Festival Director: Kristal Sotomayor
they/she
Bryn Mawr College, Class of 2017
Kristal Sotomayor is an award-winning nonbinary Peruvian American director, producer, journalist and curator based in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Named one of “10 Latinx Filmmakers You Should Know About” by HipLatina, they are a 2023 DOC NYC Documentary New Leader Honoree and Rockwood Documentary Leadership Fellow. Their college thesis film To My Motherland streamed on Comcast Xfinity On Demand. Kristal’s short Latinx immigrant rights documentary Expanding Sanctuary won the Philadelphia Filmmaker Award at the 2024 BlackStar Film Festival and is distributed through OTV, Kanopy, and New Day Films. Their short experimental documentary Don’t Cry For Me All You Drag Queens won Best LGBTQ Documentary at the 2025 Poppy Jasper International Film Festival. Kristal’s debut narrative short film Las Cosas Que Brillan is a coming of age story about a Trans Latina mermaid and produced with support from BlackStar. They are in development on their debut feature documentary Untitled PARS Project about surveillance of immigrant communities, produced with support from the Sundance Film Institute. They are in production on their first audio documentary on water rights in Pennsylvania through support from Voice of Witness. Kristal’s work has also been supported by the Outfest, If/Then, Points North Institute, MDOCS, DCTV, and NeXtDoc. They have curated acclaimed programming across the country at SFFILM, Frameline, True/False Film Fest, and the Philadelphia Latino Film Festival. They are the Director of Marketing, Audience Engagement & Community Partnerships at cinéSPEAK (formerly the Editor-in-Chief of the cinéSPEAK Journal) and their freelance writing bylines include The Philadelphia Inquirer, Documentary Magazine, Autostraddle, AL DÍA, and WHYY.
Festival Administrative Assistant: Ellen Sanders
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Ellen Sanders has worked for Haverford College as a Faculty Administrative Assistant supporting the Visual Studies Program, the Philosophy Department, and the Religion Department since 2022. She embraced the opportunity to take on the added role of Tri-Co Film Festival Administrative Assistant in July 2025. Ellen loves the festival and the opportunity it offers Tri-Co students to share their talents and creativity with their peers and community at large.