THE TEAM
DACA activists Luis Cortes-Romero, Paul Quiñonez, Alejandra Perez and Kamau Chege. Seattle, November, 2020.
PRODUCER AND DIRECTOR, Marlene “Mo” Morris is an award-winning documentary filmmaker from Washington State. Her directorial debut feature, A NEW COLOR: The Art of Being Edythe Boone, was broadcast on PBS World’s Emmy and Peabody award-winning America ReFramed series. A NEW COLOR follows a fearless muralist, activist and educator as she tackles poverty, racism and inequality through her work. The film won the Audience Favorite Special Mention award at the Mill Valley Film Festival and Best Documentary at the Peace on Earth Film Festival. Mo directed and produced Tomorrow, We Carry On/Mañana, Seguimos, a film about the resilience and courage of Dulce Garcia, the lead plaintiff in Dulce Garcia v. Donald J. Trump, part of the landmark DACA Supreme Court case. The film won best short documentary Migrant Voices Challenge at the San Diego Latino Film Festival.
Mo’s approach to filmmaking is informed by ten years as an immigration attorney and decades of experience as a mediator and social justice organizer. Mo is a former Bay Area Video Coalition MediaMaker Fellow and winner of the CINE Golden Eagle Award.
PRODUCER, Jed Riffe is a documentary film director, producer, and multimedia storyteller from Texas. He has produced 15 nationally-broadcast public television specials including the nationally broadcast ITVS, PBS, CPB, Ford Foundation and minority-consortia funded PBS series California and the American Dream and four interactive media programs. He is best known as the director of these award-winning films Ishi, the Last Yahi; Who Owns the Past? and California’s “Lost” Tribes; and producer of A Dangerous Idea: Eugenics, Genetics and the American Dream (2017); One Voice: The Story of the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir (2018); The Long Shadow (2020); and Pleistocene Park (2022). Jed also produced Mo Morris’ directorial debut feature, A New Color (2015) Jed’s films have won 35 major awards and he is a Sundance Documentary Fund Alumni and Gerbode Fellow.
PRODUCER, Nicole Solis-Sison is a multi-racial DACAmented writer, producer and creative director. Her work focuses on cultural equity, diversity and sustainability in digital discourse across the art, media and film industries. Nicole is a proud founding member of the Undocumented Filmmakers Collective, a nationwide organization that tackles systemic inequities facing undocumented immigrants in the media field. Nicole received her BFA at University of California, Berkeley. Nicole is a 2022 Define American Fellow, a Sundance Asian American Collab Fellow, and the recipient of the 2016 Eisner Award for the Highest Achievement in the Arts.
CONSULTING PRODUCER, Carlos Sandoval is an Emmy-nominated and Sundance award-winning filmmaker (Farmingville (POV), A Class Apart (American Experience) and The State of Arizona (Independent Lens) whose work has been informed by his legal training, as well as by his experience on refugee and immigration policy, including as a member of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations. He is currently on faculty at the Columbia School of Journalism, serves on several film boards and writes a monthly column recently named “Best in New York” by the New York Newspaper Association.
EDITOR, Ken Schneider is a documentary editor and producer from California. He has edited nearly 40 feature documentaries for PBS, HBO, Showtime and others. He edited the Oscar-nominated Regret to Inform, about cross-cultural loss in times of war described by the New York Times as “unforgettable ... exquisitely filmed, edited and scored.” Ken received a Peabody award for Soft Vengeance. Other films he edited have earned multiple Emmys, a Columbia-Dupont, three Peabodys, an Indie Spirit and top awards at the Sundance Film Festival.
EDITOR, Manuel Tsingaris is a documentary editor who draws from his rich Guatemalan and Greek-American heritage. Over more than 20 years, he has edited dozens of feature documentaries for PBS, ABC, HBO and others. A believer in the adage, “you get to the head through the heart”, to Manuel, the story is paramount. He edited the Peabody Award winning The Latino Americans, a 6-hour PBS mini-series retelling US history through a Latin lens. Manuel’s Alive Inside received the Audience Award for Best Documentary at Sundance and other films have received awards at top festivals.
CINEMATOGRAPHER, Vicente Franco is a director of photography and producer for documentaries, drama, and news from Spain. He was an Oscar nominee for Best Documentary and Emmy nominee for Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography for Daughter from DaNang, about child separation during the Vietnam War, winner of the Sundance Film Festival 2002 Grand Jury Prize. He has shot numerous other Academy Award nominated films including The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, Barber of Birmingham and Freedom on My Mind.
ASSOCIATE PRODUCER, Atlee Webber is an emerging filmmaker who has worked in immigrant rights and migration-focused media for seven years. In 2018 she wrote the documentary short Tomorrow We Carry On/Mañana Seguimos which won the Migrant Voices Prize at the San Diego Film Festival. In 2013, she received the Petrow-Freeman Documentary Award for her documentary short Meet Your Farm(work)er/Conozca al Trabajador Agrícola. Atlee has a Masters in Science in Migration Studies.