Kristal Sotomayor is a bilingual Latinx documentary filmmaker, festival programmer, and freelance journalist based in Philadelphia. Currently, they are in post-production on Expanding Sanctuary, an independent short documentary about the historic end to police surveillance organized by nonprofit Juntos and the Latinx immigrant community in South Philadelphia. They are also in development on the animated short docu-fiction film called Alx Through The Labyrinth that takes a dive into the Alice In Wonderland-like reality of contracting COVID-19. Kristal is a MDOCS Storytellers’ Institute Visiting Fellow, IF/Then North Shorts Resident, DCTV Docu Work-In-Progress Lab Fellow, Justice For My Sister Sci-Fi Screenwriting Lab Fellow, BAVC Serial Storytellers 2.0 Program, Good Pitch Local: Philadelphia Fellow, and NeXtDoc Fellow. They serve as the Awards Competition Manager for the IDA Documentary Awards, Programming Director for the Philadelphia Latino Film Festival, Co-Founder and Journalist for ¡Presente! Media, and are on the Editorial Board for the film journal cinéSPEAK. Formerly, Kristal was the Communications and Outreach Coordinator at Scribe Video Center. Kristal’s journalistic background includes having written for ITVS, AL DÍA, WHYY, and Documentary magazine. They write the Latinx cinema column “Cine alzando voz” for cinéSPEAK. They are a recipient of the Sundance Institute Press Inclusion Initiative, TIFF Media Inclusion Initiative, International Documentary Association (IDA) Magazine Editorial Fellowship, NBC University Visual Storytelling During Breaking News, GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics, and the Lenfest Next Generation Fund.
