The Team
The Team
FEMME FRONTERA
The Team
Jackie Barragan, Co-Director
pronouns- she/ella
Jackie is a documentary filmmaker from the U.S./Mexico Border. She graduated from UTEP with a Bachelor’s in Anthropology and a Minor in Dance. During her studies, she focused on indigenous cultures of the Americas and grassroots social movements studying extensively with the Zapatista movement. In 2021, her documentary short film, JOSIE, received First Place Award and the Audience Choice award at the Plaza Classic Film Festival. She went on to direct and produce Ome Tlaloc: Ceremonial Tattoos through the REEL South PBS program and is continuing to direct and produce more films to come. Her purpose is to tell stories that challenge the narrative on the border by exploring the complexities of the region.
Ryan Rox,
Co-Director
pronouns: she/they
Ryan Rox(she/they) is a queer, Latine Director, Writer, and Actor of Trans Non-Binary experience, living and working in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Rox recently completed her first feature film, HIDDEN FLORA. Rox is grateful to have showcased her work at TRANSlations, the San Francisco Transgender Film Festival, and many more. Rox and her work have been supported by Femme Frontera’s Filmmaker Grant with mentorship from Aitch Alberto; Film Fatales’ Fatales Forward: Trans Stories Fellowship with mentorship from Olivia Peace; and Daniella’s Guestbook. Her primary filmmaking focus is uplifting queer voices and narratives; carving out inclusive spaces for LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC employment and community building; and bringing awareness to and sparking empathy in those unfamiliar with or misinformed about the community.
Mariana Góngora,
Co-Director
Mariana Góngora is a documentary filmmaker and video journalist from Chihuahua, Mexico, and is based between the U.S./Mexico border. She commercially works as a producer, editor, and assistant director. As a borderland and Mexican-American woman, Mariana explores the shapes and forms of identities that emerge from the duality of binational experiences. Mariana was a 2022 fellow recipient for Femme Frontera x Sundance Institute’s Film Laboratory and has earned five best documentary awards for her co-direction of La Bi-vencia. She is currently working on developing her interactive digital magazine The Doc Method. Mariana is passionate about the documentation through collective memory carried among those who grew up under the War On Drugs in Mexico, the borderland experience, and healing processes through filmmaking.
Seth Gadsden, Consultant
Seth Gadsden is a visual artist and documentary filmmaker raised on a small farm in Clover, SC and based in San Diego, CA. He practices intimate, observational cinematography and experimental approaches to storytelling. Having worked extensively in the nonprofit sector to support independent filmmakers, Seth’s approach to producing is deeply collaborative and invested in fostering community, sustainability, and supporting emerging filmmakers. His camerawork has been featured at Big Sky, New Orleans Film Festival, Femme Frontera, AFI Fest, Montclair Film Festival, amongst others. Over the years, Seth has managed a wide range of projects: film festivals, community storytelling labs, site-specific public art and new media artworks. Currently, Seth manages education programs at Media Arts Center San Diego.
Prior Collaborators
Vicky Ponce,
Artist Development Manager: La Frontera Film Lab
Maria Victoria Ponce is a writer and director. Her work navigates the complexities in the routine lives within poor and working-class neighborhoods: themes of immigration, sexuality and coming of age tend to recur. Ponce is a fellow at Cine Qua Non Lab, Latino Screenwriting Project, Sundance/WIF Financing Intensive, Film Independent Fast Track as well as an artist resident at SFFILM FilmHouse. Her short fiction narrative Death & Deathability: A Period Piece broadcast nationally on PBS. She's currently developing with three feature narrative projects: One of those project, Washing Elena, is on the Black List’s inaugural Latinx List.
Eva Videla, Education Manager
Eva Videla was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico but grew up in Chihuahua, Mexico. During her childhood, she fell in love with reading and storytelling, influenced by her grandparent's stories. Eva holds a Master's degree in Communication Studies from New Mexico State University and a B.A. in Communication and International Studies from The University of New Mexico. During her studies, she focused on the intersectionalities of the fronterizos and their cultural identity. She has experience in volunteer work and educational programming, but her most recent position is at the National Young Farmers Coalition in fundraising. She likes to travel, garden, and spend time with her family and pets during her free time.
Camila Abbud, Femme Frontera Graphic Designer
Camila is a fronteriza creative with a special focus in visual art and its storytelling power. Camila is currently undergoing her bachelor's in arts at the University of Texas at El Paso with a double concentration in Graphic Design and Painting with a minor in Anthropology.
