KATY CHEVIGNY
FOUNDER, PRODUCER, DIRECTOR
Katy Chevigny is an Emmy and DuPont Award-winning filmmaker and co-founder of Big Mouth Productions. She has produced and/or directed over a dozen feature films and series since the creation of BMP in 1997. Her work has been shown on Netflix, HBO, PBS, NBC, Arte/ZDF, VPRO, and Channel 4, among others, and has played in theaters and at festivals around the world, including Sundance, Tribeca, IDFA, SXSW, CPH:DOX, Sheffield, and Berlin. Her work brings bold stories about the resilience of humanity and systems of power to the screen that push the boundaries of documentary and fiction storytelling.
Most recently, she completed THE EASY KIND, a feature about a woman singer finding her true voice as a songwriter in the Nashville music scene. Chevigny wrote and directed the film, which premiered at Telluride Film Festival in 2024. She won an Emmy in 2023 for directing two episodes of HOME, a documentary series about innovative architects for A24 / AppleTV+, which were filmed in the Netherlands and in France.
Katy also co-wrote and co-directed (with Ross Kauffman) the Netflix Original documentary E-TEAM, which premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, won Best Documentary at CPH:DOX, and was nominated for two Emmy Awards. She also directed one of the storylines in Kartemquin Films’ documentary series HARD EARNED, which won a 2016 Alfred I. DuPont Award. She directed ELECTION DAY, which premiered at SXSW and was broadcast on POV (PBS) in 2008. She also co-directed DEADLINE (with Kirsten Johnson), which premiered at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, won the Thurgood Marshall Journalism Award, and, in an unusual acquisition, was broadcast as a primetime special on NBC to an audience of over six million people.
Her original screenplay, CAFE NEW YORK, won the award for Best Tennessee Feature at the Nashville Film Festival Screenplay Competition in 2017 and was shortlisted for participation in the 2019 Cannes Film Festival “Breaking Through the Lens.”
With Marilyn Ness, she produced several Netflix Original documentaries, including the 2023 Academy Awards® shortlisted documentary short CAMP COURAGE (dir. Max Lowe). They also produced the 2020 Emmy-nominated BECOMING (dir. Nadia Hallgren) and the 2021 Emmy-winning DICK JOHNSON IS DEAD (dir. Kirsten Johnson), which also won the Special Jury Award for Innovation in Non-fiction Storytelling at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, won the Critics Choice Award for Best Documentary, and was shortlisted for the 2020 Academy Awards®.
Katy also produced DARK MONEY (dir. Kimberly Reed), which premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, and CHARM CITY (dir. Marilyn Ness), which premiered at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival. Both films were shortlisted for the 2019 Academy Awards® in the Best Documentary Feature category.
In 2018, Katy, together with Marilyn Ness and Big Mouth Productions, was honored with the Sundance Institute / Amazon Studios Producers Award. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.
PETER GILBERT
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER AND FINANCING
Peter Gilbert has a distinguished career in producing, directing, and photographing documentaries, feature films, commercials, and music videos. Peter has worked as a producer and executive producer on several Big Mouth Productions films including THE EASY KIND, DEADLINE, and CHARM CITY. He is currently working with Fernanda and Katy on the development of CAFE NEW YORK.
Peter co-produced and served as the Director of Photography for the documentary HOOP DREAMS. The film won numerous awards including The Sundance Film Festival Audience Award, Producers Guild of America, Independent Spirit Award, and The Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Award for Journalism. He also directed the film AT THE HOUSE DOOR with Kartemquin Films which premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival and won awards at other festivals, including the Inspiration award at Full Frame.
In addition, Peter produced and directed WITH ALL DELIBERATE SPEED for the series “Discovery Docs” on the Discovery Network. The film was nominated for a Primetime Emmy for Distinguished Work in Non-Fiction Film.
With Forager Films and Webber, Gilbert has produced and executive produced 15 independent films that have played at major festivals worldwide. He has been nominated three times for Best Director by the DGA (with 1 win) and is a 10-time Emmy nominee (1 win). Gilbert is a Professor of Practice at the MFA Documentary Film Program at Wake Forest University in Winston Salem, NC.
Fernanda Rosi
STORY DEPARTMENT AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Fernanda Rossi facilitates international co-productions at Big Mouth Production. She worked as a story editor on THE EASY KIND by Katy Chevigny and is currently working with Katy on the development of CAFE NEW YORK. As collaborators and peers for over two decades, they have supported each other in the development of their first fiction films. As a co-writer and story editor, Fernanda has worked on over a hundred films, two of which were nominated for the Academy Awards in the Best Documentary category, and many others received awards for screenwriting worldwide.
Fernanda’s personal projects focus on women’s power struggles in their private lives and their relationship to their larger socio-cultural context. Her feature-length directorial debut, INFLUENCED, a chamber piece, was shot with an all-female crew. Currently, she is developing the feature film La Impropiedad and the TV series FIRST LIGHT. She has written ten fiction feature-length screenplays and two TV pilots. PICTURE ME! was invited to the Latin American Screenwriters Laboratory in Oaxaca, Mexico, in 2005. The following year, she workshopped a scene from that screenplay with French director Benoit Jacquot in the ESAV Director’s Laboratory in Toulouse, France.
Among the dozens of short films she has written and directed, CLARA COMO EL AGUA, the first part of a trilogy, premiered at the PBS Film Festival, was awarded funds from
the Latino Public Broadcast Media Fund, and won Best Short at Hispanicize in Miami, Florida in 2012. The second installment in the trilogy, BRAIN OFF! premiered at the North Cape Film Festival in Norway in 2016. She lectures on storytelling around the world and has published extensively on film theory in major trade magazines.
Julia de Guzman
POST PRODUCTION SUPERVISOR
Julia de Guzman is a writer and filmmaker whose work focuses on the human side of climate, science and social justice.
She got her start at HBO Documentary Films in New York and most recently co-produced THE ARC OF OBLIVION (2023), a feature documentary from Executive Producer Werner Herzog, and SHELF LIFE (2024) about the delightfully quirky world of cheese making.
Most recently, Julia was the Post Supervisor on Katy Chevigny’s genre-bending film THE EASY KIND (2024), starring outlaw country legend Elizabeth Cook, and producing TREE PEOPLE (in production); a feature doc about humanity’s ancient relationship to trees.
Her work has appeared on networks including Showtime, HBO and PBS, programs like Frontline and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and has played at festivals including Tribeca, Telluride, SXSW, San Sebastián and CPH:DOX.
Julia has directed two award winning short films, BORN CURIOUS and LEAVES OF THREE, and produces video content & branded campaigns for clients including The New Yorker, The National Park Service, Women’s March, The Environmental Defense Fund, The Ford Foundation, The Fund for the City of New York, Montauk Brewing and Fjällräven Apparel.
She lives and works in New York.
Isabel Echavarria
PRODUCTION ASSOCIATE
Isabel Echavarria joined Big Mouth Productions in 2024, beginning as a Production Assistant on POST MORTEM. She has worked for Rainlake production company as an archival researcher and has contributed to development work, archival research, and editing at The Ciesla Foundation. She also has worked for filmmaker Kirsten Johnson and The Film Posse production company. Additionally, she shoots and edits video content for nonprofits including the After School Dance Fund. She holds a BA in film and history from Wesleyan University. Her senior thesis film, PILOT WOMEN: Wesleyan’s Transition to Coeducation, received the Grant Wilcox Prize for best documentary film thesis.