Filmmakers

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Pedro

Protagonist, Co-Writer

Pedro is a social worker, who is devoted to providing vision rehabilitation and mental health services for marginalized groups. As a blind undocumented immigrant himself, the intersectionality between immigration, blindness, and mental health has been a constant in his life. With the support of his family and community, Pedro has learned to embrace his identities, using them to empower others to face their own adversities. Pedro has volunteered his time to promote higher education to undocumented students, as he is a firm believer that knowledge is the key for upward mobility. Aside from his profession, Pedro is also a triathlon enthusiast. It is an activity that grounds him and connects him with his higher self. Since his personal life is as important to him as his professional life, Pedro enjoys spending time with his family and close friends. Their love is what motivates him to keep moving forward.

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Set Hernandez

Director, Producer, Cinematographer, Writer, Co-Editor

Set Hernandez is a filmmaker and community organizer whose roots come from Bicol, Philippines. As a queer, undocumented immigrant, they dedicate their filmmaking to expand the portrayal of their community on screen. Set’s past documentary work includes the award-winning short “COVER/AGE” (2019) and impact producing for “Call Her Ganda” (Tribeca, 2018). An alumnus of the Disruptors Fellowship, Set is also developing both a TV comedy pilot and a feature-length screenplay. Since 2010, Set has been organizing around migrant justice issues, from deportation defense to healthcare access. They co-founded the Undocumented Filmmakers Collective which promotes equity for undocumented immigrants in the film industry. Set’s work has been supported by the Sundance Institute, NBCUniversal, Ford Foundation, Open Society Foundations, among others. In their past life, Set was a published linguistics researcher, focusing in the area of bilingualism. Above all, Set is the fruit of their family’s love and their community’s generosity.

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Day Al-Mohamed

Producer

Day Al-Mohamed is an author, filmmaker, and disability policy strategist. Her policy work has focused on marginalized and disenfranchised groups and includes a variety of legislative and programmatic projects including active roles in passage of the Affordable Care Act and the Hate Crimes Prevention Act; and efforts at the United Nations to address reparations for victims of genocide. Day is author of two novels and is a regular host on Idobi Radio’s “Geek Girl Riot” with an audience of 80,000 listeners. Her documentary film, THE INVALID CORPS, a forgotten history about disabled Civil War soldier regiments, premiered on public television in 2020. She is the series creator, writer, and director of American Masters/PBS’ series RENEGADES. Day is a Founding Member of FWD-Doc (Documentary Filmmakers with Disabilities), active in Women in Film and Video (WIFV), and recently joined the board of Docs in Progress. A skilled moderator, she presents often on the representation of disability in media, most recently at the National Bar Association, SXSW, and AFI. However, she is most proud of being invited to teach a workshop on storytelling at the White House in February 2016.

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Félix Endara

Producer

Félix Endara is a bilingual creative professional from Guayaquil, Ecuador. He is based in New York City, where he works in private philanthropy and as an independent producer. He is a queer trans filmmaker who documents the preservation of LGBT historical spaces, champions activists who catalyze social change, and disrupts the insidious narratives that deny the humanity of marginalized communities. He has over 15 years of experience in filmmaking, philanthropy, and arts administration, collaborating with organizations that support multidisciplinary artists and organizations, including the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, North Star Fund, Detroit Narrative Agency, Tribeca Film Institute, New Orleans Film Festival, and the Open Society Foundations. He was a fellow at the IFP Documentary Finishing Lab (2010) as producer for WILDNESS (2012, Dir: Wu Tsang), which premiered at MoMa’s Documentary Fortnight series in February 2012, was an official selection at SXSW, and screened at the Whitney Biennial later that year. His most recent documentary feature as producer, NORTH BY CURRENT (2021) directed by Angelo Madsen Minax, had its World Premiere at the Berlinale, North American premiere at Tribeca, and will be broadcast as part of the POV series on PBS in late Fall 2021. Félix is Co-Chair of the Board of Working Films, an organization that brings together documentary filmmakers and grassroots activists to advance social justice.

