When filmmaker Alex Bush received their acceptance to Ari Aster and Lars Knudsen’s Square Peg Social (SPS), something shifted.
“Just being accepted felt like a huge weight of confidence,” said Bush, whose short film “Thaw” premiered at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival. “It was really affirming to be spoken to by these people in this way of, ‘Yeah, so you as someone who’s going to be doing this and who’s already doing this.’”
You’re already doing this is the shift from feeling adjacent to the industry to being recognized as part of it. That can make SPS sound like ruby slippers — You’ve always had the power, my dear!
To the naked eye, they did and do; the 35 selected SPS filmmakers are uncommonly accomplished. Eli Raskin produced Doechii’s Grammy-winning world tour. Haley Johnson recently produced “Obsession,” the horror pic that premiered at TIFF and was acquired by Focus Features. Sally Oh won a Grammy for her work on Beyoncé’s “Black Is King.”
Alexandre Singh & Natalie Musteata just won AFI Fest’s Grand Jury Prize for “Two People Exchanging Saliva,” a short they’re now adapting as their debut feature. Nigerian-American filmmaker Boma Iluma is a director for “The Chi.” Hawaiian filmmaker Oz Go founded Narrative Lost, a nonprofit studio making socially engaged films; his short “Antyesti” made the rounds with SPS mentors as each asked the other, “Have you seen this?!”
“Roofman” producer and SPS mentor Alex Orlovsky said the filmmakers’ accomplishments were startling. “There’s [Jamie Hawkesworth]. He’s like, “I made a short film.’ Oh, who shot it? ‘Robbie Ryan.’ I was like, ‘Oh. How’d you do that?’ ‘He liked my book of photography.’”
Orlovsky chuckled. “I said, ‘Yes, you must be a good photographer.’ And there’s [Wesley Wang], who was a senior at Harvard who had made a viral short (“nothing, except everything.”) and then had a script, and he’s like, ‘I got to go back to school.’ Whoa. That’s crazy. But awesome. And I’m super curious to read the guy’s script.” (Take a look at the full list of participants below.)
However, all of that goes to show at least two things: A significant degree of the event’s success stemmed from Lars and Amy Knudsen’s calibration of who should attend, as filmmakers and mentors, to ensure it held value for everyone. And, impostor syndrome is as universal to the human experience as oxygen. Recognizing that and learning how to move beyond it is essential because, as Lars noted in his opening remarks, confidence creates momentum. And momentum makes films.
What They Came For
SPS brought 26 writer-directors and 9 producers to Austin in late October for four days with 27 industry mentors. (Mentor list, here.) Co-hosted by Square Peg partner Ari Aster and the Knudsens, the event deliberately avoided conventional outcomes: no pitch meetings, no development sessions, no financing goals.
The gathering challenged what Grant Conversano identified as “the Sundance myth of ‘You’re going to submit, then you’re going to get in, and it’s like everything’s on wheels after that,’” a mythology that creates “a certain selfishness.”
Instead, SPS emphasized community over competition. It operated on the theory that bringing together excellent mentors and impressive filmmakers to share the unvarnished good and bad of their experiences would produce its own value. The mentors’ candor about failures, mistakes, and “very bad experiences” created what participants described as uniquely productive conversations.
But what did the filmmakers themselves take away? What was worth the application fee and four days in Austin?
The Price of Entry
The application fee was $150, although some paid less if they applied earlier. For Joshua Locy, whose his first feature “Hunter Gatherer” debuted at SXSW in 2016, the cost felt substantial. “So many of my shorts, all these things, and they’re all like fucking 70, 80 bucks,” he said. “I’ve spent thousands of dollars on submissions with a 10% success rate, something like that.”
He nearly didn’t apply, but when he saw an extended deadline he thought there was lower interest and he stood a better shot. “I was like, fuck it, I’m going to do it.” (Later, he learned deadline extensions are standard practice.)
The application itself asked for passion over polish. “They said, write a cover letter, be passionate. We’re not looking for perfection. And I just fucking unloaded. I didn’t even reread it. I just sent it. It took five minutes to write the letter.”
Nearly 1,800 people applied. Thirty-five were selected.
Trust Your Gut (Seriously)
The advice that landed hardest was often the simplest. “Trust your gut. It’s incredible how often that comes up,” Bush said. “That’s how a lot of these people who’ve had lasting careers, it seems, operate.”
Bush described watching their own past work validate this principle: “When we look at even the careers we’ve had so far, that’s true. It’s that innate feeling when you’re working on something you’re like, ‘Oh, there it is.’ Those are the ones that work out. The ones that you kind of force and maybe don’t listen to the gut tension, tend to lead you astray.”
Bush also emphasized the importance of ensuring everyone involved is “talking about the same thing” from the beginning, particularly “when you’re really getting into the nitty gritty with the more complicated people who are not just in it for the spirit.”
Translation: Your financier might love your project. They also might also think it’s a completely different movie than the one you’re making. Better to find that out early.
A Chiropractic Realignment
For Locy, who has worked in film for 20 years as a commercial production designer, Square Peg Social functioned differently. “For me, it’s been like a chiropractic realignment,” he said. “It’s just like, ‘Wait, the things you’re doing are worthy and they’re looking for unique projects.’”
