Boatbuilders

Documentary

Nov 13

boatbuilders

At a small boatyard on the coast of Maine, 60 skilled craftsmen spend four seasons building a 56-foot sailboat. Through their shared dedication to craft, BOATBUILDERS reveals the quiet beauty of working together and the unexpected ways we find purpose, connection, and belonging in the everyday.

Stage: Distribution/Impact

Project Type: Documentary

Evoke’s Role: BOATBUILDERS is an Evoke Media grant-supported project, with funding dedicated to the development and distribution of an audience development case study. Evoke founder Sabrina Merage Naim is an Executive Producer. BOATBUILDERS is presented in association with Evoke Media.

Meet the filmmakers

Director
Luke Lorentzen is an Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker. His last film, A STILL SMALL VOICE (2023), follows a chaplain completing a yearlong hospital residency. The film won the U.S. Documentary Best Director Award at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, was listed as one of the 10 best films of the year by the New York Times, and was shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
Luke’s previous film, MIDNIGHT FAMILY (2019), was also shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, after winning more than 35 awards from film festivals and organizations around the world, including a Special Jury Award for Cinematography at the Sundance Film Festival, Best Editing from the International Documentary Association, and the Golden Frog for Best Documentary from Camerimage. In 2024, the film was adapted into a 10-part fictionalized series for Apple TV+.
Luke’s other work as a director and cinematographer includes the Netflix original series LAST CHANCE U (2019), which won an Emmy for Outstanding Serialized Sports Documentary. With Kellen Quinn, Luke is a co-founder of the independent production company Hedgehog Films.
Producer
Kellen Quinn is a twice Oscar-nominated producer whose credits include Garrett Bradley’s TIME (Oscar-nominated; Sundance 2020 winner of the Directing Award, US Documentary Competition), Luke Lorentzen’s A STILL SMALL VOICE (shortlisted for Best Documentary Feature Oscar; Sundance 2023 winner of the Directing Award, US Documentary Competition), Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie’s SUGARCANE (Oscar nominated; Sundance 2024 winner of the Directing Award, US Documentary Competition), David Osit’s PREDATORS (Sundance 2025), Robie Flores’s THE IN BETWEEN (SXSW 2024), Lorentzen’s MIDNIGHT FAMILY (shortlisted for Documentary Feature Oscar; Sundance 2019 winner of Special Jury Award for Cinematography, US Documentary Competition), Asher Levinthal’s SHAKEN (DOC NYC 2023), Noah Hutton’s IN SILICO (DOC NYC 2020), Daniel Hymanson’s SO LATE SO SOON (True/False 2020), and Viktor Jakovleski’s BRIMSTONE & GLORY (True/False 2017; aired on POV).
Kellen received Doc10’s Vanguard Award in 2025 and was selected for the Dear Producer Award in 2023 and DOC NYC’s 40 Under 40 class in 2020. In 2017 and 2018, he participated in the Sundance Documentary Creative Producing Lab and Fellowship. In 2016, he was among six producers selected for Impact Partners’ Documentary Producers Fellowship. He runs the production company Hedgehog Films with Luke Lorentzen.
Associate Producer
Oscar Saint Bris' recent credits include associate producer on Luke Lorentzen's documentary feature BOATBUILDERS and producer on Masha Egieva's upcoming thriller short ROKEBY VENUS, starring Amira Casar and Pip Torrens. He works with producer Kellen Quinn, supporting production, post-production, and distribution on award-winning feature documentaries such as SUGARCANE by Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie (Academy Award® nominee, Sundance 2024 Directing Award, US Documentary Competition), David Osit's PREDATORS (Sundance 2025), and Luke Lorentzen's A STILL SMALL VOICE (shortlisted for the Academy Award for Documentary Feature; Sundance 2023 Directing Award, US Documentary Competition). On BOATBUILDERS, Oscar is also leading the film's audience development strategy, engaging core communities and building early support ahead of distribution.

ways to watch

Screenings

ABOUT THE AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT CASE STUDY

What if filmmakers started building their audiences before their films were finished?

Led by Associate Producer Oscar Saint-Bris, the BOATBUILDERS team is testing a different approach: identifying and engaging the film’s core audiences during production rather than after it. This case study will document that process as it unfolds, including the strategies the team tries, the challenges they run into, and the lessons learned along the way.

The goal is to give filmmakers and funders a practical look at how early, meaningful audience connections can be built, and how those relationships can help a story travel beyond the screen. We expect to publish the case study in fall 2027.