Kristal Sotomayor

Kristal Sotomayor is an award-winning nonbinary Peruvian American director, producer, journalist and curator based in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Named one of “10 Latinx Filmmakers You Should Know About” by HipLatina, they have received distinctions such as the DOC NYC Documentary New Leader Honor and Rockwood Documentary Leadership Fellowship (formerly known as the JustFilms Fellowship). Kristal’s short Latinx immigrant rights documentary “Expanding Sanctuary” won the Philadelphia Filmmaker Award at the BlackStar Film Festival and has screened across the country including at New York Latino Film Festival, Micheaux Film Festival, and St. Louis International Film Festival. Their short experimental documentary “Don’t Cry For Me All You Drag Queens” has screened across the globe including at Newport Beach Film Festival, NewFest, GAZE International LGBTQIA Film Festival, and Sidewalk Film Festival. They are in-development on a number of short and feature-length directorial projects through their company Sotomayor Productions. Kristal’s work has been supported by the BlackStar Filmmaker Lab, Outfest Creative Hope Fellowship, If/Then & CIFF North Shorts Residency, MDOCS Storytellers’ Institute Visiting Fellowship, DCTV Docu Work-In-Progress Lab, and NeXtDoc Fellowship. They have curated acclaimed programming across the country at SFFILM, Frameline, True/False Film Fest, and the Philadelphia Latino Film Festival. They are the Editor-in-Chief of the cinéSPEAK Journal and their freelance writing bylines include The Philadelphia Inquirer, Documentary Magazine, Autostraddle, AL DÍA, and WHYY.