1) Documentary Storytelling Workshop with Isabel Castro (Part 1)

INT-S 1111. Thursday May 7, 3-4:30pm

Award-winning filmmaker Isabel Castro will lead two 90-minute workshops on independent documentary storytelling.

All are welcome to participate; no filmmaking experience required.

Thursday's workshop will cover project research, development, and financing. 

Castro will draw on her experiences of directing MIJA, her documentary feature debut that premiered at Sundance Film Festival, and other award-winning short and feature films, including her recent biopic SELENA Y LOS DINOS about Selena Quintanilla.

2) Documentary Film Screening: MIJA

INT-S 1128, Thursday May 7, 5-7pm

MIJA follows Doris Muñoz, who hails from the Inland Empire and went on to build a career in music talent management. In this journey she meets Jacks Haupt, an auspicious young singer. Both share the ever-present guilt of being the first American-born members of their undocumented families.

Director Isabel Castro will be in attendance for the film screening and talkback.

TRAILER: https://youtu.be/LtxeORZkatk?si=zDdXbrbQrLZD5qVO

3) Documentary Storytelling Workshop with Isabel Castro (Part 2)

INT-S 1111. Friday May 8, 10-11:30am

Award-winning filmmaker Isabel Castro will lead two 90-minute workshops on independent documentary storytelling.

All are welcome to participate; no filmmaking experience required.

Friday's workshop will cover production, relationships with documentary participants, distribution, the ethics of representation.

Castro will draw on her experiences of directing MIJA, her documentary feature debut that premiered at Sundance Film Festival, and other award-winning short and feature films, including her recent biopic SELENA Y LOS DINOS about Selena Quintanilla.

Isabel Castro is a five-time Emmy-nominated Mexican-American filmmaker and photographer. Her latest documentary, Selena y Los Dinos, had its world premiere at Sundance Film Festival 2025. It won a Special Jury Award for archival storytelling in the Documentary Competition, multiple audience awards and premiered on Netflix. Her first feature film, Mija (Sundance Film Festival 2022) was a New York Times critics pick, on the DOC NYC shortlist, won a Cinema Eye Award and it won the Grand Jury Prize at the Champs-Élysées Film Festival. She directed, produced and filmed the Emmy-nominated, award-winning documentary short USA v Scott (Tribeca 2020, The New Yorker), Emmy-nominated Darlin (Tribeca 2019, NYT OpDocs), GLAAD award-winning Crossing Over (Univision/Participant Media) and on the Emmy-nominated Netflix docu-series Pandemic. She’s worked on dozens of stories as an opinion contributor, producer, cinematographer and multimedia journalist for The New York Times, as an Edward R. Murrow-award winning producer at The Marshall Project, and as an Emmy-nominated producer covering civil rights and policy at VICE on HBO. Castro was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film'' and DOC NYC’s “40 Under 40”, and she was nominated for an Independent Spirit award. She is developing her first scripted feature with The Department of Motion Pictures and working on Untitled Los Angeles, a photography and film project.

Co-sponsored by the Department of Media & Cultural Studies | Center for Iberian & Latin American Music | Department of English | Department of Music | Department of Theatre, Film, & Digital Production | Department of History | Department of Gender & Sexuality Studies | Alex Espinoza & The Tomás Rivera Endowment | UCR Writers Week