Filmmakers Río Castañeda (left) and Diana Milena Ojeda Castellanos
Latinx filmmakers Río Castañeda and Diana Milena Ojeda Castellanos were announced today as recipients of this year’s Princess Grace Award in the Film and Animation category. Presented by the Princess Grace Foundation, the award under her name identifies extraordinary emerging artists working in theater, dance and film; and nurtures their growth throughout their careers. Princess Grace Award winners receive a $10,000 unrestricted cash grant paid directly to the artists.
Castañeda, who was nominated by filmmaker David Riker, was born in México City and migrated to Washington DC in 2014. They graduated high school from Duke Ellington School of the Arts in 2017, and from Massachusetts College of Art and Design with a BFA in Animation with Departmental Honors in 2021. Their thesis film My Weaving Hands features the art of Mayan backstrap weaving in collaboration with indigenous cooperatives from Chiapas, Mexico. It has been presented in over 20 international film festivals, winning best animated short and original score at the Mexico-Prague Iberoamerican Film Festival; Best Indigenous Short at Arica Nativa Rural Film Festival in Chile; and the Young Filmmakers Award at the Festival de Cine Latino Americano in Texas. The film will be featured in Smithsonians Native Cinema Showcase in New Mexico in August 2022.
Nominated by the School of Cinema of the San Francisco State University, Ojeda Castellanos is a San Francisco-based Latin-American filmmaker who founded Cine Latina in 2013. She strives for her films to be decolonizing and raise awareness around human rights issues, working with marginalized communities. This includes peasants’ who defend their land from the paramilitaries, refugees, native people, and racialized Latin American women who struggle for equality and liberation.
She made a series of documentaries on the peasant and native exodus at the Colombian Northeast jungle by the hand of Human Rights Organizations. Her first independent work, The Children of Catatumbo, was evidence before the IACHR. The Braves, her thesis film as an MFA student at the school of cinema at SFSU, was selected in Killary Cinelab, DocMontevideo Pitch, Conecta Chile International Film Market, and Spotlighted Projects in Cannes Docs 2022.
The Princess Grace Foundation will celebrate the new class of Princess Grace Award winners at its annual Princess Grace Awards Summit and Celebration November 2–3 in New York City. The Summit is a series of panel conversations, round tables, and seminars curated for the new class of Princess Grace Awards winners designed to foster relationships and set the emerging Award winners on a path to artistic success.
