually-driven narratives. His 2018 film Crime + Punishment, filmed over four years, is a highly cinematic and systemic look at police corruption and criminal justice dysfunction through unprecedented access to a group of minority whistleblower cops, a rogue private investigator and wrongfully imprisoned youth. Crime + Punishment received a Special Jury Award at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, a 2019 Emmy Award for Outstanding Social Issue Film and was shortlisted for the Oscar for Best Documentary.

Stephen’s previous feature documentary, High Tech, Low Life chronicled the gripping story of China’s first dissident citizen-journalists fighting state-monitored censorship and was broadcast nationally on the award winning series P.O.V. His short film, The Surrender, produced with Academy Award winner Laura Poitras, received a 2016 World Press Photo Award for Best Documentary and was nominated for a 2016 Emmy Award for Outstanding Short Documentary. Stephen has also made numerous short films published on Time Magazine, PBS, The Nation, New York Times, The Intercept and Field of Vision. Most recently he directed the 2020 film Dirty Gold, part of the second season of Alex Gibney’s Dirty Money series on Netflix.

A fan of music, dance and cats, TRACY E. HOPKINS is an experienced lifestyle and entertainment writer who has written and reported for numerous print and digital publications, including Essence, Woman’s Day, Prevention, Fodor’s, People Magazine, Rolling Stone and Entertainment Weekly. The Baltimore native and longtime Brooklyn resident is also a documentary film and television producer who enjoys storytelling that uplifts, inspires and entertains. Tracy was a producer and writer on the award-winning documentary, “Maurice Hines: Bring Them Back,” a poignant portrait of the trailblazing tap dance and Broadway star. For Drifting Cloud Productions, Tracy is an Associate Producer-Researcher on projects that combine her interests in spirituality and pop culture.