2025 Gotham Cannes Producer Network Fellows Announced
by The Gotham Staff on May 8, 2025
Seven Independent Producers Selected to Attend Cannes Film Festival to Build Their International Networks
New York, NY (May 8, 2025) – The Gotham Film & Media Institute (The Gotham) announced today the 2025 fellows for the Festival De Cannes Producers Network Program. They are Caroline Clark (The Wedding Banquet), Chester Argenal Gordon (The Inspection), Dan Kagan (Longlegs), Leslie Norville (The First Wave), Joe Pirro (We Grown Now), Ani Schroeter (This Closeness), Daniel Tantalean (In the Summers). This year’s Producers Network Fellows will be participating in person at Cannes, May 14 – 19.
As the sole U.S. Partner Organization for the Festival de Cannes Producers Network, The Gotham annually selects U.S. fiction and nonfiction producers to participate. Running concurrently with the Cannes Film Festival and the Marche du Film, the program is specifically designed for experienced producers to build up their international networks and learn more about international production, financing, legal and packaging.
In addition, The Gotham is proud to support the Gotham EDU partners Colgate University and Quinnipiac University by providing their students with Gotham resources, including the opportunity for students to connect with the Gotham/Cannes Producers Network Fellows.
“This year’s Cannes Producers Network Fellows represent some of the most driven and visionary producers working today – each bringing a distinct voice and a commitment to ambitious, independent storytelling,” said Jeffrey Sharp, Executive Director of The Gotham. “Cannes has long stood as the global festival of record, and its relevance today is as profound as ever. We’re proud to support our Fellows on this world stage and grateful to the Marché du Film for their ongoing partnership in opening doors for the next generation of filmmakers.”
About the 2025 Gotham/Cannes Producers Network Fellows
CAROLINE CLARK
Caroline is a Los Angeles-based filmmaker with midwestern roots. She recently produced Andrew Ahn’s modern remake of Ang Lee’s classic film, The Wedding Banquet, which premiered at Sundance 2025 to rave reviews and is being distributed theatrically by Bleecker Street and Universal Pictures. Caroline produced Lucio Castro’s film After This Death, which premiered in this year’s Berlinale Special Gala section, and the critically acclaimed documentary Behind the Curve about flat earthers. Caroline develops film and television for the production and financing company Kindred Spirit, where she associate produced and post-supervised the Netflix Original Documentary Found, co-produced The Last Year of Darkness for Mubi, and contributed to the development, production, and distribution of films such as The Farewell, Honey Boy, We Are Little Zombies, Together Together, and The Silent Twins. For her next documentary venture, she is tagging along with the world’s leading astronomers as they search for a new planet as a part of her upcoming film, Planet Nine, which received a production grant from the Sundance Institute and Sandbox Films.
CHESTER ALGENAL GORDON
Chester Algernal Gordon is an award-winning producer, costume designer, and co-founder of Freedom Principle. Their films, including The Inspection (A24), Move Ya Body: The Birth of House, and Pier Kids, have premiered at top festivals. A visionary, they shape bold, boundary-pushing cinema. They are currently in production on By Any Means, directed by Elegance Bratton and starring Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Mark Wahlberg.
DAN KAGAN
After 10 years of working in the Studio System at Paramount, MGM, Sony and Orion Pictures, Dan used the worldwide upheaval in 2020 to pivot into independent film producing, under the banner Traffic. In the five years since, he’s produced six features, including the record-breaking hit Longlegs, the Paramount-distributed Significant Other, and New Line’s upcoming They Will Kill You, and has put together a development slate of over 20 projects with A24, Sony, Mattel, and more. In the meantime, he’s continued working with the LA music and events collective Brownies & Lemonade, which he helped found, and has dipped in and out of teaching at USC.
LESLIE NORVILLE
Leslie Norville is an Emmy Award-winning producer and accomplished showrunner with a passion for bringing nuanced, character-driven stories to life that amplify the voices and experiences of people of color. Her work has been showcased at prestigious festivals worldwide, including TIFF, SXSW, Tribeca, Hot Docs, Doc NYC, and IDFA, and aired on major networks such as Disney+, PBS, CBC, Sundance Channel, and VH1. Recent documentary projects include the Oscar-shortlisted and multi-award-winning The First Wave (Neon/National Geographic) and the eight-part series Black Life: Untold Stories for CBC. Other notable credits include the feature documentary A Ballerina’s Tale about Misty Copeland, the first African American principal dancer at the American Ballet Theatre; Brooklyn Boheme; Disdain the Mundane (part of ESPN’s Emmy Award®-winning 30 for 30 shorts series); Finding the Funk (co-executive produced by GRAMMY Award®-winner Questlove); and Any Given Day, which premiered at Hot Docs 2021. She is currently producing True North, an archival documentary directed by Michèle Stephenson (Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project) about the Black Liberation movement in 1960s Montreal, Canada. Norville is an alumna of the Sundance Documentary Creative Producing Fellowship. In 2023, Playback Magazine named her Showrunner of the Year, and in 2024, she received the Dear Producer Award.
