Ouray Film Sabbatical Announces First Global Cohort and Facilitators
The Ouray Film Sabbatical (OFS), a new residency hosted by the Ouray International Film Festival, is thrilled to announce its inaugural cohort. Chosen from over three hundred global applicants, the ten selected sabbatical fellows will travel to the San Juan Mountains from the United Kingdom, LA, New York, Austin, and Colorado. Unlike most film labs which focus only on artists, the first OFS cohort brings together ten film programmers, curators, and artists to form a diverse community of cinema professionals who are often isolated in different industry spaces.
“It was a eureka moment that we had over the several years of incubating this project,” says OFS co-founder Ben Weissner (producer at Vanishing Angle). “We asked ourselves, what happens if festival directors and programmers receive the same kind of career nourishment that directors and producers experience in major film labs? And what if we bring those people into the same room to support each other as fellow creatives? That’s what will set OFS apart.”
The Sabbatical’s mission is to extend the hospitality that lies at the mission of the Ouray International Film Festival. “Our festival is a place where artists and audiences can feel restored by the remote beauty of the San Juan Mountains,” adds festival and sabbatical co-founder Jake Abell. “Hospitality is our core vision: we fly out artists, we cook for them every night, we bring them into the homes of our supporters in this beautiful community where I grew up. Now with the sabbatical, we want to direct that radical hospitality toward the career development of creatives across the film industry.”
The inaugural OFS cohort was chosen from an extremely competitive applicant pool with the help of guest curators Colleen Thurston and Haneol Lee. Representing a blend of curation, programming, and filmmaking experience are Rob Munday (Managing Editor, Short of the Week), Imani Davis (programmer at American Cinematheque in Los Angeles), and Paris Burris (founder of Femme Film and programmer at deadCenter Film Festival). In narrative filmmaking, Hannah Schierbeek (Director of Radiant Frost, Sundance 2026) and Kayla Abuda Galang (Director of When You Left Me On That Boulevard, Short Film Grand Jury Prize at Sundance 2023) will join Liz Rao (Director of The Truck, Telluride Film Festival 2024 and Executive Produced by Spike Lee and Joan Chen) in Ouray. A trio of documentary filmmakers will attend: Sam Osborn and Alejandra Vasquez, the duo behind Masa Films who took awards at SXSW and Sundance for their film Going Varsity in Mariachi, and Tim Kirkman, Emmy®-nominated writer and director whose career spans narrative and documentary genres. Colorado-based outdoor, adventure, and commercial filmmaker Aaron Chokbengboun rounds out the ten-person cohort.
Sabbatical Facilitators Alexandria Bombach (left) in conversation with Scholar-in-Residence Dr. Sabeen Ahmed (right) at OIFF 2024
“Ouray is a hard place to get to. It’s a true oasis, and that’s what we’re looking to provide this group of film professionals,” says OIFF and OFS co-founder Jared LaCroix. “Whereas a lot of filmmaker labs focus on work-based outcomes, we’re trying to offer space to rest and rethink, so that people can forge new directions in their creative journeys with the help of other vulnerable and passionate artists.”
Based on a model of peer mentorship, the sabbatical offers a chance to recalibrate career development as well as nurture film projects in the company of four facilitators who represent the diverse industry identities of the inaugural cohort. Alexandria Bombach, award-winning director of the Sundance documentary hit The Indigo Girls: It’s Only Life After All (Netflix). Their work is distinguished by intimate, character-driven storytelling that captures activism, identity, and human resilience with emotional depth. Dr. Sabeen Ahmed, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Swarthmore College, is a former Scholar-in-Residence at OIFF. Her scholarship explores social and political philosophy, philosophy of race, and anticolonial thought. Anna Baumgarten–Los Angeles–based writer and director of the Austin Film Festival Jury Award-winning feature Disfluency–joins on the heels of her latest short debuting at Sundance 2026. Her work spans film, television development, and national speaking engagements. Finally, Rachel Denny is CEO and Principal Consultant at Media Philanthropy Advisory, a media and nonprofit executive whose leadership has shaped major arts institutions and advanced independent film and philanthropy nationwide. Co-founders Jared LaCroix, Jake Abell, and Ben Wiessner will act as hosts throughout the experience.