Advisory Board
Mónica Ortiz Uribe
Mónica Ortiz Uribe is an independent reporter born and raised in El Paso who writes about the U.S./Mexico border and the American Southwest. Her work has appeared on National Public Radio and the El Paso Times. In 2020, she co-hosted the podcast Forgotten: The Women of Juárez about the murders of women in El Paso’s Mexican sister city. The production was listed among the top ten podcasts of 2020 by the Atlantic.
Maru Buendia-Senties
Maru is an award-winning writer and director. She holds an MFA in Film Production from the University of Texas at Austin, and her films have been supported by NALIP's Latino Lens Narrative Incubator, the Princess Grace Foundation-USA, and the Artist Academy at Lincoln Center. Maru’s background includes roles with a variety of companies in the U.S. and internationally, including Troublemaker Studios (Robert Rodriguez), Screen Gems, Annapurna, Mirada Studios (Guillermo del Toro), and Pixomondo, the visual effects company behind Game of Thrones. Maru is currently a Senior Post Executive at Amazon Studios.
Sabiha Ahmad Khan
Sabiha Ahmad Khan is a researcher, educator, and maker of documentary media. She teaches at the University of Texas at El Paso. Her work focuses on food, environment, and culture.
Photo credit: Monica Lozano
Aitch Alberto
Aitch Alberto is a writer/director born and raised in Miami, Florida. She is a Sundance Episodic Lab fellow, recipient of a Skowhegan Artist Residency, a Yaddo fellowship, a Latino Screenwriting Project Fellowship, and an alumnus of the Outfest Screenwriting Lab. Aitch has written on DUSTER, from J.J. Abrams and LaToya Morgan for HBO Max. She also served as a writer on AppleTV+’s BAFTA and Film Independent Nominated anthology series LITTLE AMERICA. Most recently, Aitch has adapted and directed the NYT's Best-Selling young adult novel ARISTOTLE AND DANTE DISCOVER THE SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE by Benjamin Alíre Saenz. The film was produced by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Eugenio Derbez. Aitch has most recently been featured on Variety’s 10 Directors To Watch for 2022 and Indiewire’s 22 Rising Female Filmmakers to watch in 2022.
Chloe Walters-Wallace
Chloe is the Director of Regional Initiatives at Firelight Media, where she oversees the Groundwork Regional Lab and the new HOMEGROWN non-fiction shorts slate, both programs supporting filmmakers of color in the South, Midwest & US Territories. She is also guest-curator of the Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers 21'-22' season, and co-created the Caribbean Film Academy 2.0 at Third Horizon.
Charles Horak
Charles Horak is host of the weekly radio program On Film (KTEP, 88.5 FM, NPR) and is a voting member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association. In 2008 he co-founded the Plaza Classic Film Festival in El Paso, Texas and was the festival’s artistic director for its first six years. For over 15 years, he has been the director and host of The Film Salon, an ongoing monthly screening series dedicated to celebrating important and classic films and filmmakers. He is Chair of the Director's Circle of The Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts, is on the board of the Texas Archive of the Moving Image and a member of the Association of Moving Image Archivists.
Femme Frontera Co-Founders
ANGIE REZA TURES
pronouns: she/they
Angie has worked in independent film since 2003 after graduating from the University of San Francisco with a B.A. in Media Studies and minor in Music. For twelve years, she worked as an independent doc producer, director, and editor in the Bay Area working with award-winning documentary filmmakers. In 2011, Angie moved back to her hometown of El Paso, Texas where she co-founded the Femme Frontera Filmmaker Showcase in 2016 and served as Executive Director until 2023. Since 2020, the organization has received support from the Ford Foundation, Sundance Institute, Perspective Fund, and Constellations grant from the Center for Cultural Power. She is a 2022 Rockwood Documentary Leaders Fellow, a fellowship supported by the Ford Foundation. In 2023, she spoke on behalf of Femme Frontera at TEDxElPaso. The same year, she also served as a SXSW juror for the Texas Shorts program. In 2023, she will complete her first narrative script.
Laura Bustillos JÁquez
Laura is a documentary filmmaker and photographer from the border of Mexico and the United States. As a Transnational Woman of Color, she focuses on telling stories about immigration and social reconstruction movements within the U.S.-Mexico border and the world. Laura graduated with a BA in Visual Journalism and a special recognition from Brooks Institute in Ventura, California. She then obtained a David Lynch MA in Film at Maharishi University in 2015.
