Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another, and it seems hard to find in this age of social media, political divide and competing in the rat race.
But there is still hope, according to a group of female filmmakers who participated in a Women In Film-sponsored panel called “Emphasis on Empathy: The Power of Compassion” during the 2026 Sundance Film Festival on Sunday at the Acura House of Energy.
Moderator Tanya Sevaratnam, a critically acclaimed author and award-winning filmmaker, set the tone in a little prelude speech.
“We mostly think about the five senses associated with the body like touch and taste, but there also, in many cultures, 19 senses associated with the soul, like empathy, kindness, proximity,” she said. “So today we’re going to talk about how to open up those portals to awaken those senses of the soul with this amazing panel.”
The panel featured “Saccharine” writer, director and producer Natalie Erika James, Tandem Pictures’ Julie Christeas who produced NB Mager’s “Run Amok,” “Take Me Home” writer, director and producer Liz Sargent and “Bedford Park” writer and director Stephanie Ahn and producer Nina Yang Bongiovi.
As Sevaratnam introduced the panel she asked for each member’s thoughts about empathy.
“Empathy, to me, means understanding, and my films try to understand the world in some way and bring an audience along through empathy through characters,” James said.
Christeas said it’s something everyone can tap into because it has no gender, culture or race.
“At any moment when you begin to feel angry or judgemental toward somebody else or another situation, you can ask yourself if you can take a moment and be curious about what might be happening for that person in this moment of now and given them a little more grace and understanding that you did before,” she said.
Ahn feels empathy starts with curiosity.
“When you’re curious, you open up, and you willfully listen,” she said. “We all have habitual ways of seeing the world and seeing other people. But when you’re curious, you put yourself aside and put your attention on someone else.”
Bongiovi said the films she chooses to produce creates empathy through storytelling.
“Pretty much every film I get to produce is really about understanding everybody,” she said. “(They’re) also (about) perspectives, culture, identity, whatever it is, (and) going through storytelling is what I get to do in expanding people’s perspectives. And doing that creates more empathy.”
Sargent said empathy is something personal, like her film.
“It stars my sister who has a cognitive disability, and I shot it at my parents house, and it’s written from moments of my life,” she said.
Christeas said independent films like Sargent’s work, is a perfect format where audiences can develop empathy.
“Independent film exists outside the studio for a reason,” she said. “We’re trying to point a lens at stories that might not otherwise have an opportunity to get told — at communities, at individuals — who have something to say.”
The challenge, Christeas said, is convincing backers to invest in these stories, especially ones created by first-time filmmakers.
“They are totally unknown by the market and untested, but that doesn’t make it any less important to strive as producers to find a way forward for their unique point of view to be heard,” she said.
Bongiovi, who has premiered 10 films at Sundance over the years, is proof that these films can be made.
“Nine of them are first-time feature directorial debuts,” she said.
Those directors include Academy Award-nominated Ryan Coogler and London Film Critics Award-winning Rebecca Hall.
Still, Bongiovi feels like the film market place has shrunken, which makes independent films harder to produce.
“I do a lot of fundraising, and with the lack of acquisition, investors are more and more afraid to invest in independent film and first-time feature films,” she said. “But I don’t want to lose hope.”
Sargent basically threw the whole model out the window when making her film.
“I think every great film is made in a totally unique way; it’s just being in tune with your collaborator or subject,” she said. “My whole approach to this film was centering my sister and the way she sees the world and creating an environment where she can succeed.”
Sargent first premiered “Take Me Home” as a short, proof-of-concept, film at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, and it caught the eyes of Ai-Jen Poo, executive director of Caring Across Generations, a nonprofit that works to improve the care infrastructure in the United States, who would come on as executive producer for a full-length feature.
“It was an alignment of values,” Sargent said. “They found money through foundations and led an impact campaign because they believed the way we were making the film.”
Ai-Jen Poo was drawn to knowing someone with a cognitive disability could be 95% of the film, according to Sargent.
“All the patience, the flexibility and messiness was the most important part of it,” she said.
Another issue the panel addressed was how filmmakers use their creativity to foster empathy.
James said her film puts the audience in the shoes of someone struggling with an eating disorder and does it in a genre-specific way.
“Horror has been an incredible, creative vehicle to portray some very uncomfortable themes,” she said. “Often we talk about the insidiousness of diet culture, weight stigma, fat phobia in very intellectual terms, in very surface terms, so I wanted to create an experience in which you feel every visceral moment of this character’s journey through visuals and sound. I was hoping the extremeness of horror would be a way to cut through to give people a deep bodily sensation of insight.”
Ahn, however. didn’t start writing “Bedford Park” with the idea of instilling empathy in her audience.
“Where I started was more about feeling because I really wanted to create a film where my audience actually felt something,” she said. “I was actually feeling there was a real lack of films out there that actually made me feel something. So, I started with that and created characters and a story that would bring that.”
Christeas also said empathy goes beyond the stories the producers help filmmakers bring to light. It also means seeing the artists as people.
“I tell my cousin every time I make a film, I run away with the circus, but that circus is human beings,” she said.
Christeas confessed she didn’t take that to heart until she personally experienced an issue on set.
“I just had my son, and I was pumping (breast milk) in a barn with no heat and no lights,” she said. “It occurred to me that (as) producer, I failed completely to have a process here that’s caring for my needs. And from that moment, it really dawned on me that every new parent, every working professional, has a life and needs outside these really intense few months when we’re all together. (And they need) a space and some time to be well while they are with us.”
Bongiovi said there can also be times when just words can make a difference.
“I remember working with a producer who was very territorial and was pushing me away,” she said. “I was the one who got that film into production by raising all the funds, so I had a talk with this person. I said, ‘I am not your competitor. My goal is the same — to see this film happen. You’re going to see it flourish.’ After that happened, we had a beautiful production.”
Christeas also had an experience where her words made a difference.
“I had been invited to a philanthropic event by an executive I had just met, and it was at the time when Hilary Clinton was running for president,” she said.
Christeas found herself talking in a group of older men, who were all “left-leaning, liberal, artist-entrepreneural gentlemen.”
“As we were talking, they ended up making what they thought was a hilarious joke about a presidential hopeful at that time being a rapist,” she said. “They were all hysterical and laughing, and I felt like I was in the fisheye lens of ‘Requiem for a Dream.’ I felt so small and afraid.”
In that moment, Christeas looked the executive in the eye and said, “That’s not funny that someone who wants to be president of the greatest free nation in the world is being accused of rape.”
The executive stopped laughing and apologized to her in front of the group.
“At that moment I realized what being invited to the table might mean for a while as the only woman,” she said. “I (realized that) I was going to have to make a choice every single time (about) is the working relationship important or is it more important to just have the big mouth my mom always told me I had and say, ‘No, please, don’t make that a joke. You diminish me and every other person who identifies as female.’”
Sargent emphasized empathy doesn’t have to be weak or slow or cost more money.
“It can also be pushing people to have the resources they need to be great, and that can be on every part of making a film,” she said.
James summed up the panel by encouraging everyone in the audience to be compassionate.
“The bottom line or whatever you’re trying to achieve should never outshadow treating someone like a human being,” she said.
For screening times for ‘Saccharine,’ ‘Run Amok,’ ‘Take Me Home’ and ‘Bedford Park’ during the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, visit festival.sundance.org.