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Diane Quon

Executive Producer

Diane Quon is an Academy Award-nominated producer who worked as a marketing executive in LA at NBC and at Paramount Pictures before moving back to her hometown of Chicago. Diane has produced multiple documentaries: Oscar and Emmy nominated, Peabody and Sundance award-winning film, MINDING THE GAP (Hulu, POV) directed by Bing Liu; THE DILEMMA OF DESIRE with Peabody Award-winning director Maria Finitzo (Showtime); Emmy-nominated FINDING YINGYING by Jiayan “Jenny” Shi (MTVDocs); FOR THE LEFT HAND (PBS) directed by Gordon Quinn and Leslie Simmer; WUHAN WUHAN by Yung Chang (POV), SURF NATION (Mountainfilm Telluride 2022) and BAD AXE (IFCFilms). Upcoming documentaries include the UNTITLED SAM AND OMAR PROJECT and THE UNTITLED 19TH* NEWS FILM. Also in development is a fiction film based on a New York Times best-seller and Bing Liu’s first original screenplay. Diane is an AMPAS and PGA member, the recipient of the 2020 Cinereach Producer Award and is an IFP Cannes Producer Fellow, a Sundance Creative Producing Fellow and a Film Independent Fellow.

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Dorian Gomez Pestaña

Co-producer

Dorian Gomez Pestaña (she/they) is a Queer Mexican filmmaker, storyteller, and multidisciplinary artist raised in the South. She is a founding member of the Undocumented Filmmakers Collective and is passionate about stories that celebrate the immigrant experience and explore social justice issues. Some of her most recent work includes writing, directing, and producing the short film Refugio (2023). This film is about an immigrant family purchasing their first home in the US while navigating the complex concept of home. She is also co-producing the documentary film unseen (2023). The film unseen is about an aspiring social worker that surmounts political restrictions as a blind, undocumented immigrant to obtain a college degree and support his family. In addition, her passion for sound has allowed her to work as a creative director and producer for the podcast Nuestro South. Nuestro South explores the latine immigrant experience in the US South during the Jim Crow Era.

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Daniel Chávez-Ontiveros

Editor, Writer

Daniel Chávez-Ontiveros is an award-winning Mexican filmmaker. He studied an MFA in Documentary Film at Stanford University. His thesis film EL CISNE (2016) was awarded the UNAFF Youth Vision Award and the Audience Award in the Program of Sexual Diversity at the Morelia International Film Festival FICM. He works as an editor in short and feature documentary films in the California Bay Area. He edited the HotDocs and Tribeca award-winning film ‘499’ (dir. Rodrigo Reyes) and For this film, Daniel was nominated for Best Editing in a Documentary Film at the Tribeca Film Festival. He’s also the editor of the ITVS funded film SANSON AND ME (dir. Rodrigo Reyes) and SANCTUARY RISING (dir. Theo Rigby & Florencia Krochink), films that are currently in the final stage of their postproduction processes. He’s also part of the production team in the limited series of GROWING UP IN AMERICA: LIFE AFTER THE TALIBAN, a project that was selected to participate in the 2021 Film Independent + CNN Original Docu-Series Intensive. Daniel is also co-director at Video Consortium México (VCMX), a non-profit organization that focuses on building community in the documentary scene in Mexico and promoting the work of emerging Mexican documentary filmmakers.

