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Mimi Wilcox

@mimimw

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✂️ documentary editor & filmmaker
director, Academy Award®-shortlisted BAD HOSTAGE
editor, ESCAPING TWIN FLAMES; REALITY CHECK; MnM; etc
brooklyn

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🔦 VC member Mimi Wilcox’s (@mimimw) Oscar-shortlisted documentary short film, “Bad Hostage,” is in the spotlight this week. And now it’s available to watch for free!

“Bad Hostage” tells the story of Wilcox’s grandmother, who was taken hostage in the ‘70s. Her story intersects with the famous kidnapping of Patty Hearst and a dramatic bank heist in Sweden as the film interrogates the concept of Stockholm Syndrome.

💬 “This film began out of personal curiosity about a dramatic event in my family history: my grandmother’s experience being held hostage in 1973. Over the course of 6 years of production, it evolved into a critique of the concept of Stockholm syndrome. After world premiering at Sheffield DocFest in 2024, the film was shortlisted for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short last year. We’re so proud to now be sharing it with a wider audience.” — @mimimw

📺 Watch “Bad Hostage” now on @switchboard.magazine’s YouTube – linked in our bio!

Director + Editor: @mimimw #vcmember
Producer: @masaf4113
Executive Producer: Kirsten Johnson
Consulting Editor: @nyneve0
Original Score: @musicformovingimages
Consulting Producer: @dmquon
Associate Producer: @musicformovingimages
DP: Victor Tadashi Suarez
Motion Design: @heynicejob
Sound Design + Mix: Mark Bandy
Colorist: @yvimosluz
Archival and research: @terence.p.mickey, Dr. Allan Wade, and Dan Carlson Filbey
Special thanks to @timhorsburgh, Gordon Quinn, Debra Zimmerman, and the Ann Baker Riker Charitable Fund, @kartemquin @thefilmfund, @nyfacurrent, @chicagofilmmakers

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Thank you BendFilm Basecamp for 4 days of juicy mentorship, 30+ new friends & creative conspirators, and 28 minutes of circular breathing led by a bald man in a sports coat that bonded us forever.

Beyond honored that my debut feature pitch was selected as this year’s @bendfilmfestival Pitch Contest winner. Big thanks to mentor @whitlader, my homeroom cohort, and roomie @achapphawk for all the help getting my 5 mins tight!

The recognition (and @seanswang Ed McMahon’ing me with a foam core check) was wild, but the real prize was having a room full of filmmakers I so admire erupt into cheers around me. I don’t have the words to express what it means to feel your community rooting for you.

I hesitated posting anything in the midst of Bend’s grief. But it felt important to share my gratitude for all that Bend and BendFilm poured into me––the light, the care, the joy, the creative gumption. I wish I could give it back tenfold, right now.

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Meet Mimi Wilcox, the award-winning Brooklyn-based documentary filmmaker and editor behind Bad Hostage. Her work spans documentary film and television, including Escaping Twin Flames, for which she won an American Cinema Editors Eddie Award and received a Primetime Emmy nomination. Wilcox directed and edited Bad Hostage, which was shortlisted for the 2026 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.

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Still reeling from an incredible, wildly transformative week at @bendfilmfestival Basecamp. Thank you to all of my fellow mentees for your generosity, courage, and warmth - for everyone showing up fully as they are and sharing their beautiful and deeply personal projects. And a major thank you to our amazing mentors, for sharing so candidly and honestly your experiences, wealth of knowledge, and your excitement for work - a very, very special shoutout to my homeroom mentor the ineffable, unstoppable force that is @iamfuriousblack . I'm beyond grateful to have met you and been witness to your brilliance, inspiration, and general all purpose badassery ✊🏽🖤 A massive thank you to our Basecamp directors @claymarshallpruitt and @cooperdance , and our coordinator Shay - you have put together a truly outstanding program, and I shall be spreading the gospel for years to come ❤️ I'm hella excited to see everyone's movies!!

Mentors @darcyheusel @whitlader @maxgeschwind @theyquila @seanswang @heidiewing @cerfreport @ggprods2016 #christinevachon

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Words can’t describe how grateful I am for my experience at @bendfilmfestival Basecamp, but I’m going to try. I went into this experience excited but nervous - I started my filmmaking journey last year, and I’ve been learning as I go.

