2023
Rayka Zehtabchi & Sam Davis | Filmmakers
By John Priddy
I was introduced to our 2023 Spirit of Windrider Award Recipients, Rayka Zehtabchi and Sam Davis, on a hot and humid summer day in Indianapolis in 2018. I was happy to be inside an air-conditioned theater at the inaugural Indy Shorts Film Festival when I was first captivated by their short film, Period. End of Sentence.
Soon after that, Sam and Rayka joined us at the Windrider Summit at Sundance to screen that film, and we learned that they had just been nominated for an Academy Award!
A few weeks later, many of us watched as Rayka accepted the award for Best Documentary Short Subject from the Dolby stage at the Oscars.
“I can’t believe a film about menstruation just won an Oscar,” a delighted Rayka said to a standing ovation crowd. As an Iranian/American, she was the first person of Iranian descent to win an Academy Award.
Period. End of Sentence. was Rayka’s first documentary, and Rayka and Sam’s first big project after graduating from USC in 2016. They made the film while Rayka worked as a production assistant and drove for Uber, and Sam shot cooking tutorials and low-budget music videos.
Up until Period., the pair had given little thought to making documentaries, but seeing the real-world impact of the film opened their eyes to the power of this storytelling avenue. Fortunately, at this same time, documentary film was entering into a sort of renaissance moment as the public began to celebrate artistically crafted, cinematic docs.
Rayka and Sam bring a narrative filmmaking approach to their docs and strive to evolve the format. Now, they see themselves making both documentaries and narrative films forever.
“We want to make docs that feel like movies and movies that feel like docs, meaning they might be based on true stories, feature first-time actors, etc., or straddle the line between fiction and non-fiction,” said Sam.
Fast forward to 2023: these two artists, who are also a couple, create films that have premiered at major festivals including Sundance and SXSW and streamed on Netflix and Hulu. For Rayka and Sam, every project is a passion project.
Rayka and Sam have a working dynamic that is fluid, with little distinction between their respective roles. They serve one another by challenging each other, striving to improve the strength of their collaboration over time as they have grown together as people and as storytellers.
Sam said that “with a stronger collaboration comes more trust, communication, respect, loyalty, and patience — the basic ingredients that make any relationship worthwhile.” Rayka added, “It’s such a gift to be able to do what you love together, especially something as improbable as filmmaking ... getting to share in these adventures and experiences, the places our work takes us, the people we encounter and the things we learn.”
With a brilliant body of work featuring documentaries such as Period., Long Line of Ladies, Just Hold On and A Woman’s Place, and narratives like Are you Still There? and SHn(y)oof, it is the powerful themes and resonant storylines that set this dynamic duo apart as our 2023 Spirit of Windrider Award recipients.
And our Windrider community now get to celebrate and honor Sam and Rayka, for the incredible work that they have done so far while continuing to be super fans of the work they will do in the years to come.