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Claudia Ramirez

Associate Editor

Claudia Ramirez is a social justice advocate and filmmaker born in Mexico and raised in Los Angeles. Claudia has worked as an assistant editor on the award-winning short “COVER/AGE” (2019) and Los Eternos Indocumentados (2019), a documentary feature film that explores the root causes of forced migration centering refugees’ stories, resilience, and grassroot transnational organizing actions. Claudia has taken her talent in post production and worked on shows on HBO and Disney Plus. She is also a co-founder of the Undocumented Filmmakers Collective which promotes equity for undocumented immigrants in the film industry. Outside of filmmaking, she has been a social justice advocate working at the intersection of community movement building, migrant justice, and healing work since 2010. Claudia is a recipient of the Elevate Incubator Screenwriting Lab and currently working on developing a screenplay and a short documentary. When she is not in an editing room Claudia likes to go on bike rides, watch comedy specials, tend to her plants, and dance cumbias.

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DeAndre James Allen-Toole

Composer

DeAndre James Allen-Toole is a composer for film, television, games, and new media best known for his original score to Julian Higgins' neo-Western feature God's Country--starring Thandiwe Newton. First showing as a 2022 Sundance Film Festival Premieres selection, God's Country has received widespread critical acclaim for many aspects, notably including DeAndre's score. The film opened in U.S. theaters on September 16th, 2022. Since graduating from Columbia College Chicago's Music Composition for the Screen program in 2017, DeAndre enjoyed a lively career crafting music for diverse media independently and under the employment of many senior composers in Los Angeles before launching an independent career. He is a Sundance Institute Film Music & Sound Design Lab alum, a Sundance Institute Interdisciplinary Program grantee, and most recently, a Reel Change Film Fund grantee in connection to his first feature-length film, God's Country.

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Conchita Hernandez Legorreta

Impact Producer

Conchita Hernandez Legorreta was born in Mexico and grew up in California. She advocates for the rights of blind children and their parents in the public-school setting in the United States and abroad. Conchita received a Doctoral degree in Special Education from George Washington University. Conchita is a Biden Presidential Appointee to the National Board for Education Sciences. Conchita is the founder and Chair of METAS a non-profit organization that trains educators in Latin America that work with blind/low vision students and other disabilities. In this role she engages lawmakers in policy discussions around people with disabilities and inclusion. Conchita is also a co-founder of the National Coalition of Latinx with Disabilities that seeks to amplify the voices of disabled Latinx in the disability rights movement. Conchita strives to be a voice for change for educators, professionals and advocates to make full inclusion a reality for people with disabilities in Latin America. 

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Julie Yeeun Kim

Songwriter

Julie Yeeun Kim is a Korean American singer/songwriter, writer, and educator. Many of her musical and literary projects engage themes of identity, memory, and home. Currently, she is a Fellow at the Collegeville Institute’s “Emerging Writers Program.” In 2019, she was an Art Fellow through Define American’s fellowship for undocumented creatives as well as a regular voice actor for “Little Tooni,” a Korean children’s Youtube show.

In 2018, Julie collaborated with John Daversa’s Big Band in the album “American Dreamers,” which won three Grammys in 2019, including the category for “Best Large Jazz Ensemble.” She teaches in the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies at California State University, Long Beach and is a graduate of Fuller Theological Seminary. She and her husband live in Bergen County, New Jersey but she is forever an Angeleno.

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Qudsiya Naqui

Impact Producer

Qudsiya Naqui is a lawyer, policy researcher, and activist based in Washington, DC. She is the creator and host of Down to the Struts, a podcast about disability, design, and intersectionality. She currently serves as Visiting Assistant Professor in the Immigrant and Noncitizen Rights Clinic at CUNY Law School, where she leads a project aimed at uncovering and addressing the challenges that disabled immigrants face in the U.S. immigration system. Qudsiya’s work is centered around access to justice for marginalized communities, including immigrants, people of color, disabled people, and those who face the legal system without a lawyer. She is committed to fighting for transformative change that will ultimately abolish systems of incarceration and economic oppression. Her work has been featured in Forbes Magazine, Vox, the Disability Visibility Project, and Oxford University Press. When she’s not working on her podcast, Qudsiya enjoys building disability community through adaptive sports—she sits on the board of the Metro Washington Association of Blind Athletes.