Director

Raúl Paz Pastrana

Raúl is a Mexican immigrant filmmaker, cinematographer, and multimedia creator. His work intersects experimental non-fiction, participatory filmmaking, and visual ethnography to explore themes of belonging, alienation, and the concept of “home.” Raúl’s films have screened worldwide including at the Tribeca Film Festival, Sheffield Doc/Fest, the Aspen ShortFest, the Margaret Mead Film Festival, MASS MoCA Museum, the Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI), and at the Guadalajara International Film Festival among many more. His work has received support from the Princess Grace Foundation, Just Films, The LEF Foundation, ITVS, Catapult Film Fund, The Jerome Foundation, the New York Council on the Arts, The Santa Fe Film Institute, MountainFilm, and the Sundance Institute among others. He is a Camargo Foundation Cassis France Artist Alumni, a BAVC MediaMaker fellow, a Firelight Media Documentary Lab Fellow, a Lincoln Center/New York Film Festival Artist Academy alumni, a New America National Fellow, a Creative Capital Awards Artist Fellow, and a Guggenheim Fellow. Website: https://raulpazfilms.com/

Producer

Gabriella Garcia-Pardo

Gabriella is a Colombian-American non-fiction filmmaker drawn to our relationship to land, place and the non-human. She produced and co-wrote La Bonga (True/False 2023) from directors Sebastían Pinzón Silva and Canela Reyes. The film is a co-production with the community featured and follows their return to the home from which they were displaced 20 years before due to Colombia’s civil conflict. Gabriella directed the short The Bardia (Mountainfilm 2022) and is currently directing her first feature, FENCED, a darkly funny meditation on the boundaries that define U.S. land, identity and belonging. Her projects have been supported by Sundance, Catapult, Creative Capital, ITVS, Nia Tero and Firelight Media, among others. Previously, Gabriella created short docs at National Geographic, filmed NPR’s Tiny Desk, and led horse treks through Chile. She has been selected for fellowships at Sundance, Impact Partners, BAVC and NOFS, among others. Committed to community-building, Gabriella founded the DC Video Consortium, where she facilitated mentorship and curated events for filmmakers and journalists.

Producer

Patricia Alvarez Astacio

Patricia is a Puerto Rican anthropologist and filmmaker whose creative practice unfolds between ethnography and documentary film. Her work converges on issues of multispecies relations, race and labor in Latin America. Patricia’s films have screened at festivals worldwide such as the Havana International Film Festival, the Royal Anthropological Institute Film Festival and Cine Las Americas; and museum events and gallery exhibits, including the Queens Museum, Beta-Local, Kilroy Metal Ceiling Gallery and SOMArts. Her documentary short, Entretejido (Havana International Film Festival 2015), is an observational-ethnographic portrait of the alpaca wool supply chain that explores the racial politics of fashion production. Patricia is completing a book manuscript, “Moral Fibers: Ethical Fashion in Peru” (University of California Press), and starting production on two documentaries that merge experimental filmmaking and ethnography. She was the director of the Society for Visual Anthropology Film and Media Festival and is currently an Assistant Professor in the Anthropology Department, and faculty for the Film, TV and Interactive Media Program at Brandeis University.