Inevitable Foundation Unveils Inaugural Visionary Fellowship Honorees

By Jack Dunn

Inevitable Foundation has unveiled the inaugural class of honorees for its Visionary Fellowship, a year-long program that provides disabled filmmakers with the funding, community and guidance to create a short film that could eventually be made into their debut feature. Among the recipients are Zayre Ferrer, Monica Lucas, Filipe Coutinho, Alys Murray and Katherine Craft.

“We are thrilled to name these incredible Visionary Fellows for the program’s inaugural cohort,” said Inevitable Foundation co-founders Richie Siegel and Marisa Torelli-Pedevska in a joint statement. “Our investment in these incredible disabled writer-directors represents the ongoing expansion of our pipeline for disabled creatives, and speaks to the core of our mission: helping disabled creatives reach positions of industry power. We can’t wait to get their stories out in the world.”

The Fellowship awards each recipient $55,000 in funding for their short film, as well as a production grant, access to an experienced crew, health insurance, marketing support and financial aid for access and travel.

Founded in 2021, Inevitable Foundation has supported hundreds of disabled filmmakers through its plethora of programs, including its Accelerate Fellowship, Elevate Collective, Elevate for Podcasters and Emergency Relief Fund.

The Visionary Fellowship is exclusively supported through Netflix’s Fund for Creative Equity, which trains aspiring filmmakers for jobs on Netflix productions.

Read more about the inaugural Visionary Fellowship recipients below.

Filipe Coutinho (he/him) is a writer and filmmaker living with OCD who has a passion for character-driven, inclusive, and commercial stories. He has been featured on The Black List for the last three consecutive years for his projects “Whittier,” “Jambusters,” and “Patsy,” and the latter two are currently in pre-production. Filipe is a member of Inevitable Foundation’s Elevate Collective, a Black List Feature Lab alum, and a two-time finalist of the Nicholl’s Fellowship. His unique cultural perspective is highlighted by his background; Filipe emigrated from a small town in Portugal and knows intimately the challenges of being an immigrant in America. He is repped by Matt Rosen at RAIN management.

During the Visionary Fellowship, Filipe will develop his feature film “8- Tracks,” in which a heartbroken 30-year-old recounts, with great energy and a touch of magical realism, two life-defining relationships through the eight songs that tell their story.

Katherine Craft (she/her) is an Austin, Texas-based filmmaker and educator with low vision who always walks very fast, even though she rarely knows where she’s going. She writes character-driven comedies and offbeat horror that explore complex social issues with laughs, blood and guts, car chases, and explosions. Most recently, she wrote and directed the Audible Original “Shaky,” a nine-episode comedy series due out in 2025. Before that, she wrote on Apple TV+ series “Best Foot Forward,” and created the Snap Original series “Kappa Crypto.” She is represented by Ava Jamshidi of Industry Entertainment.

During the Visionary Fellowship, Katherine will develop her feature film “The Hog Queen;” during a small Texas town’s annual Hog Fest, a group of queer and disabled friends must survive the night being hunted in the woods by a right-wing militia after their local gay bar is attacked in the middle of their Hog Queen drag show.

Zayre Ferrer (they/them) is a Panama-born, Brooklyn-bred writer-producer who holds MFAs in Dramatic Writing and Musical Theatre Writing from NYU. They’ve been awarded the Yip Harburg Lyricist Award, Elphaba Thropp Fellowship, and received a Peabody nomination. Zayre created the Netflix Original Series “Tijuana” and wrote for HBO Max’s “Our Flag Means Death.” They are represented by CAA, 3Arts, and Granderson Des Rochers.

During the Visionary Fellowship, Zayre will develop their feature film “Bembe,” which follows a bandless Merengue bandleader hustling her way through the flourishing Latin Music scene of 1980s New York, and learning the hard way that if you wanna make it, you can’t do it alone.

Monica Lucas (she/her) is a Los Angeles-based film and TV writer who tells grounded, female-led stories about complicated relationships and uneasy power dynamics. She has worked as an assistant on TV shows for Netflix and Amazon, and as a Production Assistant on a handful of independent feature and short films. She is the recipient of Inevitable Foundation’s Accelerate Fellowship for screenwriting as well as the 2024 Artists Disruptor’s Fellowship. She is also a participant in the 2024-2025 class of Mentorship Matters and a 2024 Writer in Residence at Hedgebrook. Before receiving her MFA in Screenwriting from USC, she earned a BA in Political Science and philosophy and worked as a political activist in Washington, DC. Monica is repped by Jordan Bayer at Elevate and Jim Ehrich and Lindsay Lehrman at RBEL.

During the Visionary Fellowship, Monica will develop her feature film “Double Birthday Christmas Wedding,” about identical twin sisters Gina and Victoria, who were born on Christmas Day and have always been attached at the hip. When golden child Victoria gets engaged and sets the wedding for Christmas day, down-on-her-luck Gina refuses to be left behind and competing Birthday Christmas Weddings ensue.

Alys Murray (she/her) writes genre fare for the romantic in all of us. A graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and King’s College London, she’s published three internationally best-selling novels, and has written for Hallmark, Lifetime, ViacomCBS, Passionflix, and British television. She is a proud member of Inevitable Foundation’s Elevate Collective, and alum of Disability Belongs and The Orchard Project x Sony’s Homegrown Development Lab. She is represented by Maggie Cooper at Aevitas Creative and by Matt Felker and Norris Brooks at CAA.

During the Visionary Fellowship, Alys will develop her feature film “Happy New Fear,” in which a young woman returns to her small town to discover it’s been magically transformed into a made-for-TV Christmas movie wonderland…and she’s their new star. But magic this powerful comes at a price, and what begins as harmless holiday fun soon turns into a sinister and satanic fight for her life.