The Instrument
directed by Zac Manuel
An investigative documentary on reparations becomes unexpectedly personal when a filmmaker returns home to Barbados to tell the story of Drax Hall, the oldest continuously-operated sugar plantation in the Americas, recently inherited by a wealthy British politician descended from the slave master who founded it.
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Meet the Team
Jason Fitzroy Jeffers
Director
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Jason Fitzroy Jeffers is a filmmaker from Barbados based in San Francisco whose work gives rooted and nuanced voice to the global Caribbean and reclaims the true meaning of “third world.”
As a filmmaker, he has produced award-winning shorts such as Papa Machete, Dolfun, and Swimming in Your Skin Again that have screened at film festivals such as Sundance, BlackStar, TIFF, Sheffield and more. More recently, he co-directed the short film Drowning by Sunrise for The Intercept, and produced T, the 2020 winner of the Golden Bear for Best Short Film at Berlinale. Prior to this, Jeffers was a journalist with The Miami Herald, whose writing has also appeared in outlets such as American Way and Ocean Drive.
In addition to his filmmaking, Jeffers is also co-founder, former festival director and current board chair of Third Horizon Film Festival, an annual showcase in Miami of cinema from the Caribbean, its diaspora, and other underrepresented spaces in the Global South. It was named one of the “25 Coolest Film Festivals in the World” in 2019 and 2021 by MovieMaker Magazine. For this and other work at the intersection of filmmaking, civic media, and social justice, Jeffers was named a 2024 Creative Capital Awardee, a 2023 USA fellow, a 2019 Ford Foundation / Rockwood Leadership Institute JustFilms fellow, and a 2023 USC Annenberg Lab fellow. More recently, Filmmaker Magazine named Jeffers one of its “25 New Faces in Independent Film” for 2024.
Jeffers is currently in development on two feature-length projects: he is co-writing and producing Arc, a social realist science fiction set in inner-city Miami, which has been supported by the Sundance Institute Directors and Screenwriters Lab, SFFILM and Cinereach; and he is also directing The First Plantation (working title), a documentary on the fight for reparations in Barbados, which has been supported by Doc Society, JustFilms/Ford Foundation, ITVS, Sundance Institute, Field of Vision, the Threshold Fund, and the Southern Documentary Fund.
Darcy McKinnon
Producer
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Darcy McKinnon is a documentary filmmaker based in New Orleans whose work focuses on the American South and the Caribbean. Recently released projects include A KING LIKE ME and ROLEPLAY (SXSW, 2024), COMMUTED (PBS, 2024), ALGIERS, AMERICA (Hulu, 2023), UNDER G-D (Sundance 2023), LOOK AT ME! XXXTENTACION (SXSW, Hulu, 2022) and THE NEUTRAL GROUND (Tribeca, POV, 2021). Current projects in production include Jason Fitzroy Jeffers’s THE FIRST PLANTATION, Abe Felix’s TURNAROUND, CJ Hunt’s UNLEARNED, Nicole Craine’s KINFOLK and Zac Manuel’s THE INSTRUMENT. McKinnon’s work has been seen on World Channel, AfroPop, POV, Reel South, LPB and Hulu and has screened at Sundance, Tribeca, SXSW, CPH:DOX and more. She is an alum of the Impact Partners Producing Fellowship and the Sundance Institute Creative Producing Fellowship and is a recipient of American Documentary’s Creative Visionary Award.
Chloe-Walters-Wallae
Consulting Producer
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Chloe Walters-Wallace is a Jamaican-bred creative with a passion for travel, anthropology, dancehall and installation art. Currently, she manages the Firelight Media Documentary Lab, a fellowship that provides mentorship, funding, and access to first- and second-time filmmakers from racially and ethnically underrepresented communities, as well as “Groundwork,” a new initiative which aims to expand the pipeline of emerging independent diverse makers from the South and the Midwest. Previously, Chloe was program director of the New Orleans Film Society’s Emerging Voices Mentorship Program, which establishes meaningful connections between industry leaders and Louisiana-based filmmakers of color. In 2018, she helped design and launch the Southern Producers Lab, a regional program bringing together 13 emerging, diverse producers from across the American South. Chloe has served on juries for NEA Media Arts, Create Louisiana, The Tricentennial Story Incubator, CAAM, Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers, PBS Online Festival, Reel South, Cucalorus W-I-P Lab, and the Tribeca Film Institute IF/Then Short Documentary Program.
Zac Manuel
Director of Photography
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Zac Manuel is a director and cinematographer from New Orleans, Louisiana. Zac’s work in documentary draws from complex legacies of Southern identity, with particular interest in the impacts of history and inheritance on Black communities. Zac’s cinematography credits include TIME (2021), Academy Award nominee for Best Feature Documentary, BUCKJUMPING (2018) and DESCENDANT (2022), which was released by Netflix. His directing credits include THIS BODY, released on PBS, NONSTOP, which was acquired by the Criterion Channel in 2022, and LIL NAS X: LONG LIVE MONTERO, eponymous documentary of the international pop star which was acquired by Max in 2024.
Romola Lucas
Producer
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Romola Lucas is a filmmaker and attorney from Guyana. As an attorney, Romola represents artists and entrepreneurs. As a filmmaker, Romola has produced several narrative shorts in different countries around the Caribbean. She is also one of the founders of the Caribbean Film Academy and is executive director of Third Horizon.
Sebastián Díaz
Editor
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Based between the SF Bay area, LA and NY, Sebastián Díaz is a filmmaker and recipient of two Emmy awards as an editor, winning for Atención! Murderer Next Door (NY Times OpDoc) and the interactive documentary {The And}. He also edited Takeover (NY Times OpDoc), which made the Academy Awards shortlist in 2022; as well as Cypress Hill: Insane in the brain for Showtime. His short documentary, Toñita's, premiered at MoMA Documentary Fortnight. His feature documentary Brilliant Soil won the Material Culture & Archeology Film Prize at the RAI Festival of Ethnographic Film. Sebastian received a PBS Emerging Filmmakers grant in 2023 with A Thousand Pines, a feature documentary funded by ITVS and Latino Public Broadcasting, broadcast on Independent Lens in 2024. As an editor and independent filmmaker he has worked for organizations such as Netflix, the BBC, Frontline and the Guggenheim Museum. He co-founded Bulbo art collective (2001-2011), which produced a documentary series broadcast in US and Mexico (Univision) about Tijuana-San Diego border culture where he was raised. Sebastián was a fellow of the 2019 Karen Schmeer Diversity in the Edit Room fellowship and sits on the board of directors of UnionDocs, NYC.