Native Laredoan Raul Seca Jr. is pursuing a master’s degree in film and media production from the University of Texas-Austin while producing his thesis film, Diabetic Jesus.

Seca previously worked at KGNS- TV as a production assistant, later moving to a marketing producer position. His love for filmmaking, however, began much earlier. 

“Growing up, I loved making movies,” he said. “Getting together with people to make something happen, to create… that’s what I wanted to live for, and the older I got, the more I would look to film as a means to be able to do that.” 

Seca’s initial spark for film came alongside a diagnosis of Type 1 Diabetes at 11 years old. 

“Being a kid, it wasn’t the easiest thing for me to adjust to or live with,” he said, adding, “There wasn’t anything fun or nice about being a kid succumbing to illness, enduring numerous highs and lows, never-ending syringe injections, and finger prick blood tests.”

Seca recalled that his childhood improved when he received his first camcorder for his birthday.  

He began filming projects constantly and later discovered video editing. 

“From fifth grade on, I made it a hobby, but I wanted to make this my life,” he said.

After high school, Seca worked as a self-employed freelance videographer.

“I often did jobs for little to no pay,” he said. “What I craved most were experiences to exercise and develop my craft.”

Seca credited growing up in Laredo as a fundamental part of himself and his art. 

“It influenced everything, really,” he said. “Laredo is a truly and deeply integral part of me and my upbringing.”

“To this day, I feel there’s nowhere else like it,” he continued. “It’s like that saying — you can take yourself out of the 956, but you can’t take the 956 out of yourself.”

Seca shared his appreciation for the professors at both Laredo College and Texas A&M International University, as well as his current UT professors.  

“There are so many to mention; for sure Mrs. Marcela Moran, my video production professor at TAMIU… there’s T. Rob, my photography professor,” he said.  

“In Austin, I have to give a huge thanks to Cindy McCreery, Miguel Alvarez, Ya’ke Smith… The list goes on and on,” he said. 

 Professor Moran shared her admiration for Seca as a student and creative.

“I actually immediately recognized… this student really genuinely gets it,” Moran said, adding, “He’s so talented. His stuff always surpassed the course expectations,” she said.

Seca talked about producing Diabetic Jesus, noting that the title originated as a stage name and music persona for a solo electronic music project created in 2018.

 “The name came to me one night while performing for a friend’s Halloween house party. I went dressed as Jesus for the show, a costume gifted by my family as a joke for having long hair and a beard myself.” 

He said that his friend introduced him as DJ Jesus, and a lightbulb went off in his head. 

“I got to envision the letters DJ as initials for a different name — Diabetic Jesus,” he said. 

The name soon developed a deeper meaning, driving the story of his thesis film and representing his battle with Type 1 Diabetes. 

“The story of Diabetic Jesus in the film is an illness-drama, coming-of-age story that draws heavy inspiration from experiences in my own life and childhood,” he said. 

“The film shares the name because it’s based on how it all started for me with music and my relationship with it, discovering how piano was there for me during a difficult time in my early life, while also serving as the birth of my persona at its essence, synchronizing both identities into one for a non-autobiographical play on a personal origin story,” Seca said. 

The film will premiere at the Texas Union Theatre at UT-Austin in the spring of 2027. 

Seca shared his tips to aspiring Laredo filmmakers, offering, “You have to trust in yourself and in the process… we’re all in it together. No matter the type of camera you have… you can make something worthwhile. It all starts with the story. That’s what drives a good film forward; that’s where it counts.”

(Sean Jimenez is an aspiring environmental photojournalist and a junior at Texas A&M International University in his hometown of Laredo. He is working towards a major in communications with a focus in media production and a minor in environmental science. He is currently the Director of Photography and Associate Editor of The Bridge, TAMIU’s student run newspaper. He aims to shine light on unrepresented communities through journalism and photography).

“I wish that I had been allowed to be talented,” blurts a simmering Lupe López as he tries to cajole, guilt, and shame his son Jesus to play the trumpet at his 65th birthday celebration. The backyard mariachi concert by La Familia López is the crowning moment for a beaming Lupe,  the proud patriarch of his family.  

Jesus’ refusal to play causes Lupe to reflect on his youth and the repressed desire to learn the trumpet and his own father’s coaching on how to mask his emotions. These are some of the themes explored by Laredo filmmaker Isaac Garza in the 2023 film short The Son Who Can’t Play Trumpet.

