THE TEAM

DIRECTOR

Priscilla Gonzalez Sainz is a Mexican-American filmmaker based in Southern California. Her work explores themes of displacement, identity, and transnationalism that call social and political barriers into question. Priscilla earned her MFA in Documentary Film and Video from Stanford University where she completed her thesis film ‘Room 140’ that was a Semifinalist for the Student Academy Award and nominated for the IDA Wolper Student Documentary Achievement Award. In 2020, Priscilla completed ‘Status Pending’ with the support of Tribeca Film Institute, IF/Then Shorts, and the National Association of Latino Independent Producers (NALIP). The film was picked up by Aljazeera English’s Witness strand for international broadcast and Collective Eye Film educational distribution. Recently, Priscilla was selected for Catapult Film Fund’s Research Grant to develop a new project, making her one of five filmmakers participating in this inaugural fellowship program. She has contributed to award winning films, including credits as an additional editor for ‘Aguilas’ (2021) and ‘The Infiltrators’ (2019), and works for the Documentary department at Chapman University’s College of Film and Media Arts.

CO-PRODUCER

Liz Fields is an Asian-Australian-American writer and filmmaker who has traveled to 40 different countries across six continents searching for stories that illuminate human existence, struggles, and truth.After graduating from Columbia University, Liz wrote for Salon, ELLE, ABC and more before joining VICE, where she was part of the Emmy Award-winning team that launched VICE News on HBO. As a filmmaker, she’s explored the insanity of the modern American condition on the 2016 presidential campaign trail, produced a Netflix series on the global drug trade, and won a Gracie award and GLAAD nomination for her work on issues affecting minority women and the trans community.

EDITOR

Sarah Garrahan is a documentary producer and editor from San Antonio, Texas. She holds a MA in Creative Documentary from the Autonomous University of Barcelona and a MFA from Duke University in the Experimental and Documentary Arts. She was a co-producer and additional editor on the hybrid documentary The Infiltrators by Cristina Ibarra and Alex Rivera, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2019 and was awarded both the Audience and Innovator Awards for the NEXT section. She was an editor on Building the American Dream by Chelsea Hernandez, which premiered at SXSW in 2019. She is currently editing Jasmin López's the feature documentary, Silent Beauty.

CAMERA 

Guisel Contreras is a Mexican-American documentary film director, producer and cinematographer. She specializes in observational camerawork and has a love for filming life as it unfolds. Guisel is dedicated to telling stories about women, education, art, health and human rights and believes in the power of intimate, character-driven storytelling to mobilize social change. She is proud to capture the complexities of people’s lives from behind the camera.

PRODUCER

Laura Reich is an independent producer and Head of Production at Vibrant Penguin, Inc. Her work includes narrative, documentary, episodic, and branded content. In the narrative space her projects include the feature film "Kept Boy", distributed by Breaking Glass, and "All Sorts" which premiered at the 2021 Seattle International Film Festival. In episodic television she produced the live show "The Sushi Dragon Show Starring TheSushiDragon" on VENN TV, and post produced for the Facebook Watch Original "Rival Speak", which filmed on an XR stage, merging post with production. Her documentary work includes the PBS American Masters film "Rita Moreno: Just A Girl Who Decided To Go For It", which received theatrical distribution from Roadside Attractions after premiering at Sundance in 2021. She also produced the award-winning short documentary "Status Pending" which premiered at Big Sky Film Festival in 2020 and screened as part of NBC’s Meet The Press Showcase at AFI and was picked up for international broadcast as part of the Aljazeera Witness series. Her branded work includes projects for Riot Games, The University of Southern California, and LEGO.

IMPACT PRODUCER

Lyntoria Newton is an independent documentary filmmaker and creative producer and arts educator in the SF Bay Area. She has produced content for outlets such as The Boston Globe, PBA30, Google, The Ford Foundation, and others. Her work has shown at festivals across the U.S and internationally. She holds a B.A. from Hampshire College and an M.F.A. in Documentary Film and Video from Stanford University where she completed her thesis film, Hey Little Black Girl. The short essay film explores black girlhood through the coming of age stories of four little black girls living in the SF Bay Area. With support from the Ford Foundation, she produced two seasons of Basic Able, a satirical podcast devoted to disrupting ableist representations of disability. She was the associate producer and engagement specialist for the feature documentary film, River City Drumbeat, which follows a black drum corp in Louisville, Kentucky. She also currently serves as an impact producer on the documentary film Mossville: When Great Trees Fall, which tells a story of environmental racism’s lethal impact on a historic black community in Louisiana.

CAMERA / CINEMATOGRAPHER

Nathan Reich is a filmmaker and musician originally from the San Francisco East Bay. He holds an MFA in Documentary Film and Video from Stanford University, a Certificate in Documentary Media Studies from The New School, and a BM from the Berklee College of Music.

ASSISTANT EDITOR

Vick is a freelance Editor and Post-Production Coordinator based in Los Angeles. A graduate of the reputed Dodge College of Film and Media Arts at Chapman University, Vick’s films have been screened from coast to coast. In addition to his domestic work, Vick has also worked on several international productions in Australia, Canada, Kenya, Mexico, United Kingdom and Singapore.