2024
Scroll below for some highlights of RTF affiliate accomplishments in 2024!
While it is impossible to track all of the amazing accomplishments of our affiliates, we relish opportunities to celebrate your successes. If you are a TexasEx, we invite you to share details with us about your new projects, awards & recognition, publications, and professional triumphs—so we can share them with the world!
2024 - Highlights from RTF Affiliate Accomplishments
Shōgun, which Rachel Kondo (MFA Michener Writing / Screenwriting ’16) co-created/co-wrote, won a record 18 Emmys (and was nominated for 25 in total). The show has also been nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Television Series – Drama.
Drew Daniels (BS '08) was the cinematographer on Sean Baker’s Anora, which won the 2024 Palme D’or and has been nominated for four Golden Globe Awards, including Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy.
Monique Walton (MFA Production '13) won the 2024 Independent Spirit’s Producer Award for Sing Sing. She recently sat on The Hollywood Reporter producer’s roundtable with Amy Pascal (Challengers), Lucy Fisher (Gladiator II), Mary Parent (Dune: Part Two), Samantha Quan (Anora), and Tessa Ross (Conclave).
Nicole Chi’s (MFA Production '23) MFA thesis film, Los Mosquitos, won the Princess Grace Award for student filmmaking and The Gotham’s Focus Feature/JetBlue Student Short Film Showcase. Chi was also named Best U.S. Latina Director of a Live Action Short for Los Mosquitos at the 2024 Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival and received the Best New Director Award from the 2024 Mulan International Film Festival for her feature Guián.
Fatima Wardy (MFA Production) was named a 2024 Building Bridges Fellow from Sundance Institute, Doris Duke Foundation, & Islamic Scholarship Fund. Her thesis film, White Musk, was selected out of almost 4,000 global submissions for the 2024 Berlinale Talents Summit. She was also selected to workshop the project in the 2024 Short Form Station Lab and won a special Jury Award at 2024 SXSW in the Texas Shorts Program for her student short, Hair Care.
Casey Walker (PhD student) won two SCMS Scholarly Interest Group graduate student essay competitions: "Classical Hollywood Cinematographers and the Cultural Capital of Television," won for Television Studies, and “Que son los monstruos?”: Borders, Bodies, and Infection in the Post-9/11 Sci-Fi/Horror Film Monsters" won for Horror Studies. Both articles have since been published.
Pete Johnson (PhD Student) won 3rd place in the SCMS Graduate Student Writing Award competition for his essay, "The Financial Ecologies of Transnational Television Production: From KKR to Sky German's Pagan Peak."
Xavier Ingram (BS ’24) took home the 2024 Austin Film Festival Texas Short Film Award for his undergraduate thesis, There’s a Klansman in my Trunk.
Arturo R. Jiménez (faculty, MFA Production '20) won the SXSW 2024 Audience Award Texas Shorts category for the film Sangre Violenta / Sangre Violeta, which he co-directed with Moody Advertising/PR alum Edna Diaz and produced with Diaz and Maggie M. Bailey (MFA Production ‘21).
Sachin Dheeraj (MFA Production '22) and PJ Raval (faculty, MFA Production '04) won 2024 SFFILM Rainin Filmmaking Grants.
PJ Raval (faculty, MFA Production '04) won the Creative Visionary Award from American Documentary, was selected as a USA Artist Fellowship for Film/Video, and earned a Sundance Institute Documentary Film Grant for his Untitled Philippines Project.
Glen Powell was nominated for a 2024 People’s Choice Award for Comedy Movie Star of the Year for Anyone but You and for a Golden Globe for Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy (Hit Man).
After earning the Audience Award for Texas Independent Feature at the 2023 Austin Film Festival, I’ll Be There, made by RTF faculty Cindy McCreery (Writer/Producer) & Andrew Shea (Director/Producer), was picked up by Buffalo 8 and is now available on Amazon Prime, YouTube and Apple TV+.
Iliana Sosa (faculty) won the Adelante Directors Fellowship from Netflix, Shondaland, Latinx House and Sundance Institute.
Katherine Craft’s (faculty, MFA Screenwriting ’17) script “The Hog Queen,” which she is slated to direct, has been selected for the Inevitable Foundation's Visionary Fellowship backed by Netflix. This fellowship provides disabled filmmakers with funding, mentorship and a community to help them transition from short films to feature debuts. Shelby Hadden (faculty, MFA Production ’16) is the creative producer, and Sebastián Valdivieso (MFA Production ’22) is the cinematographer. Craft was also selected for the Athena List Disney Development Grant and the RespectAbility Comedy Intensive this year.
