Nonfiction films that push the boundaries : Singing in the Wilderness

Rachel Elizabeth Seed, Danielle Varga, Garrett Bradley

A documentary by Dongnan Chen selected among the five projects to take part in

Sundance Institute 2019 Documentary Edit and Story Lab

Gabriel Rhodes, Dongnan Chen, Matthieu Laclau

This year’s Sundance Lab selected all women-directed projects ranging from intimate familial explorations to experiments in ‘speculative nonfiction’. On June 21st, the film project teams gathered at the Sundance Resort in Utah for an intensive program receiving support from the field’s most compelling creators.

Dongnan Chen, a graduate from the documentary program at New York University, presented her first feature length project at the Lab. After a successful debut film The Trail from Xinjiang, and another work Sound of Vision, Chen centers the storyline of Singing in the Wilderness around an identity struggle of two young Miaos in the real world of China.

Other projects receiving the support of Sundance Lab include: A Photographic Memory, Fox, Truth or Consequences, Through the Night.

Hannah Jayanti, Loira Limbal, Malika Zouhali-Worrall