After years of pitching on IP-based projects that never happened, hearing Searchlight president Matthew Greenfield discuss how decisions actually get made proved revelatory.
“I take a project to a studio or to my manager, whatever, and I hear things like, ‘There’s no foreign sales’ or ‘There’s no value in the actor,’ whatever. So then I think my problem is foreign sales.”
But Greenfield reframed it entirely: “We think that their brains are operating on spreadsheets, but they’re reacting humanly and viscerally to what they’re hearing. And maybe at some point that gets trickled down to us as foreign sales but he’s saying, ‘No, it’s not about that.’”
The insight shifted Locy’s entire approach. “I don’t need to worry about fucking foreign sales. I don’t need to worry about algorithms that decide what a value of a project is. I need to worry about my voice and the story I’m trying to tell. That’s what’s important.”
Which is both liberating and terrifying. Because it means the work is actually about the work.
Just Make the Thing, but Smart
Brothers Grant and Adam Conversano arrived feeling the uncertainty many emerging filmmakers share about traditional paths. “I think people are collectively feeling like that old path is disappearing,” Grant said. “And I think what’s been great about this weekend is it’s presenting a road forward for people in our generation. We’re just forging ahead and doing it.”
They brought with them advice from filmmaker Ira Sachs, who had seen their short film: “You don’t need to get into another lab, you need to find a producer. You get a budget, you get an actor. Do not waste your time for a year applying to applications and waiting around. You need a producer, an actor, and some money. And if it’s not a lot of money, do that. But don’t sit around waiting.”
That urgency — just make the thing! — came with crucial caveats about sustainable budgets. As Grant noted, “The story and the scope of the project has to match the resources. I’ve worked on features where they may be trying to do too much for too little and just driving people into the ground. And that’s not great for anyone. I think that people don’t want to do that anymore.”
The Conversanos also valued what Adam called “mentorship and face-to-face passing of experience and information that’s only possible. Mentorship is just another layer of encouragement and belief that you can do this: ‘I’ve done this and I’ll support you through that.’”
Keep Writing (Even When Nothing’s Getting Made)
Grant Conversano took away the importance of “just keep writing and not get too concerned with when any particular script is getting made. Hearing Ari say ‘I had four or five scripts I’ve been working on for years before he even got Hereditary made’ was big.”
He also emphasized starting wherever possible: “If you don’t know a lot of people and you feel like the industry’s really far away, just start somewhere. I started as an extra, then worked as a PA. You have to be useful to other people for some amount of time and put in the time. We’ve been working for 10 years, just to be clear.”
Everyone’s Starting Over
Perhaps most telling was Locy’s observation about finding common ground across experience levels: “You kind of always have to start over. You always have to reinvent yourself. I made — for the first time in my life, really — a short film last year where I was like, I have to make something. I have to pierce through this diaphragm somehow.”
He continued: “I may have more contacts and networks and this or that, but at the end of the day, we’re all just trying to make our movie and it’s impossible until it’s not.”
That impossibility fuels what Locy described as essential: “There’s a certain mental severity, I guess. This clarity and severity and focus that wanes and waxes as good news, bad news happens, or money is here, money is gone. It is just like life happens that hope and faith that comes and goes.”
When asked if he’d ever reached a point where he’d consider giving up on features, Locy was definitive: “I don’t know what that means. There’s no way I could live my life without the hope of making something.”
Locy also described what drove him to make his first film over a decade ago: “‘No one’s ever done this movie before. This has never existed before and it’s going to exist.’ That was enough.”
It’s still enough.
What It Actually Bought
What Square Peg Social offered wasn’t formulas or shortcuts, but something more fundamental: confirmation that the struggle is shared, that intuition matters, that starting over is normal, and that the community exists if you can find it.
As Bush put it, the goal was understanding “how development is really working and how relationships are really built that lead to that type of work” and “to feel like we’re in this together and we can keep helping each other and really set those relationships.”
The $150 bought entry to that conversation. What filmmakers took away was permission to trust themselves within it. And in an industry that often runs on desperation, that shift from fear to momentum might be the most practical tool there is.
Producers
Alex Bendo
A New York–based producer whose films have screened at Cannes, Berlin, and Telluride, Bendo is launching his company Endangered Species with projects backed by NEON and Spike Lee.
Eli Raskin
A 2022 Sundance Fellow and 2025 Rotterdam Lab participant, Raskin has produced award-winning work across film, television, and music, including Blue Sun Palace and Doechii’s Grammy-winning world tour.
Haley Johnson
Johnson recently produced Obsession, which premiered in TIFF’s Midnight Madness program, marking a breakout in her genre-driven producing career.
Harris Mayersohn
The LA- and Brooklyn-based writer-producer behind Dogma 3000, Mayersohn’s credits span The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to Rap World, with coverage in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Vulture.
Ivy Freeman-Attwood
Under her Silkscreen banner, Freeman-Attwood produced Two Neighbors (Edinburgh 2025) and is developing The Dispute with Riley Keough’s Felix Culpa and Donald Glover’s Gilga.