As the camera pans the gathered guests, we see faces familiar to us.  El huerco chiflado, el gringo who has learned the “I got you ‘aghhhhhh’” heard here every day, the boisterous chanters encouraging the reluctant Jesus. The scenes filmed across from the Plaza Theater and the party gathering are authentic because they take place in Laredo to a score composed by Laredo-born Grammy award winner Adrian Quesada.  

This was the backdrop that director Garza was seeking when he decided to film in his hometown.

The project catalyst was his award-winning HBO film Pepito that explored the relationship between a son and his very religious mother.  Pepito was filmed in the Austin area. Karen Gaytan, one of the founders of the Laredo Film Society told Garza, “You know that’s a Laredo film shot somewhere else.”  

When Garza received a $25,000 grant from the HBO One-Fifty Pa’Lante Promise program that focused on underrepresented communities, Gaytan encouraged him to expand the funding and film entirely on location in Laredo. She is the film’s producer. 

“I know Karen as a problem solver, and I involved her to strategize about shooting in Laredo,” Garza said.  

Gaytan, a filmmaker with a background in community organizing, cut her teeth as a production assistant on Journey, a full-length film shot partially in Laredo with an international cast.

Gaytan credits that experience with her own journey of telling border stories that validate tales neglected by mainstream media. 

Soon Garza and Gaytan had galvanized the Laredo arts community, and they succeeded in convincing the City of Laredo and private donors to contribute. With a modest $75,000 budget the project relied on Garza’s Austin area collaborators and Gaytan’s Laredo Film Society network of local aficionados to tackle the project.

The father-son conflict of The Son Who Can’t Play Trumpet was a universal theme seen through a niche world, said Garza. That story was intertwined with the immigrant themes of assimilation in a border culture.  

Amidst financial and logistical challenges, Gaytan and the production team developed COVID pandemic testing protocols before major scenes. 

Garza said that the whole experience was fulfilling and that his film crew was inspired by the adventure. He wants to tell more Laredo stories in the future and encourages the support of the Laredo Film Society and developing infrastructure for future endeavors in the region.

The Son Who Can’t Play Trumpet can be found on Omeleto, a free streaming platform at youtube.com/@Omeleto.

(Armando X. Lopez is an attorney, poet, journalist, and lifelong advocate for this frontera that he loves dearly.)

Though early in his career, native Laredo filmmaker Diego Martinez is emerging as a distinct and disruptive voice in the city’s film scene. Last February, he released his latest short film, Ode to Phantom Limbs, continuing to refine his already impressive cinematic style.

Currently a student at Texas A&M International University, Martinez began producing “genuine” short films in college. His interest in film, however, began much earlier. 

“It was in me already,” he said, recalling how he would rewatch his favorite movies repeatedly as a child, forcing his grandparents to start them over again.

He said his early influences ranged from Martin Scorsese to more unconventional directors like David Lynch, Andrei Tarkovsky, Ingmar Bergman, and Béla Tarr. “I guess I enjoy filmmakers who go against the grain,” he noted, a preference that would end up shaping his visual and narrative style.

Martinez also credits former teachers and close friends for helping him shape his artistic voice. At Harmony School of Excellence, English teachers strengthened his writing, while a history teacher encouraged his growing interest in philosophy. There he also met two of his closest friends, who have helped him with video projects since then. He also credited his parents, Ricardo and Nancy Martinez, and his girlfriend, Ana Elena Ramon, as key sources of support.

He explores themes of social critique using an experimental approach. “I’m very critical of systems,” he said, “and that could go as far as societal systems, social contracts, or interpersonal relationships.”

His first short film, There are Rules in This House, explored an abusive household through a horror lens. “I thought it was such an interesting dynamic as a system within that household,” he explained.

Following his interest in philosophy, Martinez tackled a more existential topic in his second short film, Project Static: To Understand the Frequency. In it, he follows an artificial person challenging a system that defines him as “nothing but code.”

It was in this project that he developed a distinctive style using unconventional filmmaking techniques. Slow shutter speed, step printing, and a narration that borders on poetry highlight the influence of neo-noir cinema and filmmakers such as Wong Kar Wai, whom Martinez cited as an inspiration for the film.

Much of this visual and narrative style was carried over to his most recent work, Ode to Phantom Limbs, which premiered in February at an event in partnership with the Laredo Film Society.

