NYWIFT Celebrates Tribeca’s 25 Years of Women Filmmakers

New York Women in Film & Television is proud to partner with the Tribeca Festival to present a panel at the 2026 festival’s Storytelling Summit! 

NYWIFT looks back on Tribeca’s 25th Anniversary history of championing women’s stories on screen and in the community. The festival has had a major impact in shifting the balance to recognize more women and non-binary creators in front of and behind the camera.

Filmmakers across genres will reflect on Tribeca’s formative role in their career trajectory. Tribeca filmmakers will share stories from years past, insights looking toward the future, and share advice. Film clips will be featured.

Speakers include Sharese Bullock-Bailey (Manhattan Neighborhood Network), Dori Berinstein (award-winning director/producer/writer), Maria Cuomo Cole (award-winning documentary producer), Gabriela Díaz Arp (director and producer), Violet Du Feng (award-winning independent documentarian), Michele Spitz (Woman of Her Word). Moderated by NYWIFT CEO Cynthia Lopez. 

Date: Saturday, June 6, 2026
Time: 12:00-1:00pm ET
Location: Spring Studios, 5th Floor – 50 Varick St (between Laight and Beach Streets)

Price: $250 for Storytelling Summit Pass (Includes access to All Tribeca Storytelling Summit programming, June 4-13)**

Buy Storytelling Summit Pass

**NYWIFT members get a 10% discount on the Storytelling Summit pass. See your weekly e-blast for details, or email membership@nywift.org to get the code. 

Panelists:

Sharese Bullock-Bailey is the Chief Program Officer at Manhattan Neighborhood Network (MNN). She is an Emmy-nominated producer, strategic consultant and leader in social impact storytelling. Recently, Sharese served as the Festival Director/Chief Innovation Officer at Urbanworld Foundation, Chief Partnership and Strategy Officer at GFS and Director of Tribeca Teaches at Tribeca Film Institute. Sharese has funded, distributed, and curated independent media globally for the over 20 years, leading service and international education programs in over 20 countries. She serves as Board Vice Chair at Independent Television Service (ITVS) and a Board Member for CreativeTypes.

Gabriela Díaz Arp is an independent director and producer passionate about the ways visual language can deepen human understanding and connection. Her work challenges documentary conventions by incorporating fictional elements, new technologies, and pushing the boundaries of the form. Her last film, Meeting A Monster, a virtual reality film which explores the memories and motivations of former white supremacist Angela King, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and was shown at festivals around the world including Cannes Next, Sheffield Doc Fest, Atlanta and New Orleans Film Festival.

She will be releasing her debut Matininó at Tribeca Film Festival and Sheffield DocFest this year. The film follows four generations of Puerto Rican women transforming their experience of violence into a fantasy film. The film won best documentary project at Gotham Honors and was a finalist at New Orlean’s South Pitch. Her work has been supported by Sundance, Film Independent, IDA, Doc Society, BAVC, Ford Foundation, Chicken & Egg, Firelight Media, Working Films and Studio IX and the Puerto Rican and Dominican Republic Film Commissions.

Dori Berinstein is a six-time, Tony-winning Broadway producer and an Emmy-award-winning director/producer/writer of film & television. Dori’s filmmaking work includes: Couture To The Max (Tribeca ’26), Kenny Loggins: Conviction of the Heart (Hot Docs ’26), A Man with Sole: The Impact of Kenneth Cole (Tribeca X), ShowBusiness: The Road To Broadway (Tribeca), Carol Channing: Larger Than Life (Tribeca) and Marvin Hamlisch: What He Did For Love (Emmy). Dori supervised production on Dirty Dancing and Jim Henson’s MuppetVision 3-D and Exec-Produced Isaac Mizrahi’s award-winning-documentary Unzipped and Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story. Dori has worked as a Producer/Exec for DreamWorks, Paramount Pictures, Warner Brothers, Sony Pictures, NBC, MTV, Nickelodeon, Sesame Workshop, Oxygen, Vestron Pictures and Walt Disney Imagineering. www.dramaticforces.com

Maria Cuomo Cole is a Peabody and Emmy Award-winning documentary producer and advocate known for creating socially impactful films through compelling storytelling. From 1992 to 2020, she led HELP USA, expanding the nonprofit from its New York roots to 70 residences nationwide serving more than 600,000 people experiencing homelessness, including veterans, families, survivors of violence, and people living with HIV/AIDS. Her producing career began with the 2009 documentary Living for 32, about the Virginia Tech shooting, which was shortlisted for an Academy Award and aired on Showtime. She executive produced the Oscar-nominated documentaries The Invisible War and The Hunting Ground, both credited with advancing national conversations and policy reform around sexual assault. Her recent work includes The Librarians and several acclaimed films addressing gun violence, including the Oscar-nominated short Death by Numbers, Us Kids, Notes from Dunblane, and NEWTOWN.

Violet Du Feng is based in New York, Violet Du Feng is an Emmy® Award-winning independent documentarian, a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow, a 2024 Chicken & Egg Awardee, and a 2023 Sundance Momentum Fellow. Known for creating nuanced, intimate, and thought-provoking films that illuminate broader social issues, Violet tells intimate stories that resonate on a universal scale. Her most recent film, The Dating Game, premiered at Sundance 2025 in the World Cinema Documentary Competition. The film went on to win the International Best Director Award at the Doc Edge Festival and has been broadcast in ten countries. Her previous film, Hidden Letters, was Oscar®-shortlisted and received Emmy® and Peabody nominations. The documentary premiered in competition at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival and won twelve festival awards.
Violet is a member of the Documentary Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) and serves as an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s Journalism School.

Michele Spitz of Woman of Her Word is an accessibility film and media producer, narrator, public speaker, educator, consultant and philanthropist dedicated to advocating for media accessibility and audience inclusion. Twelve years of experience producing and managing audio description assets for blind and low-vision audiences. She has produced audio description for over 150 media projects.

Michele has a rich history with the Tribeca Festival, currently serving as the media accessibility consultant, advising the Traffic Department and awarding the annual Woman of Her Word Tribeca Audio Description Production Grant for the past four years to films including Happy Hours, Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything, LIZA: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story, Rather, and All You Hear Is Noise. For the past decade, she funded annual accessibility grants for NYWIFT films. Michele was the catalyst having consulted with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that resulted in the first ever Audio Described Broadcast of the 93rd Academy Awards.

Cynthia López (Moderator) is the CEO of New York Women in Film & Television, and former Commissioner of the New York City Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, where she implemented strategies to support film and TV production throughout the five boroughs. López is the recipient of many coveted industry awards including: 11 News and Documentary Emmy Awards, the American Documentary: Special Emmy Award for Excellence in Documentary Filmmaking, three Peabody Awards, and two duPont-Columbia Awards.

Prior to working as Commissioner, López was Executive Vice President and co-Executive Producer of the award-winning PBS documentary series American Documentary | POV, and was involved in the organization’s strategic growth for 14 years. Her ability to forge strategic media partnerships has been a signature of her work. Notable partnerships include: New York Times, Reuters, Al-Jazeera Network, Discovery Communications, The Moth, Story Corps, Harpo Studios and ABC News, NIGHTLINE with Ted Koppel. Lopez is proud to have spent her career collaborating with independent filmmakers across all sectors of the film and television industry. She was honored along with Martin Scorsese and MichaelApted, the Leading Light Award from DOC NYC’s Visionaries Tribute.

(All images courtesy of the participants)