Yolanda Cruz hails from the indigenous Chatino community of Oaxaca, Mexico.  She is an experienced and formally trained producer/director with seven award-winning documentaries already under her belt.  Premiered at the 2008 Morelia International film festival, Yolanda has recently completed her debut full-length documentary, “2501 Migrants: A Journey.” Yolanda has received the support of numerous prestigious organizations including the Rockefeller foundation, Latino Public Broadcasting, and the Ford Foundation. Her work has screened to much acclaim at film festivals and museums around the world including the Sundance Film Festival, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, Park la Villette in Paris, the National Geographic All Roads Film Project and the National Institute of Cinema in Mexico City. Yolanda holds an MFA from the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. She is a fluent English, Spanish and Chatino speaker and harbors a passionate drive to increase the representation of indigenous people in the media.

In 1998, Yolanda graduated with a liberal arts degree from Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. While there, Yolanda discovered her passion for film. Subsequently she enrolled in UCLA Film School in Los Angeles, California, graduating with an MFA in film production in 2002.

While still in film school at UCLA, Yolanda’s first student project, Entre Sueños, an experimental film about an indigenous woman seeking her identity, was chosen for competition in the 2000 Sundance Film Festival.

Her documentary Oaxacalifornia, a collection of interviews with Oaxacan Indians who live in California, was screened in the Park La Villete museum in Paris, France, where people all over the world were given the opportunity to learn about the indigenous people of Mexico as artists and community organizers.

For her masters degree thesis Yolanda produced the film Guenati’za (The visitors), a 16-minute documentary about an Indian Zapotec native named Ulises who was employed as a gardener in Los Angeles, California. Guenati’za follows the voyage of Ulises and his family as they return to host traditional festivities in their community of San Juan Evangelista Analco in the Northern mountains of Oaxaca.

In 1998, funded by the McArthur Foundation through the Chiapas Media Works program, Yolanda traveled to Chiapas to teach film production to a group of young indigenous adults.  Empowered by their new knowledge and using the technical tools of media production, these young people were then able to go out and share their cultural traditions with others as they documented their political struggles through film.

In 2001, Yolanda co-coordinated the Latino/Chicano Film Festival at UCLA and in 2003, sponsored by the Smithsonian Museum of the Native American, Yolanda coordinated a regional tour to introduce the works of  filmmakers from Michoacan, Oaxaca, and Chiapas to the California cities of Fresno, Madera, and Los Angeles.

In 2005, with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, Yolanda produced the film Sueños Binacionales about the lives of transnational communities of  indigenous Oaxacans residing in the United States. In 2007, she went on to work with Brave New Films, producing and directing three documentaries for the ACLU focusing on the violations to basic freedoms experienced by marginalized people within the United States.

Yolanda is currently wrapping up work on her documentary 2501 Migrants and preparing for the festival circuit. 2501 Migrants depicts the life and work of Oaxacan artist Alejandro Santiago, who is creating 2,501 sculptures to represent the members of the Oaxacan community of Teocococuilco who have been forced to leave in order to search for work in the United States. 2501 Migrants is funded by The Rockefeller Foundation and Latino Public Broadcasting.

Yolanda lives in the artistic community of Silverlake in Los Angeles, California,  where she is dedicated to continuing to document the experiences of the indigenous people of Oaxaca, Mexico, through her work as a documentary and narrative filmmaker.

In addition to her many film projects, Yolanda has also published a bilingual cookbook, “Oaxaca Sabores Simples: A Culinary Voyage through the Indigenous Communities of Oaxaca, Mexico”. Illustrated by her husband, Jerome Manet, it is filled with stunning photographs of the lifestyle and cuisine of Oaxaca.