Martinez continued exploring social dynamics in this project, this time within a romantic relationship. “That was me dealing with a relationship I should have handled better,” he said, explaining the inspiration for the film. “With Ode to Phantom Limbs, it was like an ode to a part of yourself that’s no longer there, but you still feel it.”

Reflecting on the challenges of his new short film, he said this time he focused more on technical aspects and improving dialogue. He also learned about color grading, upgraded his audio equipment, and composed the film’s music himself.

He is currently working on Ode to Filmmaking, a documentary about the making of his latest project. “It’s a love letter to filmmaking,” he said. “I wanted to shine a light on the process, as well as the local film community.” The documentary will premiere at the Kill to Shoot Film Festival at Texas A&M International University in May.

He highlighted the role of the Laredo Film Society, which he discovered in high school. “I was thrilled to see that kind of representation,” Martinez recalled. “It was also inspiring just seeing stuff getting done here and seeing the local talent, too.”

Martinez has begun writing his next project and expressed his desire to continue improving the production value of his films and expanding their distribution, putting not only his name but also the Laredo film scene on the filmmaking radar.

(Born and raised in Nuevo Laredo, Enrique Fiscal is a filmmaker and student at Texas A&M International University. He has presented his work at several local festivals, where he has received recognition for his work. His latest short film, Olivia, is currently on the festival circuit and has been invited to participate in international film festivals.)

I recently had a moment to catch up with Alejandro Montoya Marin, a director and writer with roots in Laredo. He has been on a whirlwind tour with his third feature film, The Unexpecteds, which won best comedy at Smodcastle Film Festival.

The Unexpecteds — recognized by The LA Times as one of the Best 25 Latino Films of 2025 — has also received numerous other recognitions on the indie film festival circuit.  While visiting at universities in Mexico, Alejandro took a break to chat while in Monterrey where he was talking about filmmaking to aspiring students wanting to break into the film industry. 

Cliffe Killam (CK): How has growing up in Laredo and in Merida and the other places that you’ve been in your life shaped you? Your view of the world and how they shaped your filmmaking?

Alejandro Montoya Marin (AMM): That’s a great question. I think every time we live somewhere or somewhere else, we allow the atmospheres of the people, the architecture, the customs, the food to all shape us in different ways. I try to put my essence into these movies through the music and customs that I grew up with, but in a way that doesn’t feel forced. I want it to feel natural as part of the story.

CK: When did you kind of fall in love with movies? What was the first movie you fell in love with? 

AMM: The first movie I fell in love with? I mean, with the movie or the experience? The experience was when I saw Katy La Oruga and it was in Laredo. I think it was seeing an animation from Spain about a worm that becomes a butterfly. That’s kind of like the plot, but I remember being in the city sitting down and the big ass curtain opening, and you’re like, whoa! And yeah, I fell in love with the whole going to the movies. I looked forward to the weekend. Every time there was a possibility of going to the movies, I would go. I love it! With a specific film. I mean all the classics, right? Like Alien, Predator, Back to the Future, then later in my life, like Seven and Do the Right Thing and Pulp Fiction, Silence of the Lambs, all those. At every stage in life there is a different kind of falling in love with films because every decade or every so often, your mind and how you see things in the world changes because of where you are in life. So the way you perceive art is different or how you identify with certain pieces of art is experienced differently. So, yeah, still falling in love with movies all the time.

CK: Your most recent feature film. What’s it about, who are some of the actors?

AMM: Yeah, man. My third feature film, The Unexpecteds, is an action comedy about a group of friends, suburban parents who lose their life savings to a YouTuber that scams them. And now these suburban schlubs must muster the courage to get the money back. I was lucky enough to meet and actually seek out these actors that were part of the cast I was able to work with. One of the cast members is Matt Walsh from Veep and The Hangover. I have been a big fan of his for years. There’s also Alejandro de Hoyos from Man of Toronto, Chelsea Rendon from Vida Shameless, and Francisco Ramos, John Kaler, Jason Konopisos-Alvarez, Natasha Leggero, and Sonia Smith. 

CK: What’s your message to young artists and filmmakers trying to break in?

AMM: Don’t wait! Don’t wait for permission, just do it!  Don’t wait for Netflix to give you an opportunity. You have the power and the opportunity to go and get a camera to do it. And I think that that’s why I chose Robert Rodriguez and Kevin Smith, as my biggest influences that I got to work with professionally and who became my mentors.  They represent this rebelliousness.  The rebellion of getting to do what you love.  Don’t wait for what is in the hands of other people.  It’s in your hands.  Make it happen.