But once I arrived at Caldera Arts, I felt at peace. Meeting new people is hard, let alone extremely accomplished filmmakers and industry mentors! But amidst the trees and the creek filled with flopping fish, I remembered how much comfort can come from around you. My roommate @daazhraii and I spent every night on the walk back to our cabin with our heads tilted back, admiring the stars. We were lucky enough to witness a meteor shower!

Bendfilm selected the most talented and generous group of fellows. I’ve never been in a space where each story was so different, but also so meaningful. We cried, cheered each other on, and grew immensely in only four days. My Homeroom group, led by the incredible @heidiewing , was such a safe space to share ideas and develop our stories and pitches. I mean it when I say I want to see everyone’s film once they are released, because they WILL get made!

The Bendfilm staff and industry mentors made this experience out of this world. Getting to know and learn from such accomplished professionals told me that filmmaking is really just about people coming together and making magic. Sure, you have pitches, and financing, and distribution, etc, but at the end of the day, it’s about everyone believing in the value of a story. And I got to learn this across the breakfast table and sitting around a campfire. Where stories begin.

I’ve been forever changed. My project is about a Native woman who starts waking up in her past lives, and yearns for the excitement found there, pulling away from her own reality. She soon learns that she already has the elements of those lives she loves in her own reality, she just needs to make the active choice to unlock them. The dream of “making it” in film is fun to envision while falling asleep at night, but the reality of building connections and community to create a story and sharing it with the world is so much sweeter. náxʷɬqʷulʼas (thank you), Bendfilm: Basecamp!

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📝 from jon:
This is a little bittersweet note. I spent the week at Bendfilm: BASECAMP and had a truly amazing experience developing our next project and practicing our pitch with the next wave of award-winning filmmakers. I met some amazing artists and storytellers. Was mentored by THE @heidiewing and spent time in the woods with some of the best and kindest leaders in the industry. I also got the opportunity to pitch @celesteyumarabarbosa and my next project - In Dreams, I Am a Valley in front of a panel of industry judges and a packed theatre. If you have a chance please click the tags on the photos and follow these beautiful souls. You’ll be grateful when you see the work they’ve made and are working on.

We have one more selection to announce before our film festival circuit officially comes to a close and we move on to the next. It’s a good one! Promise. 🤎

Us! Us! Us! Us!!!! 🤣 🫶🏽🏆

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After her grandmother was held hostage, she shocked her small town by declaring that she felt more threatened by the police than by the men holding her hostage. Bad Hostage explores the origins of Stockholm Syndrome through a family story intertwined with the kidnapping of Patty Hearst and a dramatic bank heist in Sweden.

Directed by Mimi Wilcox
98th Academy Awards Shortlist — Best Documentary Short

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Issue 16 is here and we have something a little different for you this month! Many of you know us for our longform written pieces, but are you also tuning in for our short films? This month, we’ve decided to spotlight four shorts in our first ever all video issue. We have short documentaries, short narrative films, and short student work. From a grandmother’s extraordinary hostage story, to a man piecing his life back together after loss, to the high-stakes world of stunt drivers in India, to three Republican women reckoning with the future of their party. Watch now at the link in bio.

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Picture 🔒 with @mimimw

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Brrrlin. February 2026. ❄️❄️❄️🌞❄️❄️❄️

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Editor Mimi Wilcox (@mimimw) describes the emotional connection editors develop with their participants, and balancing that care with the responsibility to tell the story truthfully and preserve the large context. ⁠
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Learn more about the editing process behind hit TV shows on our “Cutting Edge” panel, live now on YouTube. Link in bio. ⁠
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#CuttingEdge #Editor #TV #RealityCheck

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#FYC - #RealityCheck: Inside America’s Next Top Model for Outstanding Picture Editing for a Nonfiction Program

Editing by Stefanie Maridueña, ACE (@stefmariduena), Mimi Wilcox (@mimimw), Austin Flack (@austinflack)

#ForYourConsideration #Emmys #TV

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