Holiday dark comedy Merry Good Enough, written and co-directed by Caroline Keene (MFA Screenwriting ’16), debuted on streaming this past holiday season. It was the opening night film selection at the New Hampshire Film Festival and scored 95% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Jinsook Kim (PhD '19) won a 2024 American Council of Learned Societies fellowship, a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and International Communication Association's 2024 Helen Award for Emerging Feminist Scholarship.
Kevin Shivers (BS '08) won Billboard’s R&B/Hip-Hop Power Players’ Choice Award.
Catarina Flores (BS '24) garnered a Television Academy Internship.
Kathy Fuller Seeley (faculty) recently restored several short silent films from director/actor Francis Ford—the older brother of legendary filmmaker John Ford—in 2K with a new musical score on a new BluRay collection that she co-produced. The collection includes a short documentary she made about Ford’s career, “Francis Ford Film Pioneer” (9 min., 2024). The films will screen at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC in January 2025.
Doc NYC selected documentary editor Sarah Garrahan (BS ’09) for its “40 Under 40” list, which “spotlights young creatives who are making an impact on the field of documentary.” Last year, Filmmaker Magazine included Garrahan in the “25 New Faces of Independent Film” list.
Andy Fisher (BS ’99) earned an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Directing for A Variety Series, Jimmy Kimmel Live!
David Tillman (BS '04) earned an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Picture Editing for a Nonfiction Program, The Jinx -- Part Two.
Jimmy Lindsey (BS '92) earned an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Cinematography For A Single-Camera Series (Half-Hour) for Physical episode, "Like A Rocket"
Abbott Elementary, executive produced by Patrick Schumacker (BS ’02; co-showrunner) earned nine Emmy nominations and was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Television Series - Musical or Comedy.
Ben Philippe (MCW MFA Writing / RTF Screenwriting ’14) is a writer on Only Murders in the Building, which received 21 Emmy nominations and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Television Series - Musical or Comedy.
Jacob Barajas-Santos (BS '22) was a colorist on Mufasa: The Lion King.
Queer Eye, executive produced by Jennifer Lane (BS ’87) earned two Emmy nominations.
Andrew Garrison (faculty emeritus) earned a Visiting Canterbury Fellowship.
Books Published
- Brett Caraway,
- Jennifer Holt, Cloud Policy: A History of Regulating Pipelines, Platforms, and Data
- Amanda D. Lotz and Tim Havens, Media Industries in the Digital Age
- Amanda D. Lotz and Ramon Lobato, eds., Streaming Video: Storytelling Across Borders
- Alfred Martin, Jr., ed., Rolling: Blackness and Mediated Comedy
- Swapnil Rai, Networked Bollywood: How Star Power Globalized Hindi Cinema
- Kevin Sanson, Mobile Hollywood: Labor and the Geography of Production
UT Awards
Chidera Orazulike (BS '25) and Cody Rea (MFA Screenwriting '25) won the Robert Foshko Memorial Scholarship & Screenplay Competition.
Melissa Santillana & Laurel Rogers (PhD Students) were 2024 winners of UT's highly competitive professional and student awards: Melissa Santillana (Outstanding Dissertation) and Laurel Rogers (Outstanding Graduate Student Academic Employee Award).
Faculty Cindy McCreery (Writer/Producer) & Andrew Shea (Director/Producer) won the 2024 Moody College Creative Achievement Award for their feature, I’ll Be There.
Richard Lewis (faculty, MFA Production '94) won the 2024 Moody College Teaching Excellence Award.
Karen Kocher (faculty, MFA Production '95) won the Glen Baumgart Visionary Community Engagement Award through the UT Tower Awards.
Kathy Fuller Seeley (faculty) won a 2024 Texas 10 Teaching Award.
Korey Pereira (faculty, BS '11) won an Outstanding Young Texas Ex Award and a 2024 Texas 10 Teaching Award.
Shanti Kumar (faculty) was granted a Global Virtual Exchange award from Texas Global for “Streaming Media in Asia: UT-BRAC University Virtual Exchange,” in partnership with BRAC University, Bangladesh.
PJ Raval (faculty, MFA Production '04) was selected for a 2024–2025 UT OVPR Research & Creative Grant for an upcoming feature documentary.
Mary Beltrán (faculty) has been named a senior mentor for the Intersectional Humanities Initiative Mid-Career Scholars Program, which is designed to support tenured faculty who are working towards promotion to full professor.