(Cliffe Killam, an active community civic and business leader, is passionate about giving back to Laredo and South Texas through leadership that generates positive, high impact outcomes. He believes the arts can develop creative and critical thinking for future artists and leaders. He has a deep commitment to improving Laredo and Webb County through education, healthcare, economic development, and downtown Laredo.)

Karen Gaytan’s first encounter with film was rooted in debate programs, family conversations, and the discovery of documentaries as a space for thinking through the world. Before she ever directed or produced, she learned how to argue ideas. Without realizing it, that was where she began becoming a filmmaker.

At fifteen, a leadership camp introduced her to competitive debate. The experience sharpened her interest in philosophy and sociology and trained her to interrogate narratives. Film arrived later as a natural extension of that impulse, not as spectacle, but as a tool for asking better questions.

At eighteen, she moved to Austin for college. By nineteen, financial challenges and scholarship complications forced her to return to Laredo. The return was painful. But returning to the border anchored her. What felt like a setback became the foundation of her artistic lens.

Gaytan often says that her border identity is not simply a theme, it is a framework. Growing up between Reynosa, Cancún, Mérida, and South Texas shaped her sensitivity to displacement and belonging. In the film industry, she noticed how rarely Southwest Texas was portrayed with nuance. Migration stories were flattened, border narratives simplified.

In response, she began building spaces rather than waiting for representation. In 2018, alongside Gabriela Treviño and Lizzett Montiel, she co-founded Laredo Film Society. The goal was to cultivate conversation and cultural presence in a city often excluded from traditional film circuits.

Cinema, she realized, was less about individual genius and more about collective effort.

She joined the “Viva Laredo” initiative, working with community leaders on presentations before City Council and projects ranging from bike infrastructure to urban gardens. Film production and community organizing began to blur. Both required coordination, shared vision, and care.

In 2018, she returned to school with renewed determination. That same year, she volunteered for the campaign of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York. The experience broadened her political imagination and strengthened her confidence. Narrative, she saw, shapes public life, whether in politics or on screen.

Her curiosity led her to volunteer at the Sundance Film Festival, where she met Rachel Lears, a filmmaker working on a documentary that would later premiere at the festival and be sold to Netflix. Being part of that process revealed how intimate, personal stories could travel globally.

Moving to New York tested Gaytan’s resilience. During her first year, she lived in eight different apartments before finding stability. She worked on a climate change documentary and oscillated between Brooklyn and Laredo during winter months, inhabiting two realities at once. Another Border.

A leg accident last year forced her to slow down. The pause shifted her directing style. Rest, she discovered, is not the opposite of productivity. It is part of it.

Recently, Gaytan has moved more deeply into education. She became a co-facilitator of a writing workshop for migrant students with Álvaro Enrigue at PEN America’s. Working closely with young writers navigating displacement has redefined her relationship to storytelling. Writing, like film, becomes an act of dignity.

This shift does not replace her filmmaking, it expands it. Teaching, for her, is another form of directing: guiding process, listening carefully, holding space.

Throughout our conversation, one idea returned repeatedly: the preference for networks over rigid institutions. Gaytan builds through relationships.

Her career is not defined by a single breakthrough, but instead by a series of deliberate micro-decisions: answering an audition call on a bus, volunteering at a festival, organizing a screening in a city that rarely appears on cinematic maps.

(Neo Laredense Seyde García is a human resources professional in international trade and logistics. She lends her support to the arts in both Laredos in numerous ways, among them by writing about exhibits and artists. She can be reached at seydeg91@gmail.com.)

Carlos Evaristo Flores stood before a packed room at Casa Ortiz, presenting his documentary The Southern Front (2022) with a quiet intensity that belied the urgency of its message. A lawyer born in Laredo and a committed activist along la Frontera, Carlos has long been a voice for humanitarian causes that shape the border’s lived reality. His film is not just a record — it is a time capsule, capturing a moment that now feels less like history and more like a warning echoing into the present.

The Southern Front traces a chapter in our national story that seems to be repeating itself: the looming threat of a border wall, one that risks tearing apart the fragile yet resilient fabric of border identity. Through carefully observed scenes, the documentary brings us back to the pandemic years, when isolation gave way to collective purpose. Communities gathered — masked, uncertain, but resolute — united by a single cause: no border wall.

We see a march threading through city streets, charged with both fear and patriotism. We see a message painted boldly across the pavement near the Federal courthouse, not merely written but declared — an urgent cry of history and heritage aimed at those who choose not to see. Each image pulses with defiance, with memory, with belonging.

Inside Casa Ortiz, under the stewardship of the Laredo Cultural District, the audience reflected the border itself: diverse, attentive, deeply invested. The room was filled not only with people, but with concern — about policies that now take the form of buoys fitted with circular blades, devices designed not just to deter, but to harm, to maim, to threaten lives in the most visceral ways. Yet the fear present that evening went beyond the physical. It was something deeper, more enduring — the fear of a wound inflicted on the soul of a community.

Laredo has always existed in a delicate balance, a juntos pero no revueltos coexistence that dates back to its founding in 1755 by Don Tomás Sánchez. It is a place defined by separation and unity at once, by lines that divide and lives that intertwine. The danger now is not only steel and water, but the erosion of that shared identity.

The discussion that followed the screening made one thing clear: spaces like Casa Ortiz matter. The people of Laredo have a voice — thoughtful, passionate, informed — yet too often absent from the rooms where decisions are made. The forum became a testament to the necessity of dialogue, of civic presence, of refusing silence.

Flores himself embodies a quiet duality. Soft-spoken, composed, he transforms when his work comes to life on screen. The calm gives way to conviction; the advocate emerges fully formed. Y sus imágenes valen más que mil palabras. His camera speaks where words fall short.

When he created The Southern Front in 2022, the wall was a looming possibility — serious, but still abstract in its distance. Today, that distance has collapsed. The issue has come home.

His father, writer Carlos Flores, a retired professor from Laredo College, sought tranquility in San Ygnacio — a historic riverside town where he restored a home and built a life rooted in reflection and peace. That home now stands in the path of renewed wall construction efforts. The line, once theoretical, now threatens something deeply personal.

For Flores, the fight has entered a new chapter. As a lawyer, it is a legal battle. As an activist, it is a continuation of a lifelong struggle. But as a son, it is something even more profound: a defense not only of land, but of legacy, memory, and the right to belong.

In the end, The Southern Front is not just a documentary. It is a mirror, a warning, and a call — to remember, to resist, and to remain Los Laredos.

(Writer Jorge Santana is the creative and operations manager of the Laredo Cultural District. He has served as the President of the Webb County Historic Commission from 2021 to the present. He serves on the City of Laredo Fine Arts and Culture Commission and the City’s Historic Landmark Board. He has written a weekly column for El Mañana de Nuevo Laredo since 2017. He is the author of several books that have received much merited recognition.)

“Since I was a child, I always loved telling stories and performing,” recalled writer, filmmaker, and director Scarlet Moreno, adding, “I had an incredible cultural upbringing of dance classes with Altagracia Azios García and Cheryl Kirkpatrick, and voice lessons with Kathy Proffit from the age of nine until I left for college.

“I was blessed with parents who supported my move to New York at the age of 18 to study at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where I completed a BFA in Drama and Journalism. It was scary for them to have me go so far away. That measure of love was huge for me,” she continued.

After completing her studies at Tisch in 2011, she moved to Los Angeles to begin a career in directing, writing, and acting in films of her own creation.

Moreno considers herself a feminist “who centers the female experience in unexpected and creative ways” — including horror, a genre valuable to her work, she said, “for the juxtaposition between the beautiful and the harrowing.” 

The energy of that juxtaposition drives the drama of Velma, the 14-minute short that she wrote, directed, and in which she played the lead. The story builds with calibrated tension and suspense with a series of male callers who arrive at her home individually for  sumptuous suppers, but are never seen leaving after dancing to Moon River playing on the hi-fi and the repeated visual of a polished brass faucet being opened to fill a tub. 

Men 1, 2, and 3 who have visited her separately and in sequence are seen only as mouths, chins, backs, chests, and hands, and if whole, as blurred faces — except for the last visitor who is seen in full and is handsome and has kind eyes.

There is no audible dialogue between Velma and her visitors, but there are brief monologues of her anguished diary entries and some sobbing.

The departure of the last caller makes quite a revelatory splash in the tub, unleashing the heretofore unseen, un-articulated denouement of the drama between Velma and her four visitors.

In a 2024 online interview with Rue Morgue, Moreno said, “Ultimately, Velma asks its audience to examine what they find worse in a woman: promiscuity or blood lust.” She continued, “Sex and sexuality and their expression have been weaponized against women for centuries, a double-edged sword that aims at those who are not sexual enough and those who are deemed too sexual. I’m excited for audiences to enter Velma’s world and watch as she dances on the edge of that sword.”

Velma, which debuted at Panic Fest in 2022, was recognized with Film Quest’s 2023 award for Best Costuming-Short, Underworld Film Fest’s Banshee award, Arthouse Film Fest’s Fellini Award for Best Art Direction, Nightmares’ award for Best Cinematography, and Sin City Horror Fest’s award for Best Editing. 

Moreno credits her childhood friend Chaine Leyendecker for Velma’s brilliantly overstated costuming. 

Another of Moreno’s shorts is a comedy called Little Lucha and the Big Deal. Set in St. Paul, Minn. in the 1980s, it is the story of two dejected wrestlers who have not made it in professional wrestling, she for being a woman, and he for being diminutive.

Moreno is the Big Deal and Josh Stifter is Little Lucha. The two met in 2018 when they were selected by filmmaker Robert Rodriguez to be in the series, Rebel Without A Crew. 

Moreno and Stifter wrote and directed this comedy that evokes not only laughter, but also empathy for the two wrestlers whose dreams of success seem out of reach. Moreno and Stifter are the beating heart of this story.

Moreno is currently in post-production for Money’s Tight, a musical thriller. She is in pre-production for Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night which will premiere in Los Angeles in early June. She will play Olivia and will also produce and lead production design.

She and her husband Kody Harms, a therapist specializing in neurodivergence, are the parents of Oscar Dean Moreno Harms.

“I’m striving in my work to embrace and uplift the beauty of all humanity. It’s what I try to explore. That’s what inspires me,” said screenwriter and filmmaker Barbara Cigarroa whose screenplay El Otro Lado will be developed as an independent feature film.

El Otro Lado is set on the landscape of two cities facing each other across the international border of the Río Grande. The story rests on Lucy, a 17-year-old Mexican-American girl and her father, Rey, and the two unaccompanied Guatemalan minors, Tomás, 17, and his brother Lalo, 5, that Rey has sponsored not out of kindness, but for cash. While the story reveals that the presence of the brothers has affected the familial dynamics of Lucy and Rey, it also tells of the peril Tomás feels for his own survival and that of his brother.

The story offers a peer into the inhumane abyss of U.S. immigration policy.  

According to Cigarroa, Laredo-Nuevo Laredo and Brownsville-Matamoros are being considered as settings for El Otro Lado. “The film will probably go into production in the next year or year-and-a-half,” she said.

When writing or creating for film, she said she immerses herself in the world from which she is capturing sound, color, and the essence of the people who live there. “You can listen to what the world is bringing to the story. I try as close as I can to bring authenticity to the story I want to tell,” she continued, adding, “In El Otro Lado I want to show the vitality of the border and the fluidity of its culture.”

She recalled the walks from the home of her maternal grandparents in Nuevo Laredo to Laredo. “The ease of it, the walk across the international bridge, it was seamless, impactful about the way I felt about both cities as one,” she said.

“I grew up in a large family. I had about 50 first cousins. Our playground was the streets of Nuevo Laredo and Laredo and my grandfather’s ranch in Mexico. Two of the driving forces in my life were my Mamagrande Barbara and my grandfather Joaquin Cigarroa, a physician who late in his life still made house calls to downtown Laredo and Nuevo Laredo,” Cigarroa recalled.

Cigarroa holds an MFA in screenwriting from Columbia University and a BA in English from Yale. She works as a writer and consultant for various narrative, documentary, and TV projects, current and past work including with Red Crown, K. Period, Paramount Plus, and ITVS. She is also a Professor in Screenwriting at NYU Tisch School of the Arts in the Grad Film Department. She served as the Head of Writing in 2025, and as a full time Visiting Professor between 2023 - 2025. 

While at Yale she had the good fortune to intern with documentarian Albert Maysles (Salesman, Grey Gardens, Gimme Shelter).

Her original iteration of El Otro Lado was selected for the 2019 Sundance Screenwriters and Directors Lab. It was also chosen to be a part of The BlackList’s inaugural Latinx List. 

Her short film Dios Nunca Muere had its world premiere at the New York Film Festival; and in 2019, Cigarroa was celebrated by Filmmaker Magazine as one of the “Top 25 New Faces of Independent Film.”