She is an Alumnus of The Laundromat Project in NYC, was 2019’s Distinguished Global Speaker on Immigration, Humanity, and Empowerment at Towson University in Baltimore, Maryland, participated in Creative Capital’s “Taller Profesional para Artistas”, was an invited lecturer of “Decolonizing our Identities” at the Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juarez as well as at ISMA in Cotonou, Benin, among other creative accomplishments as a Director, Director of Photography, Editor, Producer, and more.
jazmin ONTIVEROS harvey
Jazmin is a queer Latinx filmmaker from the borderlands of New Mexico. In 2016, Jazmin’s film Overland screened in what later became the Femme Frontera Filmmaker Showcase. As the co-founder of Femme Frontera, Jazmin is passionate about empowering female-identifying and non-binary voices along the border, partnering with organizations such as Meow Wolf to create educational opportunities for local filmmakers. As a social justice storyteller, Jazmin created short documentaries for the ACLU of Southern California, and has been working in the film industry since 2015. She is a member of the ICG Local 600 and has worked in the camera department on multi-million-dollar movies including Bios, starring Tom Hanks, and most recently, The Harder They Fall, starring Idris Elba and Jonathan Majors. Among other projects, Jazmin DP’d the award-winning web series Bad Juju, as well as Matter of Black, which was distributed by Seed & Spark.
iliana sosa
Iliana is a filmmaker based in Austin, Texas. She was born and raised in El Paso, Texas by Mexican immigrant parents. A former Bill Gates Millennium Scholar, she holds a MFA in film production and directing from UCLA. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Steven Bochco Fellowship, the Hollywood Foreign Press Award, the Edie and Lew Wasserman Fellowship and the National Hispanic Foundation of the Arts Scholarship, among others. Her MFA thesis film, CHILD OF THE DESERT, won Best Short Film and the Texas Award at the Oscar qualifying 2012 USA Film Festival. She was a 2013 Film Independent Project Involve Directing Fellow and was selected for the 2013 TransAtlantic Talent Lab in Reykjavik, Iceland. In 2014, she was selected for the Sundance sponsored Latino Screenwriting Project with her script, PAPER BIRDS LEARN TO FLY. Iliana has directed short documentaries, fiction shorts and a fiction feature, DETAINED IN THE DESERT, which had its World Premiere at the 2012 Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival. She is currently in post-production on her first feature documentary, JULIAN.
ilana lapid
Ilana Lapid is a filmmaker and educator interested in exploring the personal faces of global conflicts. She was born in NYC and grew up in Jerusalem, Ottawa and Las Cruces, NM. She holds a BA from Yale and MFA from the University of Southern California in Film Production. Lapid received a Fulbright in Romania to work with visual stories of Roma (Gypsy) children, and was an Artist in Residence at Slifka Center at Yale. She has directed multiple short films that won awards at international festivals, including Red Mesa, which won several awards including Best Short at the LA Latino International Film Festival. Lapid is a professor at the Creative Media Institute of New Mexico State University, where she teaches directing, screenwriting and border cinema. In 2016, Ilana directed Yochi, a narrative short shot in the jungle and pine savannah of Belize, that deals with the pressing global problem of the illegal wildlife trade. Her short La Catrina, which is part of Femme Frontera, was also selected for the 2016 Women in Film and Television International Showcase.
Jennifer Lucero
Jennifer is a multimedia artist and activist using video production to build insightful interactions among communities. Graduating at the University of Texas at El Paso in Electronic Media Journalism and a minor in Women’s Studies, Lucero was determined to focus on crucial and diverse human experiences to be heard. In 2009, she connected with director and producer, Barni Qaasim, to produce and edit Catching Babies, a feature length documentary which explored the lives of mothers and midwives living on the US-Mexico border. Connecting with nonprofits as a community health educator, Lucero spent 2011 through 2014 producing multimedia presentations on pertinent health information- empowering people with education to make safe and conscious choices about their health. In 2016, she was awarded a grant from the City of El Paso to document the sound and story of women musicians from the Borderlands. The Appleseed Project plants seeds of inspiration around the musical platform it promotes. Intimate and confessional, women share their musical experiences against the sound of their own songs. Currently, Lucero works as a freelance multi-media consultant for nonprofits in her home city.