Valeria Contreras is an award-winning filmmaker and storyteller from El Paso, Texas whose career bridges film, comics, brand strategy and political advocacy. She is a Producers Guild of America Create Fellow and Film Independent Producing Fellow. Most recently, she is developing a feature film screenplay, “Oranges,” set in El Paso, through the support of the El Paso Community Foundation Border Art Residency.

As a writer/director, Valeria is dedicated to elevating the untold narratives alongside the U.S.-Mexico border to spark further dialogue about the region and bridge creative connections between the United States and Mexico. Valeria’s first short film, “Homesick,” a tale of two star-crossed lovers, separated by a global pandemic and the U.S.-Mexico Border, screened at multiple festivals including the Femme Frontera Filmmaker Showcase and the Oscar-qualifying Atlanta Film Festival. 

As a producer, Valeria has worked to champion multiple films, including “Not My Name,” an acclaimed Colombian Spanish-language short that won the Focus Features Award for Social and Cultural Impact. Through her independent production company, Apis Mellifera Productions, Valeria is developing a slate of international feature films in collaboration with filmmakers from the U.S., Colombia, Nigeria, and Canada. Her projects reflect a passion for complex characters, wondrous worlds, and magical realism, intertwined with urgent social themes, to bridge cultural divides.

Beyond film, Valeria is committed to mission-driven storytelling and building community. She founded Valcon Comics, publishing bilingual, educational comics for children, including “El Cartoon,” a bilingual comics newspaper distributed across borders. She has brought her expertise to various local non-profit organizations and national political campaigns, including the Harris-Walz 2024 and Beto O’Rourke 2020 presidential campaigns.

 

Valeria is a graduate of the University of Chicago and Columbia University, where she earned an MFA in Film & Creative Producing, receiving the Michael Hausman/Buffalo Mike Filmhaus Foundation Award and the 3Pas Studios Award. She has served on the Young Mezcal Jury at the Festival Internacional de Cine en Guadalajara.

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About Oranges (Feature Screenplay):

When free-spirited Lucia decides to leave home for a new adventure in Mexico City, her responsible older sister, Griselda, must confront her own fears and regrets as they share a bittersweet farewell at a streetcar stop in West Texas. But as the two sisters go through decades without the other, their close-knit connection and bond starts to fray, emphasized each time Lucia returns home to visit her beloved border town.