THE SQUAD CLASS of 2026

Carmen Angelica

Carmen Angelica is a writer, director, and comedian based in Brooklyn, NY. For
the past five years Carmen worked as a Segment Director at (the Emmy winning)
The Daily Show. This year Carmen directed Ego Nwodim's solo show at Lincoln
Center and Netflix is a Joke. Additionally her recent pilot Liberty Library made
The Women's List on Deadline. Carmen has worked as a comedian and director
creating sketches, series, branded content and several short films. Her work can
be seen on CollegeHumor, Cracked.com, Reductress, UCBcomedy.com and on
the UCB show. Carmen's work has gained notice online and in the festival circuit
leading to her being named a New Faces Creator at Montreal's Just For Laughs
Festival and her short film, Tight Spot, was featured as a Staff Pick on Vimeo.
Carmen is currently repped at Odenkirk-Provissiero Entertainment.

Mentor: Lucia Aniello

Shaz Bennett

SHAZ BENNETT is an award-winning director and writer. Her debut feature ALASKA IS A DRAG, that she wrote & directed was released on Netflix by ARRAY.

Shaz directed her first episodic for Ava DuVernay's QUEEN SUGAR (OWN), She has since directed five episodes of BILLIONS (Showtime), and episodes of two John Wells shows ANIMAL KINGDOM (TNT) and RESCUE: HI SURF (Fox). Shaz wrote and directed in Seasons 6 and 7 on QUEEN SUGAR and served as the Showrunner for the final season. As a writer, Shaz has contributed to SUPER PUMPED (Showtime), UnREAL (Lifetime) and four seasons of the acclaimed Amazon series BOSCH. She co-wrote pilots SOVEREIGN for Peacock and GRAND CANYON for CBS. An alumna of the prestigious AFI Directing Workshop for Women, DGA’s CBS program, one of two directors selected for the Apple Established Directors program and one of Fox's Top 20 Directors, and the Sundance Screenwriting Labs.

Mentor: Abe Sylvia

Sabrina Doyle

Sabrina is a writer-director known for her intimate dramas and character-driven genre
work. Lorelei, her feature debut, starring Pablo Schreiber and Jena Malone, was an
Official Selection of the Tribeca Film Festival. It won the Jury Prize at the Deauville
American Film Festival and the Jordan Ressler First Feature Award at the Miami Film
Festival. The film had a limited theatrical release and sold to Hulu.

The late Sir Alan Parker called Sabrina’s work "refreshingly intelligent, serious and
lyrical. Much needed in tomorrow's cinema." Sabrina’s fantasy featurette Go for
Grandma stars Oscar winner Amy Madigan and premiered at AFI FEST.

A former BBC journalist and first-generation high school graduate, Sabrina earned top
BA and MPhil degrees from Cambridge University before receiving a Fulbright
Scholarship to attend the American Film Institute, where she completed her MFA in Film
Directing.

Mentor: Kat Candler

Claire Fowler

Claire Fowler is a writer and director from North Wales. She is an alum of Oxford University,

Columbia University’s Film MFA, the WB Directors’ workshop, and the AFI’s Directing Workshop for Women. Her short, Salam, premiered at Tribeca and won a BAFTA Cymru, and she recently was a director on Netflix’s Manifest. Her debut feature,Toad, participated in the 2024 Sundance writers and directors labs and is currently in financing with the aim to shoot in the summer of 2027.

Mentor: Shannon Murphy

Saray Guidetti

Saray is a director passionate about bold, character-driven narratives. She directed on NBC’s The Blacklist and recently directed Sin Aliento, a proof-of-concept filmed in Bolivia and set in the world of rally racing. She served as an Associate Producer on Supergirl, Dead Boy Detectives, American Blue, and Home Delivery, and as Supervising Producer on the documentary Love, Lizzo. She is currently producing an independent horror feature while developing her own film and television projects.

Mentor: Gandja Monteiro

Anna Halberg

Anna Halberg is a writer, director, and producer working across film and television. She co-wrote
and co-directed Sony Screen Gems’ TAROT, which grossed nearly $50 million worldwide on an
$8 million budget. Her short film BLINK, which she wrote, directed, and produced for Screen
Gems, premiered at SXSW.

Anna is currently adapting Freida McFadden’s bestselling novel THE TEACHER for Apple and
is casting THE DEVIL’S HAND, written by R. Murphy (READY OR NOT), which she is attached
to direct. She also wrote YOU TAKE CARE NOW, which she is attached to direct for Blumhouse
and Atomic Monster.

Her additional credits include producing THE GATEWAY for Lionsgate, LONG DISTANCE for
Amblin, EXTINCTIONfor Netflix, and EXPEND4BLES for Lionsgate. She has also produced and
directed more than 100 commercial and branded-content campaigns for companies including
Visa, Gap, McDonald’s, Smirnoff, and Chevrolet.

Anna is represented by CAA and Untitled Entertainment.

Mentor: Mike Flanagan

Tiffany Johnson

Tiffany Johnson is an NAACP Image Award–winning director known for her bold visual style and cinematic approach to storytelling. Her directing credits include Hulu's How to Die Alone, for which she received the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Directing in a Comedy Series, as well as Marvel's Wonder Man, Apple TV+'s The Big Cigar, Peacock's Poker Face, Amazon's Hunters, Netflix's Dear White People, Showtime's Black Monday, A Different World, and The Drop: A Snowfall Saga. A graduate of the AFI Directing Workshop for Women and a Ryan Murphy HALF Initiative mentee, Tiffany is currently developing several original feature films. As she prepares for her feature directorial debut, she remains committed to telling bold, visually distinctive stories that expand the landscape of Black genre cinema.