Kenza Berrada Amor
A Moroccan filmmaker and AFI alum, Berrada Amor explores history and memory in her work; she’s currently developing Hounds, a neo-noir thriller set on the night of Princess Diana’s fatal crash.
Sally Oh
A Grammy winner for Beyoncé’s Black Is King, Oh produced the Cannes-lauded Blue Sun Palace and Sundance winner Trokas Duras, bridging narrative film, music, and live performance.
Shao Min Chew Chia
Singaporean writer-director-producer and Mid-Autumn founder, Chia is a Sundance and Film Independent Fellow producing Loved One and Soil, while developing films that explore empathy and cultural memory.
Yona Strauss
An alum of the Sundance Producers Lab, Strauss produced Dead Lover (Sundance, SXSW, TIFF Midnight Madness) and Infinity Pool, with new projects Mizeria and Mano a Mano in the works.
Writers / Directors
Adam & Grant Conversano
North Carolina–born brothers and Vimeo Staff Pick honorees, the Conversanos are developing their first feature following their award-winning short Summer’s End.
Alex Bush
A filmmaker exploring identity and transformation, Bush’s short Thaw premiered at Tribeca 2023; their first feature is in development with Antigravity Academy and Unapologetic Projects.
Alexander Thompson
Thompson’s Em & Selma Go Griffin Hunting premiered at Sundance 2025; he’s now developing features with Phoenix Pictures and Armory Films.
Alexandre Singh & Natalie Musteata
This Franco-Indian and Romanian-American duo—named to Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film”—won AFI Fest’s Grand Jury Prize for Two People Exchanging Saliva, now being adapted as their debut feature.
Andrew Ondrejcak
A multidisciplinary artist merging design and cinema, Ondrejcak’s films like The Actress reflect a background that spans opera, Hermès fashion shows, and performance installations at the Met.
Boma Iluma
The Nigerian-American filmmaker behind Comfort (Tribeca) and The Chi directs across film, fashion, and television; he’s a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree developing his first feature, Bako.
Christine Yuan
An Emmy-winning director whose work blends intimacy and visual precision, Yuan’s films have screened at Cannes and Marfa.
Conor McCormick
Irish filmmaker McCormick’s acclaimed shorts Beautiful Youth and Bunker Baby established his reputation for lyrical storytelling; he’s now developing his first feature.
Dezi Gallegos
Currently Director of Development at Proximity Media (Creed III), Gallegos’ debut feature Obie and the Specter builds on his Nicholl-honored screenwriting and Proximity credits.
Henry & Oliver Bernsen
The Bernsen brothers’ debut feature Bagworm (Sitges 2025) follows a string of genre shorts exploring the surreal and macabre sides of human experience.
Jamie Hawkesworth
The celebrated photographer behind The British Isles and campaigns for Vogue and McQueen brought his quiet, observational style to short films like Marmalade.
Joshua Locy
Locy’s 2016 debut Hunter Gatherer debuted at SXSW and earned Spirit Award recognition; after a stint writing on HBO’s The Righteous Gemstones, he’s preparing his second feature, Body Blow.
Lucy Knox
An Australian Directors Guild Award winner, Knox’s short films have screened at Berlinale, Palm Springs, and MoMA, and are distributed by the Criterion Collection.
Matthew Saville
The New Zealand writer-director of Juniper—one of Rotten Tomatoes’ Top 100 Films of 2023—is developing The Frogman, inspired by his Telluride short Dive.
Michael Godere
An actor turned writer-director, Godere co-wrote and starred in Loitering with Intent; his short Buick marks a return to personal, character-driven filmmaking.
Nathan Ginter
Winner of Neon x Kodak’s Short Film Contest for Steak Dinner, Ginter crafts surreal, genre-tinged stories grounded in emotion and absurdity.
Neil Ferron
Seattle-born Ferron’s Fishmonger—a surreal dark comedy and Slamdance Grand Prize winner—has been described as “horrific and funny” in equal measure.
Oz Go
Hawaiian filmmaker and activist Go founded Narrative Lost, a nonprofit studio making socially engaged films; his short Antyesti exemplifies his commitment to storytelling as service.
Pepi Ginsberg
A musician-turned-filmmaker, Ginsberg’s WassupKaylee (SXSW 2025) and Cannes-premiering The Pass earned her multiple festival honors and a place on the 2025 Hamptons Screenwriting Lab roster.
Rachel Dunkel
Dunkel’s irreverent, emotionally fearless voice bridges comedy and tragedy; a recent USC MFA graduate, she’s represented by Lighthouse Management & Media.
Sam Mandich
A filmmaker and dancer from Long Beach, Mandich’s visually poetic films Jia and Angels explore identity and belonging through movement and intimacy.
So Young Shelly Yo
A BAFTA Breakthrough honoree, Yo’s debut Smoking Tigers won multiple Tribeca awards and cemented her as one of indie film’s most distinctive emerging voices.
Wesley Wang
The Harvard-based writer-director behind nothing, except everything, now being adapted at TriStar with Darren Aronofsky. Wang’s next project, you are seen, is backed by Blumhouse’s Couper Samuelson.