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Filmmakers

  • Mabel Valdiviezo – Producer & Director

    Mabel is an award-winning Indigenous Latinx filmmaker, multidisciplinary artist, and alumna of the Sundance Producers Conference. Utilizing a poetic vocabulary, her work explores transnational migration, gender equality, mental health, and spirituality. Mabel is a 2022 fellow of the Gotham Documentary Lab and her work has been supported by the San Francisco Arts Commission and the Fleishhacker Foundation. Her film credits include Carlos Baron, Poeta Pan, documentary short, PBS/KQED (director/producer); The Water’s Muse, experimental short (director/producer); Sands of Silence, feature documentary, PBS World (associate producer); River Webs, PBS (feature editor); Women with Altitude, (feature editor). Her narrative short Soledad Is Gone Forever screened at Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival and received the Women in Film Emerging Filmmaker Award. Mabel is the founder of Haiku Films and Arts 4 Healing. Mabel is a member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia, Undocumented Filmmakers Collective, FWD-Doc, and NALIP.

  • Sara Maamouri – Co-Producer & Editor

    Sara Maamouri is an Emmy-nominated documentary producer and editor who has explored a diverse range of topics for over 20 years. Her work touches on social, educational, and political issues, from a teacher and students performing under extraordinary circumstances (ITVS funded The Music’s Gonna Get You Through, 2010) to rebuilding a life in a former war zone (Amal’s Garden, 2012). Sara edited and produced We Are Not Princesses (premiered at Doc NYC 2018), and edited and co-produced the Peabody Award-winning film The Judge (premiered at TIFF 2017 and won the Best Bay Area Documentary Feature at SFFILM Festival 2018). A multilingual Tunisian educated in New York and California, Sara brings cultural sensitivity to her editing, production, and story development, creating impact-focused narratives to attract and engage rapidly evolving audiences. Her recent films include Black Mothers Love & Resist (SFIFF 2022), directed by Débora Silva Souza and Clarissa’s Battle (HRWFF NYC 2022), directed by Tamara Perkins and produced by Sara.

  • Maria Zeiss – Editor

    Maria is a Venezuelan-born Emmy nominated editor and producer based in San Diego. Maria’s major editing credits and awards include Signing Our Way to Freedom (2018), Best Documentary, San Diego Film Festival; Sands of Silence: Waves of Courage (2017), nominated to Best Documentary Feature at the 32nd Imagen Awards; The Price of Renewal (2006), Best Documentary Editing Nominee, Sacramento International Film Festival, (as part of the PBS documentary series California and The American Dream); Remaking American Medicine (2006), Cine Golden Eagle Award for PBS; Piragua, Best Documentary, IV National Film Festival; Angeles Desterrados, Special Award, International Film/Video Festival; and Buscando América and Crónica Anónicas, a documentary series for HBO. She received her bachelor’s Degree in Social Communications and a masters degree in Television, both in Venezuela.

  • Mario Furloni  – DP (U.S.)

    Mario a Brazilian-born director and cinematographer based in Oakland, California. His feature fiction debut, Freeland, co-directed with Kate McLean, was supported by IFP and SFFILM, and the Kenneth Rainin Foundation. The film, which Furloni also shot,  premiered at SXSW in 2020 and won several awards. He is the cinematographer and co-producer of the critically-acclaimed documentary The Return, nominated for Emmy and Peabody awards. His naturalistic camera work can also be seen in the Oscar-nominated documentary Crip Camp. Furloni has directed a number of  documentary and fiction projects, including Pot Country (USA, 2011), Someone is Happy Somewhere (Brazil, 2016, official selection for San Francisco International Film Festival, and the Havana International Film Festival), Gut Hack (USA 2017, SXSW NYT OpDocs series), and First Friday (USA, 2013, PBS’ AfroPop). He has a master’s degree from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

  • Tupac Saavedra – DP (U.S.)

    Tupac is a cinematographer, journalist and documentary filmmaker with a demonstrated history of working in the media production industry. He has produced documentaries and shorts videos for Frontline World, Time/CNN, Yes Magazine, and LPB from Mexico, India, Cuba, Peru, Brazil, and Bolivia. Tupac’s films include The Little Prince of the Andes, premiered at Al Jazeera, Witness, and  Bolivian Baroque, a 42-minute documentary that aired on European television. His award-winning documentary, On The Road With Evo, is a close look at Evo Morales the person and the politician, as well as an examination of the political conditions that brought him into power.

  • Jorge Vignati – DP (Peru)

    Jorge was the most celebrated Director of Photography working in contemporary Peru. He left an impressive body of work in feature films and independent documentaries. Jorge shot over eighty documentaries all over the world, including Nicaragua, Bolivia, Philippines, Colombia, Mexico, Ecuador, Antarctica, Costa Rica, Uganda, Kenya, Senegal and the USA. Among his many accomplishments, Jorge was assistant director and cameraman in Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo. He shot for National Geographic, BBC, Travel Channel, Discovery, and Paramount.

  • Guillermo Palacios – Location Sound

    Guillermo is a highly experienced location sound person and sound mixer who has worked on over 25 Peruvian films and international co-productions. In the documentary genre, he has been the location sound person for several Peruvian projects as well as for National Geographic, BBC, TV Española, ZDF and NDR in Germany. Guillermo is the founder of Perfo Studio, a sound facility in Lima, Peru, were he is the sound designer and lead sound mixer of feature films. Recently, he was the location sound person and sound designer of October, a Peruvian film that won the Un Certain Regard Jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

  • Mitch Teplitsky – Consulting Producer

    Mitch advises on audience building, educational & new media strategies for the film. He has been on the forefront of innovative fundraising, marketing and distribution strategies for independent filmmakers, and has extensive knowledge of the Peruvian experience in the U.S. He is a documentary filmmaker and marketing/fundraiser consultant, based in New York City and Lima, Peru. His feature documentary Soy Andina, about Peru, dance and identity, was broadcast on U.S. public television (Latino Public Broadcasting) in 2009 and 2010. Mitch also produced New American Girls, a web series about (Dreamers) undocumented immigrants for LPB.

  • Chelo Alvarez-Stehle – Impact Producer

    As a documentary filmmaker and impact producer, Chelo orchestrated her Through the Wall short and Sands of Silence feature documentary worldwide impact campaigns, including screenings, Q&A and panels around the world from Sidney to Tijuana; universities from Yale to Oxford to Buenos Aires and Hiroshima; women’s rights, human rights ,and immigrant rights organizations; and the United Nations. Chelo worked as an impact producer for Nasrin, on the jailed Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, taking it to the European Parliament, and to millions of Arab and Iranian households. She is the lead impact producer for From Here, on immigration, and racism (The WORLD Channel/America Reframed) and impact consultant for Storming Caesars Palace on universal basic income, (Independent Lens), helping bring the film to Capitol Hill ahead of the midterm elections.