Mentor: Boots Riley

Manjari Makijani

Manjari Makijany is an Emmy-nominated Indian-born writer-director-producer based in Los Angeles. Her debut feature, Skater Girl, was acquired by Netflix and released worldwide in 31 languages. Her second feature, Spin, was Disney Channel’s first Original Movie to feature an Indian-American lead and premiered on Disney+, earning Manjari two Children’s & Family Emmy nominations for Outstanding Special Fiction and Outstanding Directing.

Her latest feature, Fireflies, is an uplifting sports drama set in Kerala. She is also directing a documentary about her father, the late actor Mac Mohan, best known for his iconic role as Sambha in Sholay.

Manjari is an alumna of the American Film Institute’s Directing Workshop for Women, Universal Pictures Directors Intensive, and Fox Filmmakers Lab. Her work spans India, Australia, and the United States, bringing a distinct cross-cultural perspective to her storytelling.

Mentor: Geeta V. Patel

Kate Sullivan

Kate Sullivan is a filmmaker unbound. Her work ranges from award-winning
television to experimental theater to effervescent music videos. Her coming-of-age
short film, The End of The Party, premiered at the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival in
New York City and features the song “I miss you, I’m sorry” by Grammy
Nominated singer Gracie Abrams. Kate directed her first episode of television,
Netflix’s Nobody Wants This in March 2026 and will direct and episode of ABC’s
Will Trent in the fall. In the theater space, Kate is currently attached to direct a
stage version of the film Can't Hardly Wait featuring rock music from the early
2000's. Previously, Kate served as Head of Development for Thomas Kail's
(Hamilton) production company Old 320 Sycamore and produced television shows
such as Fosse/Verdon (FX), Up Here (Hulu), and We Were the Lucky Ones (Hulu).
Kate also produced the Emmy-nominated feature film World's Best (Disney+).

Mentor: Karyn Kusama

Mallory Thompson

Mallory Thompson is a stunt coordinator and second unit director known for crafting story-driven, character grounded action across high-profile film and television productions. She has stunt coordinated on series including Presumed Innocent, Imperfect Women, Palm Royale, Gaslit, and the upcoming films Intimacy Party and Cowboy, among others. She was recently nominated for a 2026 Emmy for Outstanding Stunt Coordination for Palm Royale Season 2.

Mallory's approach is shaped by years as a stunt performer on productions including Avatar 2 & 3, Top Gun: Maverick, and Twisters - experience that gives her a performer's instinct for physicality alongside a filmmaker's eye for story. A former LSU pole vaulter, she brings elite athleticism and rigorous safety-first coordination to every production she leads. She is a member of the Directors Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild and serves as Vice President of the Stuntwomen's Association of Motion Pictures.

Mentor: Lesli Linka Glatter

Alissa Torvinen

Alissa Torvinen ("Torv") is a director known for bold, stylized, performance-driven work across music, commercial, and narrative film, now developing her solo feature debut. She has collaborated with P!nk, Khalid, Phoebe Bridgers, Black Eyed Peas, Chaka Khan, Snoop Dogg, Liev Schreiber, and Zooey Deschanel, and directed national campaigns for brands including Johnson & Johnson, HP, and Spectrum. Her Phoebe Bridgers video, "I Know the End," was named IndieWire's Best Music Video of the Year in 2020. In 2019, she co-directed K-12, a feature-length musical with Melanie Martinez that premiered theatrically in 32 countries and holds a 90% score on Rotten Tomatoes.

Her first feature script, Extinction of the Badger Duck, was selected for the Film Independent 2026 Screenwriting Lab and received a $25,000 Climate Entertainment Development Grant from Film Independent and Plot Shift Media for its original approach to climate storytelling.

Mentor: Jake Schreier

Kristin Windell

Kristin Windell is a television director with a passion for character-driven storytelling and
a keen eye for detail. With a background spanning both editing and directing, she brings
a unique perspective to every project. She has directed across a wide range of genres,
including action, drama, procedural, sci-fi, superhero, family, and comedy. Her directing
credits include Criminal Minds: Evolution, The Hunting Party, Found, Quantum Leap,
Kung Fu, All American, Secrets of Sulphur Springs, Doom Patrol, Magnum P.I., and
Hawaii Five-0, among others.

Before stepping behind the camera, Kristin spent more than a decade as a series editor,
shaping stories across an equally diverse range of television. Her editing credits include
Arrow, Alias, and Brothers & Sisters, where she worked closely with some of the
industry’s leading directors. Those years in the cutting room gave her a deep
understanding of story structure, pacing, visual language, and performance—skills that
continue to inform and strengthen her approach as a director.
Most recently, Kristin expanded her work into documentary filmmaking, producing and
directing her first documentary, Better Than Yesterday. She is currently submitting the
film to festivals, marking an exciting new chapter in her career as a producer-director
and storyteller.

Kristin was selected for the prestigious Warner Bros. Directors’ Workshop, an
opportunity that helped launch her directing career. She is currently a mentee in the
Directors Guild of America’s DDI program, continuing to expand her craft and build on
her commitment to supporting and collaborating with fellow directors and creatives.

Mentor: Laura Belsey