Tribeca and Chanel are once again joining forces for Through Her Lens, the mentorship and grant program dedicated to supporting emerging women filmmakers, and the 2026 edition has drawn a roster of established talent that reads like a cross-section of modern Hollywood. Halle Berry, Regina King, Celine Song and Meg Ryan are all set to participate in the initiative, organizers confirmed, lending their experience to a program that has become one of the more visible pipelines for female directors looking to move from short-form work into features.
The program, now in its second decade of partnership between the festival and the luxury house, pairs selected filmmakers with industry mentors across a multi-day intensive. Participants workshop short films, receive feedback on scripts and are ultimately competing for production grants that can help carry a project toward completion. It is the kind of practical support that is hard to come by, and the names attached this year signal that the program's reputation continues to attract top-tier involvement.
A Roster Spanning Acting, Directing and Everything Between
Berry's presence is perhaps the most headline-grabbing. She has spent the last several years steadily expanding her work behind the camera, and her involvement in a mentorship program aimed at women directors fits a pattern she has spoken about publicly: using her position to create room for others. For a generation of filmmakers who grew up watching her on screen, the chance to sit across a table from her carries real weight.
King arrives with a similarly layered résumé. Long respected as one of the finest actors of her generation, she has also built a formidable second act as a director, and her perspective on navigating that transition - from in front of the camera to behind it - is precisely the kind of guidance the program was designed to provide. Mentorship from someone who has made that leap herself tends to land differently than advice from a purely executive vantage point.
Song's participation reflects the program's interest in filmmakers whose work sits at the art-house end of the spectrum. Her debut feature announced her as a distinctive voice in contemporary cinema, and her follow-up projects have only deepened that reputation. For emerging directors working in intimate, character-driven registers, her insights into craft and the festival circuit could prove especially valuable.
Ryan, meanwhile, brings a career arc that has moved from romantic-comedy stardom to directing, a path that offers its own lessons about reinvention in an industry that often resists it. Her willingness to engage with younger filmmakers speaks to a broader trend of established figures treating mentorship as part of the job rather than an afterthought.
Why Programs Like This Matter
The statistics around women directing studio features have improved only marginally in recent years, and the gap is even more pronounced when it comes to financing. Grant programs and labs cannot solve that problem alone, but they can meaningfully change the trajectory of individual careers. Through Her Lens has produced alumni who have gone on to make features, land festival slots and secure representation - outcomes that are difficult to achieve without the kind of access and validation these programs provide.
The Tribeca-Chanel partnership also reflects a model that has become increasingly common: a cultural institution supplying the infrastructure and a corporate partner supplying the funding. The arrangement is not without its critics, who question how much of this work should fall to private entities rather than the industry at large. But the practical effect for the filmmakers involved is tangible, and the program's alumni network has become a resource in its own right.
What distinguishes this year's edition is the range of the mentor roster. Acting, directing, screenwriting and producing are all represented, and the participants will not be getting a single template for how to build a career. That plurality may be the program's real value. There is no one path, and hearing that from four people who took very different routes to get where they are is likely to resonate more than any single piece of advice.
Details on the full participant slate and the timing of the intensive are expected to be announced by Tribeca in the coming weeks. For now, the confirmed involvement of Berry, King, Song and Ryan gives the 2026 edition a level of star power that should keep attention on the program well past its closing session - and, organizers hope, on the filmmakers it was built to serve.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter