Isabel Castro

Isabel Castro is a four-time Emmy-nominated, Mexican American filmmaker who combines a practice in journalism and art to tell stories about immigration, civil rights, and identity. She splits her time between Mexico City and Los Angeles. 

Castro 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), and on the Emmy-nominated Netflix docu-series Pandemic. Her debut project Crossing Over (Univision/Participant Media) won a 2015 GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Documentary. Interviews about her work on Crossing Over were nominated for two additional GLAAD awards. She’s worked on dozens of stories as a producer, cinematographer and multimedia journalist for The New York Times, as an Edward R. Murrow-award winning producer at The Marshall Project, on two seasons of the Emmy-award winning series VICE on HBO, and as an Emmy-nominated producer covering civil rights and policy at VICE News Tonight on HBO. 

Mija is her feature length debut. Mija has received support from the Sundance Institute, Impact Partners, Cinereach, the SFFILM Catapult Documentary Fellowship, Points North Institute / CNN Films, Fork Films, Chicken & EggPictures, Firelight Media, and NBCU Academy & NBC News Studios Original Voices. Castro is an Artist-in-Residence at Concordia Studio, and she was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film” and DOC NYC’s “40 Under 40”, both in 2021.