Riz Ahmed’s Fellowship Hands 10 Filmmakers $40,000 and a Very Good Phone Book
The third Pillars Frames Fellowship cohort spans London, Atlanta, Ramallah and beyond. Here is who made the list and why the programme keeps launching careers.
Ten filmmakers have just been handed $40,000 each, no strings attached, plus an advisory committee that includes Mahershala Ali, Hasan Minhaj and Ramy Youssef. That is the 2026-2027 class of the Pillars Frames Fellowship, the programme run by Pillars Fund and Riz Ahmed’s Left Handed Films for directors and screenwriters who work alongside Muslim communities.
The fellows are based in the US and UK, and their CVs already carry names like BAFTA, Venice, Cannes and the Emmys. The fellowship, which used to be called the Pillars Artist Fellowship, is built to meet them at the moment when talent needs a bit of runway.
What the fellowship actually gives you
The grant is unrestricted, so fellows spend it as they see fit. Over 10 months they also get one-on-one mentorship and workshops led by entertainment industry experts, plus three in-person retreats in New York City, London and Los Angeles. Networking with production companies and studios is part of the package, as is access to that advisory committee of Muslim actors, directors, producers and writers. Netflix and Amazon MGM Studios have supported the programme since the first cohort in 2022.
Arij Mikati, Pillars’ Vice President of Programs, put the logic plainly: “Muslim stories are abundant and can be found everywhere. Too often, what is missing is access and investment. That’s where Frames steps in.”
The class of 2026-2027
It is a cohort that refuses to stay in one lane. Yasmin Afifi, a British-Egyptian director and writer, won the 2024 BAFTA for Best British Short with Jellyfish and Lobster, and she works in dark comedy, magical realism and absurdism. Sindha Agha made a first documentary, Birth Control Your Own Adventure, that drew 20 million views. She also won a BAFTA for the comedy anthology How to Be a Person and wrote and co-produced the Emmy-nominated Netflix series The Principles of Pleasure.
Fyzal Boulifa moves between the UK and Morocco. His features include Lynn + Lucy and The Damned Don’t Cry, and he is known for casting non-professional actors. Amar Chebib grew up skateboarding in the Persian Gulf, where he started making videos. His hybrid documentary Joe Buffalo, about an Indigenous skateboarding legend, was executive produced by Tony Hawk and won 16 international awards.
Laith Elzubaidi, a British-Iraqi writer and playwright in London, wrote Insane Asylum Seekers, which became the fastest-selling show in the history of the Bush Theatre Studio. His online show Food I Can’t Read has passed 50 million total views since launching in 2025, and he founded the British-Arab Writers Group, a collective of more than 250 Arab writers in the UK.
Rapper-turned-filmmaker Duran Jones, an AFI Conservatory graduate, is building a slate under his BLK MCG Content banner. His short Time is Money won Best Director at the 2025 Diversity in Cannes Showcase. Atlanta’s Morgan Mathews made Clara’s Fruit, a short documentary on the legacy of Sister Clara Muhammad that premiered at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture and aired on PBS.
London’s Imran Perretta is a visual artist, writer, director and composer who co-wrote, directed and scored his debut feature Ish. The BBC and BFI commissioned it, and it took the Audience Award at the 2025 Venice Critics’ Week. Huda Razzak, an Atlanta animator and daughter of Iraqi immigrants, saw her short The Ocean Duck long-listed for the Oscars. She has made content for Sesame Street and worked on Netflix Animation’s The Twits.
Rounding out the list is Said Zagha, born in Jerusalem and raised in Ramallah, who directed the first two episodes of the Arabic-language Netflix series Crashing Eid. His short Coyotes premiered at Venice and won Best Short Film at the BFI London Film Festival.
A pipeline with receipts
Ahmed and Pillars founded the fellowship in 2021 to back stories that reflect the full richness and complexity of Muslim experiences. The early alumni suggest the idea is working. Their films and series have premiered at Sundance and SXSW and have been sold to or developed with Netflix, PBS, A24, Amazon Studios, Watermelon Pictures and the BFI. Amber Fares picked up a Sundance jury award and an Oscar shortlist. Imran J. Khan won a SXSW audience award for Mustache. Myriam Raja won a BAFTA for Top Boy, and Nadra Widatalla worked on Paradise, which earned seven Emmy nominations and one win.
It fits the way Ahmed has run Left Handed Films. The company produced The Long Goodbye, which won the 2022 Oscar for Best Live Action Short, and Flee, the first film to be nominated for Best Animated Feature, Best Documentary Feature and Best International Feature in the same year. It also made Bassam Tariq’s Mogul Mowgli and, more recently, the Amazon Prime Video series Bait, which Ahmed created, wrote and starred in.
Allie Moore, Senior Vice President at Left Handed Films, says the new fellows each bring “a fearless vision, a singular voice, and a rigorous craft.” Mikati describes a cohort whose work is “bridging Ramallah with Atlanta and London with Los Angeles and New York City.” For a pipeline, that is a wide map.
Via Netflix