American Promise

Filmmaker and artist Michèle Stephenson, pulls from her Haitian and Panamanian roots to think radically about storytelling. Her feature documentary Going To Mars won the 2023 Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and a Guggenheim Artist Fellow. 

Joe Brewster is a psychiatrist trained at the at the renowned McLean Hospital in Massachusetts. He uses his training as a jumping board for the issues he tackles as a filmmaker. From the post-traumatic stress syndrome experienced by former child soldiers in his feature film, The Killing Zone; to the complex alienation of black prison guards in his first narrative, The Keeper, Brewster’s work has garnered awards both domestically and internationally. The Keeper was screened at Toronto, Sundance and Cannes Film Festivals and received a Spirit Award nomination. He is a 2009 Sundance Documentary Fellow, a Tribeca-Gucci Fund recipient, and a winner of the 2011 San Francisco Film Society Documentary Fund prize. Joe studied at Stanford University and received a medical degree at Harvard University.