Kristal Sotomayor is a bilingual documentary filmmaker, cinematographer, and editor. Currently, she is the Communications and Outreach Coordinator for Scribe Video Center and a Festival Programming Coordinator with the Philadelphia Latino Film Festival (PHLAFF). Kristal was also a Festival Programming Pre-Screener for the Philadelphia Film Festival (PFF) and the documentary-focused Camden International Film Festival (CIFF) in Maine. In addition, she is working on her first independent short documentary about the historic end to police database sharing organized by Juntos and the Latinx immigrant community in Philadelphia. The documentary was selected for Good Pitch Local Philadelphia, hosted by the Doc Society.
Her Bryn Mawr College thesis short film To My Motherland, about her experiences being a first generation Latina, has screened at film festivals across the United States and Europe. In the past, she has interned with the award-winning PBS documentary film series POV | American Documentary and on the feature documentary Little Sallie Walker directed by Marta Effinger-Crichlow.
Most recently, Kristal has been awarded a Scholarship to attend Double Exposure Investigative Film Festival. She has also been the recipient of the Film Scholars Fellowship from Scribe Video Center, co-sponsored by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences. In the past, she has received the HCAH Flaherty Seminar Student Fellowship from Haverford College and the NextDoc Emerging Filmmaker Fellowship from Youth FX and The Carey Institute. Additional awards include the Hanna Holborn Gray Research Fellowship and Film Studies Program Fellowship from Bryn Mawr College.
At Bryn Mawr College, Kristal was the Head of the Film Series Committee, which screens films on campus twice a week, and the Founder and Co-President of the Filmmakers Association, which unites student filmmakers and provides workshops on filmmaking basics. Through the Filmmakers Association, she established the first 48 Hour Film Festival, where groups of students create films in a 48 hour timespan. In addition, Kristal interned for the non-profit Profugo creating social media video content and a food-related video series as part of the annual fundraising campaign. MORE →
