The MNFF Creative Distribution Mentorship

We are delighted to announce our inaugural cohort of mentees for the MNFF Creative Distribution Mentorship. All selected mentees will receive one-on-one, informed and authentic peer support from a personal mentor as they begin to plan and launch distribution for their first feature film.

Mentees will also take part in a 12-week facilitated program convened by MNFF staff between October 2025 and January 2026. Through this unique masterclass series, mentees will receive expert guidance from distributors, publicists, sales agents and impact producers who will meet with the cohort in small groups. 

2025-2026 Mentees

Rebecca Blumhagen

Rebecca Blumhagen is a filmmaker and educator whose work explores the space between memory and presence, lost myths of childhood, agrarian rhythms and confrontations between history and modern culture. Her current work, Churn, Dash, explores the memory and art of the feed sack, utilized by rural women to create clothing and quilts.

Macpherson Christopher

MacPherson Christopher is a filmmaker based in Guilford, VT. His work is centered on human interest stories, and his filmmaking seeks to tell meaningful stories and balance a career of passion projects alongside work for nonprofits and organizations. Mac holds a degree in Environmental Studies from Middlebury College and an MFA in Film from Emerson College.

Ziyao Liu

Ziyao Liu is a writer-director based on Earth. Born in China and now a resident alien in Los Angeles, she creates character-driven narratives of hybrid genres, often about Asian women. Her goal is to reveal characters’ strengths and weaknesses in everyday moments and reimagine their lives that are otherwise constrained by reality. She loves to find humor in the absurdity of our existence beyond language and cultural barriers.

Jess Zeidman

Jess Zeidman is a filmmaker and writer based in Brooklyn, New York. After receiving her BFA at Northwestern in Radio / Television / Film, she wrote and produced her first feature Tahara, a NYT Critics’ Pick released in 2022. She also produced Noah Schamus’ Summer Solstice and Cole Escola’s Our Home Out West. She now makes films through her production company Alina Pictures.

About the Mentorship

Mentees are selected from a competitive pool of directors or producers who are in the final stages of completing their first doc or narrative feature. Ideal applicants are seeking personalized, one-on-one professional guidance, expert feedback and peer support as they explore traditional and nontraditional avenues for their film’s public distribution and exhibition. Open to all first-time feature-makers in the United States, the MNFF Creative Distribution Mentorship seeks to offer filmmakers both practical expertise and social camaraderie in the often lonely and isolating period that comes after a film is locked, but before it reaches its first public audience.

Through one-on-one mentor/mentee meetings, as well as participation in our curated suite of expert sessions, mentees receive clear-eyed and honest consultation regarding their own film’s opportunities for traditional and commercial film distribution. At the same time, they will learn about the landscape for independent film distribution writ large. Through masterclasses and peer support, they will strategize and plan their current projects’ pathways, and discover broader opportunities for professional development and growth.  

Our hope is that our mentees emerge from the program with an expansive, boundary-pushing view of what robust, sustainable, ethical and regenerative exhibition and distribution can look like for their films.

Applications

Applications for the 2026-2027 mentorship program will be accepted via Film Freeway beginning Spring 2026.