Chicken & Egg Films was founded in 2005 by documentary film industry veterans Julie Parker Benello, Wendy Ettinger, and Judith Helfand, who were inspired by a shared belief in the power of women storytellers. Based on their experience in filmmaking, teaching, funding, and impact producing, they identified an urgent need in the field: more financial and creative support for women nonfiction directors who face bias in the field due to their gender.

While those systemic barriers persist for women, there are many other people who are impacted by gender-based inequities in the documentary filmmaking industry. Our approach to achieving gender equity in the documentary field needed to evolve.

We previously expanded program eligibility to non-binary people. But based on the inquiries we have gotten from potential applicants and the trends we have seen in applications, it’s clear that our old eligibility criteria still fell short of serving all of the filmmakers our mission calls us to serve. So we set out to become a more gender-inclusive organization. To better navigate this journey, we have spent the past year engaged in a comprehensive discovery process in partnership with experts at Reimagine Gender.

This work included listening to filmmakers and learning more about the intersection of gender bias with other forms of prejudice and discrimination. We also learned about global variations in the understanding and discussion of gender.

We are thrilled to announce, effective today, we have expanded eligibility for our programs to include gender-expansive filmmakers. Our working definition of gender-expansive is an umbrella term that includes any person whose gender identity or expression does not comply with the socially defined gender norms and roles of their culture.

This is only the beginning.

We are committed to ongoing learning and will continue to evolve our work, including revising our program selection criteria and design methodologies, our organizational practices and operations, and our brand identity in order to embrace the full spectrum of filmmakers who are impacted by systemic gender-based inequities.

As Jenni Wolfson, CEO of Chicken & Egg Films, says, “We believe that greater gender representation behind the camera disrupts and challenges cultural and systemic barriers, resulting in documentary films that better reflect the diversity and complexity of the human experience. Our expanded eligibility strengthens our ongoing commitment to champion filmmakers who tell stories of perseverance and hope, struggle and joy, and the quest for equity in a fractured world—in sum, filmmakers who use the power of documentary film to catalyze social change.”

A note about language:

The language of gender continues to evolve, and global differences require us to use language that is as accessible as possible. We considered many ways of naming who we support. As we asked people in interviews and group discussions globally, we found that many regional language preferences were negatively perceived elsewhere. “Gender-expansive” is the best-understood term, so we will use it until another term gains greater global acceptance.

Our new expanded eligibility will apply to open calls for the Chicken & Egg Films Research & Development Grant and Project: Hatched, which we will be announcing very soon. Stay tuned! It will apply to all of Chicken & Egg’s programs moving forward.