JOE PIRRO
Joe Pirro is Head of Production at James Schamus’s Symbolic Exchange. He produced Andrew Ahn’s The Wedding Banquet starring Bowen Yang and Lily Gladstone which premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival where he won the Sundance Institute – Amazon MGM Studios Producers Award for Fiction. The film was released in April in the U.S. by Bleecker Street. His other recent credits include Ahn’s Driveways (Berlin ’19), Mike Ott’s McVeigh (Tribeca ’24), and Minhal Baig’s We Grown Now (Toronto, ’23) which was released in 2024 by Sony Pictures Classics and was nominated for three Film Independent Spirit Awards including Best Feature. Other credits include Kitty Green’s Casting JonBenet and The Assistant, Amman Abbasi’s Dayveon, Rhys Ernst’s Adam, and Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire’s A Prayer Before Dawn which premiered at Cannes in 2017. Joe grew up in Roanoke, Virginia and studied at The College of William & Mary before becoming an elementary school teacher, teaching 2nd and 3rd grades in Brooklyn. Since shifting careers he has worked at UTA, Focus Features, The Weinstein Co., and Red Hour Productions. He resides in New York City.
ANI SCHROETER
Ani Schroeter is a New York based producer and filmmaker. Recent credits include Kit Zauhar’s second feature, This Closeness (producer), which premiered at SXSW 2023, and Between The Temples (associate producer), starring Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane, which premiered in-competition at Sundance 2024. Her most recent film, Bunnylovr (producer) starring Katarina Zhu, Rachel Sennott and Austin Amelio premiered at Sundance 2025 in main competition. She recently wrapped production on Pocket Dream (producer) starring Spike Fearn, Stacy Martin and Scott Cohen. Additional credits include the short film Wiggle Room (co-producer), directed by Sam Guest and Julia Baylis which was acquired by Searchlight after premiering at Sundance 2021, the short film Good Grief (line producer) directed by Nastasya Popov which premiered at Palm Springs 2021, and Giants Being Lonely (1st Assistant Director) which was nominated for the Orizzonti Competition (Horizons) at the 2019 Venice Biennale. Working independently, Ani has produced countless other short films, music videos, commercials and campaigns for brands such as Expedia, Nike, A24, Universal Music, Anomaly, Object & Animal, and Tommy Hillfiger. Ani attended Bard College and is originally from Seattle, WA.
DANIEL TANTALEAN
Daniel Tantalean is an Indie Spirit Nominated and Sundance Winning Producer and the founder of Yellow Nest Films. In The Summers won the Grand Jury Prize award at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and has been nominated for Best First Feature at the 2025 Indie Spirit Awards. Daniel is a 2023 Film Independent Producing Lab Fellow and he is also a 2020 and 2022 NALIP Latino Media Market Fellow, and was chosen for the 2024 Tribeca Creator’s Market for the feature documentary Rebel Without a Pause. His exceptional work has been featured at top film festivals including Sundance, Tribeca, SFFilm, Hot Docs, and Big Sky Documentary Film Festival. Daniel was shortlisted for the 2021 AT&T Untold Stories Competition and produced the award-winning short doc Ale Libre distributed by The New Yorker.
About The Gothams
The Gotham Film & Media Institute presents The Gothams as two annual awards ceremonies celebrating innovative talent both on-screen and off-screen in film and television. As the first major event of both awards seasons, The Gothams shine a spotlight on groundbreaking work while advancing the Institute’s year-round mission to support independent storytelling.
About the Gotham Film & Media Institute
The Gotham celebrates and nurtures independent film and media creators, providing career-building resources, access to industry influencers, and pathways to wider recognition. The organization, under the leadership of Executive Director and award-winning producer Jeffrey Sharp, fosters a vibrant and sustainable independent storytelling community through its year-round programs, which include Gotham Week, Gotham International, Filmmaker Magazine, the Gotham Awards, Gotham EDU, Owning It, and Expanding Communities.
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