Towards a visionary cinema of the borderlands...

Cecilia Aldarondo is a director and producer from the Puerto Rican diaspora who works at the intersection of poetics and politics. Her feature documentaries “Memories of a Penitent Heart” (2016) and “Landfall” (2020) premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and were co-produced by the award-winning PBS series POV. Her third feature, “You Were My First Boyfriend,” had its world premiere at the 2023 South by Southwest Film Festival and is now streaming on HBO. Among Aldarondo's fellowships and honors are the Guggenheim, a three-time MacDowell Colony Fellowship, the 2022 IDA Emerging Filmmaker Award, 2021 New America Fellowship and Women at Sundance 2017. In 2019 she was named to DOC NYC's 40 Under 40 list and is one of 2015’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film. She teaches at Williams College.

Peter Bratt is a Rockefeller Fellow, a Peabody Award winner, an Emmy-nominated film producer, writer and director, a member of the Director’s Guild of America (DGA) and the recipient of the 2023 University of California Santa Cruz’s Social Science Alumni of the Year award. 

Bratt was born and raised in San Francisco by a strong, indigenous, single mother from Peru. His family was part of the American Indian Occupation of Alcatraz, the Wounded Knee standoff and the Farm Workers Movement. As a consultant, organizer and community member, he has worked with the International Indian Treaty Council, Amazon Watch, Friendship House Association of American Indians, BAYCAT, H.O.M.I.E.S., Instituto Familiar De La Raza, CANA, the SF American Indian Cultural District and Native American Health Center.

In 1996, Bratt released his first feature film, “Follow Me Home,” which acclaimed novelist Alice Walker referred to as “a work of genius” and over time became a cult classic. “Follow Me Home” premiered at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival and won the Best Feature Film Audience Award that same year at the San Francisco International Film Festival. 

In 2007, he and his brother Benjamin Bratt (actor) and their partner Alpita Patel co-founded 5 Stick Films, a production company intent on making films that create social impact. 

Two years later, in 2009, they produced “La Mission,” a feature Bratt also wrote and directed. “La Mission” premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, received the prestigious Norman Lear Writer’s Award, won the NAACP and GLAAD award nominations and won two Imagen awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor. It was one of 10 American independent films selected by Sundance and the President’s Committee on Arts and Humanities to launch Sundance Film Forward, a program that uses film and conversation to excite and introduce a new generation to the power of story.

He also wrote, produced and directed “Dolores,” a feature documentary about civil rights icon Dolores Huerta that was executive produced by legendary musician Carlos Santana. “Dolores” debuted at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival and has won numerous awards, including a 2018 Peabody Award and a Critic’s Circle Award.

In 2021, he was also the director and executive producer of ABC’s “Corazon de America,” which was the most widely watched episode of the network's “Soul of a Nation” series.

In addition to his film and television work, Bratt works and organizes in his community. As part of a Native-Latino coalition that is building the first urban Indigenous village in the United States, he is the project lead for Friendship House’s The Village SF, a social service, cultural and spiritual center run by and in service to over 9,000 American Indians living in San Francisco – providing access to health care and behavioral health services, cultural resources, housing and a place to thrive.

Aurora Guerrero is a Chicana filmmaker and activist born to immigrant parents and raised in Northern California. She is a graduate of UC Berkeley and California Institute of Arts. Her debut feature, “Mosquita y Mari,” premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and garnered multiple awards, including Indie Spirit and GLAAD nominations. The New York Times called the film “an unassuming jewel,” praising Guerrero’s attention to the humanity of her characters. 

She is attached to direct the pilot of “The Owl” at Apple+ with Skydance, Religion of Sports and Nuyorican producing and Michael Perri and Vaughn Willmott writing.

She has spent the last decade racking up an increasingly prestigious list of television credits as a sought after episodic director. She is currently directing a block of episodes for Apple+’s new series “Sanctuary.” 

The films of Mexican-American filmmaker Rodrigo Reyes challenge the traditions of cinema to examine the contradictory nature of our shared world while revealing the potential for transformative change. 

Reyes has received the support of the Mexican Film Institute, Sundance and Tribeca Institutes and is a recipient of the Guggenheim and Creative Capital Awards, as well as the Rainin Artist Fellowship, the SF Indie Vanguard Award and the Eureka Fellowship from the Fleishhacker Foundation. Reyes has supported the health of the film community as a board-member of the Video Consortium and the Roxie Theater, and as co-director of the BAVC Mediamaker Fellowship. He has presented his work and taught masterclasses in many settings, including Stanford, Harvard, Yale, UC Santa Cruz, UCLA, Princeton, Boston University, MassArts, The New School, University of San Diego and the DOCS MX Film Festival.

In 2020, his film “499” won Best Cinematography at Tribeca and the Special Jury Award at Hot Docs. “Sansón and Me” won the Best Film Award at Sheffield DocFest and opened the 2023 season of the prestigious documentary series Independent Lens. That same year, he was named a Visiting Artist at Stanford University through the Mellon Foundation. In 2024, he won the Doclands Pitch with an upcoming collective film, and he was honored to be selected for the DocX Lab “Otherwise Histories, Otherwise Futures,” organized by the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke.