Erika Dilday, Moderator; Executive Director, American Documentary | Executive Producer, POV, POV Shorts, America ReFramed
Part One:
Rish Aggarwal, Co-Founder, COO of Kinema
Alexandra Garcia, Executive Producer, The New York Times Op-Docs
Part Two:
Anne Alvergue, Director, The Martha Mitchell Effect; Editor & Co-Writer, Maintenance Artist
Jacqueline Baylon, Director & Producer, Until He’s Back
Darcy McKinnon, Producer, Natchez, and Principal, Gusto Moving Pictures
Short documentaries are distinguished by more than just their runtime. Within a concise format, they offer expansive, inventive storytelling—and serve as timely, powerful tools for engaging with a rapidly shifting world. This two-part panel explores how short films create unique opportunities for both filmmakers and audiences, acting as vital entry points for sparking dialogue, raising awareness, and generating meaningful impact in communities and beyond.
Part I: Industry Insights
This conversation with leaders from across the documentary landscape — including public media, journalistic platforms, and social impact organizations — will contextualize the current challenges and possibilities shaping the short-form space. We’ll explore how these organizations use shorts to enter broader cultural conversations, reach diverse audiences, and catalyze change. The discussion will highlight the power of shorts to respond swiftly to pressing issues and foster connections between storytelling, journalism, and community engagement.
Part II: Filmmaker Case Studies
A group of dynamic filmmakers, including featured POV Shorts creators, will present case studies from their own work — offering a behind-the-scenes look at how short documentaries come to life, find audiences, and make a difference. This portion will spotlight practical strategies, creative insights, and lessons learned in the field, emphasizing the distinct power of the short form in today’s media ecosystem.
This session is designed for filmmakers, impact producers, programmers, and documentary professionals seeking inspiration, community, and tools to navigate — and thrive in — the evolving nonfiction landscape.
Presented in partnership with American Documentary and Kinema.
Rish Aggarwal is the Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Kinema, a global film distribution and exhibition platform built for film creators. Before launching Kinema, Rish was a Principal at Human Ventures, where he supported and invested in early-stage startups across a range of industries. Prior to that, he worked in fintech, leading strategic projects at Transactis ahead of its 2019 acquisition by Mastercard.
Anne Alvergue is an Academy award nominated documentary filmmaker and editor in the greater New York area. Her work focuses primarily on gender, politics, and labor. She directed and edited The Martha Mitchell Effect, nominated for a 2023 Academy Award in the Best Documentary Short film category, and distributed by Netflix.
She has edited many acclaimed documentaries, including the Emmy-nominated Love, Gilda which opened the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival and was released theatrically by Magnolia Pictures; the Emmy-nominated Body Parts; and Emmy and IDA-nominated Bully.Coward.Victim: The Story of Roy Cohn, also nominated for Outstanding Editing by Cinema Eye Honors and distributed by HBO.
She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a film envoy for the American Film Showcase, a Directing instructor at New York Film Academy, and a former editing mentor for the Karen Schmeer Film Editing fellowship and the Sundance Institute. She received a Masters degree in Documentary Film from Stanford University.
Erika Dilday, producer, journalist and media executive, is the Executive Director of American Documentary Inc. and the Executive Producer of its award-winning documentary series POV on PBS and America ReFramed on WORLD.
Previously, she was the CEO of Futuro Media Group, a multimedia organization that gives a critical voice to the diversity of the American experience through award-winning journalistic content for and about BIPOC. Prior to Futuro Media, she was the Executive Director of Maysles Documentary Center where she oversaw community cinema, filmmaking programs and produced the acclaimed documentary, In Transit. Erika also held strategic planning and financial management roles at The New York Times, National Geographic Television and CBS.
She is a graduate of Harvard College, the Columbia School of Journalism and Columbia Business School. In 2020 she was a Knight Nieman fellow at Harvard University where she authored a piece for the Nieman Reports on authentic journalism in communities of color. Erika is a 2016 recipient of the Columbia Journalism School Alumni Award and a 2017 National Arts Strategies Chief Executive Fellow. Her latest film projects include Civil War with Rachel Boynton and Meanwhile with Catherine Gund.
Alexandra Garcia leads Op-Docs, The New York Times’s Oscar-winning series of short documentaries. Previously, she was a documentary director/producer for The New York Times’s video newsroom and for its documentary series The Weekly and The New York Times Presents on FX and Hulu. Her work at The Times has earned three Emmy awards, over a dozen Emmy nominations and has screened at film festivals worldwide. Formerly, she was a fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard and a senior video journalist at The Washington Post.
Jacqueline Baylon is a Mexican filmmaker & journalist whose work focuses on civil rights injustices and migration stories from different corners of the world. Her short film, Until He’s Back (2024), about a father trying to recover his son’s remains after he died trying to immigrate, was shortlisted for the 97th Academy Awards®. The film screened around the world, was nominated for an IDA award, appeared on the DOC NYC Shortlist, and won Best Short at both the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival and the Hamptons International Film Festival. Her other work includes stories such as the accusations against Turkey for cutting water supplies in northeast Syria, the experiences of protesting as an undocumented immigrant, and the harrowing reality of the oxygen supply crisis in Peru during the pandemic. She has worked for news organizations across the U.S., including The New York Times and Scripps News.
Darcy McKinnon is a documentary filmmaker based in New Orleans, whose work focuses on the American South and the Caribbean. Recently released projects include A King Like Me and Roleplay, premiering at SXSW 2024, Commuted (PBS, 2024), Algiers, America (Hulu, 2023), Under G-d (Sundance 2023), Look at Me! XXXTENTACION (SXSW, Hulu, 2022) and The Neutral Ground (Tribeca, POV, 2021), recipient of LEH Documentary of the Year 2022. Current projects in production include Jason Fitzroy Jeffers’ The First Plantation, Abe Felix’s Turnaround, CJ Hunt’s Unlearned, and Suzannah Herbert’s Natchez. Her work has been on POV, Reel South, LPB, Cinemax, and Hulu and has screened at Sundance, Tribeca, SXSW, CPH:DOX, and more. Darcy is an alum of the Impact Partners Producing Fellowship and the Sundance Institute Creative Producing Fellowship, and a recipient of American Documentary’s Creative Visionary Award in 2023.