Father Figures
FATHER FIGURES
When a retired theater director begins creating internet videos featuring deeply intimate conversations with his growing collection of ventriloquist dummies, his daughter embarks on a process of collaborative filmmaking to understand his motivations and repair their fraught relationship—using puppets.
Stage: Production
Project Type: Documentary
Evoke’s Role: Father Figures is a grantee and program-related investment of Evoke Media. Evoke founder Sabrina Merage Naim and Evoke Director of Impact and Storytelling Jamie Newton are Executive Producers.
Meet the filmmakers
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Director/Producer
Emma D. Miller is a Gotham Award-nominated filmmaker whose work explores the strange and beautiful messiness of being human. Her projects have been supported by Sundance Institute, Ford Foundation, Field of Vision, Impact Partners, and Anonymous Content, among others, and have been selected by festivals including Venice, Toronto, SXSW, Camden, and CPH:DOX. She is the producer of Elizabeth Lo's MISTRESS DISPELLER, winner of a dozen festival awards and nominated for three Cinema Eye Honors, as well as Iliana Sosa's SXSW award-winning WHAT WE LEAVE BEHIND (ARRAY Releasing/Netflix), a New York Times "Critic's Pick." She is also the co-producer of an upcoming feature for National Geographic Documentary Films and the director of the short documentary THE SCHOOL OF CANINE MASSAGE, which premiered at SXSW 2024 and was acquired by Kanopy. As development executive at Concordia Studio, she worked on Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning films that premiered at Sundance, Tribeca, and Telluride, including TIME, BOYS STATE, and PROCESSION. Other credits include Showtime's COUPLES THERAPY, the Oscar-nominated short KNIFE SKILLS (The New Yorker), and the Oscar-shortlisted, Sundance award-winning feature UNREST (Independent Lens/Netflix). Named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film” and one of DOC NYC’s “40 Under 40,” Emma was a 2023 Sundance Producers Fellow and 2024 JFI Filmmaker in Residence.
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Producer
Florrie Priest is a documentary producer based in London. She started her career at Rise Films, working in-house on productions including Paul Taylor's THE ART OF POLITICAL MURDER, Dror Moreh's THE HUMAN FACTOR and series 4 and 5 of ITV2's highest rating comedy ever — Roman sitcom PLEBS. Florrie was an assistant producer for David Osit's multi-award winning MAYOR; associate producer for Jed Rothstein's ONCE UPON A TIME IN LONDONGRAD; and associate producer for GEORGE CARLIN'S AMERICAN DREAM, a two-part documentary for HBO directed by Judd Apatow and Michael Bonfiglio, which won the 2022 Emmy® for Outstanding Documentary. Florrie co-produced Shaunak Sen's ALL THAT BREATHES — the only film ever to have won both the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and Best Documentary at the Cannes Film Festival. The film received BAFTA and Oscar nominations for Best Documentary, as well as a Peabody Award. Florrie recently produced Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine's MIDDLETOWN (Sundance 2025) and is co-producing Toby Bull's RE-EVALUATION with Kat Mansoor's Snowstorm Productions. She is passionate about bringing new audiences to documentary cinema and elevating the genre by working with and advocating for filmmakers who are taking bold and surprising artistic risks in their storytelling.
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Producer
Colby Day is an award-winning producer, writer, and director. He is the writer of the Netflix film SPACEMAN, directed by Johan Renck (CHERNOBYL) and starring Adam Sandler and Cary Mulligan, which premiered at Berlinale 2024 and was the no. 1 film on the streaming service. He is also the writer of IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE (Searchlight Pictures), directed by Oscar winner Andrew Stanton (WALL-E) and starring Kate McKinnon, Rashida Jones, and Daveed Diggs, with Day serving as executive producer. Day wrote, directed, and produced the short film LEAD/FOLLOW (Austin Film Festival), and produced Emma D. Miller's short documentary THE SCHOOL OF CANINE MASSAGE (SXSW 2024). He has developed projects with Hulu, Lionsgate, LBI, and 3311, and previously worked in artistic development for the New York-based theater company Pipeline. Colby is represented by UTA and Grandview.
