The Black List Names 2026 Projects Lab Filmmakers

EXCLUSIVE: The Black List has named the six filmmakers for its 2026 Projects Lab. They are Mike Ambs (Falling Forward), Sierra Falconer (Cry For Me, Baby), Georgia Fu (Approximate Joy), Seth Kelman (Vessels), Megan Spatz (North) and Brandon Tyson (Ta Ta Dear).

Now in its third year, the program provides creative mentorship and professional support to promising filmmakers as they further develop their feature script during a weeklong workshop in Ojai, CA. The Projects Lab is an extension of The Black List’s Writers Labs, which have been running annually since 2013. The Projects Lab offers writer-directors the chance to develop a screenplay that they next intend to direct.

Returning mentors include Pippa Bianco (Share) and Hannah Fidell (A Teacher), Kaz Firpo (Eternals), Molly McGlynn (Irish Blood) and Anu Valia (Shrinking). Pitching and peer workshop sessions will be led by Scott Myers (The Protagonist’s Journey, Spec Script Deals: 1991-2025) who has been a part of every single annual Black List Lab so far.

Black List Annual Lab alumna Noga Pnueli (Meet Cute, Thud) will also join as a session mentor. After the lab concludes, the filmmaker cohort will participate in a yearlong support program involving monthly meetings with directors, screenwriters, agents, managers, producers, and executives.

“It was a privilege to invite these six filmmakers to our Projects Lab this year,” said Megan Halpern, Black List SVP. “Each approaches their work with an urgent point of view, a powerfully unique aesthetic, and something desperately important to say about the world we live in. Their passion and talent will propel these films into the world and make audiences sit up and take notice. You need a true community around you as an independent filmmaker, and we are thrilled to welcome these talented writer-directors into ours and offer whatever support we can, now and well into the future.”

Falling Forward by Mike Ambs has also been selected as The Black List’s 2026 Sloan Foundation Fellow. Founded in 2018, the Fellowship was created in partnership with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to support writers developing science or technology-themed scripts. Ambs will receive additional mentorship and support from a science advisor and the Foundation following the Lab.

Submissions for both the 2027 Labs are now open on the Black List website.

Previous Black List Lab alumni include Amber Alexander (Crew Girl), Claire Ayoub (Empire Waist), Minhal Baig (We Grown Now), Tom Dean (Carolina Caroline), Savion Einstein (A Cuban Girl’s Guide To Tea And Tomorrow), Nicole Feste (The Hunting Wives), Gia Gordon (Law and Order), Danny Hogan (The Pitt), Jimmy Keyrouz (Broken Keys), Dagny Looper (Outer Range), Noga Pnueli (Meet Cute) Alexandra Qin (Thirstygirl), Michelle Steffes (For When You Get Lost), and Jason Young (The Magic Flute).

Learn more about this year’s projects and the filmmakers behind them below.

2026 Projects Lab Scripts:

Mike Ambs – FALLING FORWARD
An advanced AI system has escaped. The world is on edge. Behind closed doors, the very people who created it must race to regain control before time runs out.

Mike Ambs is a self-taught writer-director whose debut documentary, “For Thousands of Miles,” inspired by his own 4,200-mile solo bicycle trip across the United States, was selected for the IFP Labs. His short films have twice premiered at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, most recently “Falling Forward into an Unknown and Dangerous Future.” He writes about screenwriting craft at his Substack, 20,000 Words, and lives just west of Detroit with his wife, Erica Hampton, where they help tend a community garden at an abandoned correctional facility.

Sierra Falconer – CRY FOR ME, BABY
After suffering a late-term miscarriage, a devoted care home aide in a fading Midwestern town copes by treating a baby doll as her living child, forcing the community to decide whether to confront her delusion or to enter her fragile world of play.

Sierra Falconer is a Michigan-raised, Los Angeles-based filmmaker. Her feature directorial debut, Sunfish (& Other Stories On Green Lake), premiered in competition at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival and was acquired by The Future of Film is Female and Vortex Media for a theatrical release across the U.S. and Canada. IndieWire hailed it as “one of [2025’s] best filmmaking debuts.”

Georgia Fu – APPROXIMATE JOY
When her real estate empire, marriage, and carefully curated image begin to unravel, a driven Taiwanese-American realtor deploys the only tool she has, her ability to sell anything, even as the performance costs her everything she was trying to save.

Georgia Fu received her BFA from NYU’s Tisch and her MFA from NYU’s Tisch Asia in Singapore. She worked at the photo desk for the International Herald Tribune in Paris and Hong Kong. Her short films have played at festivals including Tribeca, Slamdance, Chicago International Film Festival, New Orleans Film Festival and Hollyshorts. Georgia has also participated in AFI’s Directing Workshop for Women, Universal’s Directors Initiative, and TIFF’s Filmmaker Lab, where she was awarded the HFPA/Film Independent Residency. She lives in Los Angeles.

Seth Kelman – VESSELS
Inside a remote radio station, an investigative journalist’s interview with an enigmatic cult leader spirals into psychological warfare when the FBI sting operation surrounding them crumbles, trapping her alone with the very evil she sought to expose.

Seth Kelman is a writer/director, ex-Florida man, and graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. His work blends genre with emotional urgency, often following characters caught between survival and self-discovery. He has multiple features in active development, including a breakneck tech thriller and a darkly comedic doomsday caper. Seth is represented by Untitled Entertainment.

Megan Spatz – NORTH
After a global famine, survivors form a ruthless regime to colonize Indigenous land for agriculture and punish unsanctioned procreation with death. When a subjugated Dena’ina woman becomes pregnant, she escapes into the Alaskan wilderness to seek what remains of the tribe she’s been isolated from.

Megan Spatz is a writer, director, climate activist and longtime film and television costume designer with more than 15 years of experience in the industry. Originally from Alaska and raised in Scotland, she creates character-driven stories exploring environmental change and our relationship to the natural world. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband Phil, their dog Sage, and their three disabled cats.

Brandon Tyson – TA TA DEAR
A struggling filmmaker is tasked by his celebrated artist mother to document her last week alive before she transforms her Right To Die into her final, controversial piece of performance art.

Brandon Tyson is a Los Angeles-based writer and director working across narrative, documentary, and branded storytelling. Over the past decade, he has directed dozens of campaigns and short documentaries for companies including Ford, Google, and Dunkin’, earning Webby and Telly honors along the way. Raised in Los Angeles by a Filipina mother and British father, Brandon makes character-driven films about love, time, and the strange ways people try to make meaning out of being alive.