With Chorwet, Kenya secures rare representation within a funding ecosystem that has historically skewed toward Western and European nonfiction.
By Joseph Jonathan
The Sundance Institute and Sandbox Films have announced the 16 projects selected for the 2026 Sundance Institute | Sandbox Fund, with Kenyan documentary Chorwet (The Rhino Friend) among the chosen projects. Directed and produced by Dylan Habil and co-produced by Lucinda Van de Rheede, the film stands as the only African project in this year’s cohort.
Created in 2017, the Sundance Institute | Sandbox Fund distributes grants to documentary teams at any stage from development to post-production, with a focus on nonfiction projects that explore the intersection of science and culture. Now in its eighth year, the fund has grown to distribute close to one million dollars annually, supporting a global community of documentary artists. The 2026 cohort of 16 projects, involving 47 filmmakers, draws from 11 countries: Denmark, Guatemala, Iceland, India, Kazakhstan, Kenya, North Macedonia, Portugal, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Chorwet, currently in production, follows Zacharia Mutai as he balances fatherhood with his deeply personal bond to the last two northern white rhinos on earth. The film frames his story as one of care, loss, and endurance on the front lines of a conservation mission that may represent the species’ final stand.
The broader cohort is organised across three stages. In development, selected projects include A Tale of Sea Dogs and Other Creatures (Kazakhstan), which follows a young Kazakh scientist fighting to save the Caspian seal from extinction; The Pulse of the Volcanoes (Guatemala), a meditation on the country’s 37 volcanoes as witnesses to war and injustice; and What You Remember (North Macedonia, U.K.), which examines how a government’s architectural reimagining of Skopje erased the city’s collective memory.
In production alongside Chorwet are Metropolis (U.S.A., India), which follows a multiethnic team of scientists tracking and combating mosquitoes across New York City; The Mammoths that Escaped the Kingdom of Erlik Khan (Denmark, Macedonia, U.K., Portugal), set in the Yakut Tundra where a young Dolgan reindeer herder must choose between ancestral tradition and modern mammoth tusk hunting; and Sweet Mystery of Life (U.S.A.), which investigates the memory care crisis by collaborating with dementia patients and their families to reconstruct their most important memories on film.
In post-production, selected projects include Finding Your Laughter (U.S.A.), in which Chicago comedian Arlieta Hall uses stand-up and improvisation to process caring for her father living with Alzheimer’s; River of Grass (U.S.A.), an ode to the Florida Everglades told through the writings of Marjory Stoneman Douglas; and The Tallest Dwarf (U.S.A.), in which a filmmaker with a rare form of dwarfism joins forces with little people artists to reckon with a history of public display and forge a new vision of disabled identity.
Themes emerging across this year’s cohort include memory’s role in shaping identity, environmental transformation seen through Indigenous and scientific knowledge, and the ways technological acceleration is forcing reckonings with biological and ecological limits.
Seventy-five percent of selected projects are directed by artists from communities traditionally underrepresented in documentary filmmaking, with half from first- or second-time feature documentary directors and five marking a director’s debut feature. This year’s submissions included 56% international entries.
“We are thrilled to continue building on this programme’s impactful legacy,” said Paola Mottura, Director of Sundance Institute’s Documentary Film Fund. Sandbox Films Executive Director Jessica Harrop noted that the partnership has “introduced us to projects from all over the world, and proven to us that there is an appetite to tell these stories in the independent film community”.
With Chorwet, Kenya secures rare representation within a funding ecosystem that has historically skewed toward Western and European nonfiction, adding the country’s name to a growing list of African nations making inroads at major international documentary platforms.