Personal details
Born:
- Born Place: Santiago, Chile
Also Known As:
Dominga Sotomayor Castillo
Dominga Sotomayor
Dominga Sotomayor Castillo (born 1985 in Santiago, Chile) is an acclaimed Chilean filmmaker and one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary Latin American cinema. After studying directing in Chile and Spain, she co-founded the production company CINESTACIÓn, through which she has produced a number of significant auteur films from the region. Her cinematic style is characterized by a subtle, sensorial language that often focuses on intimate narratives, characters in transition, and themes of memory and coming-of-age, frequently set against the backdrop of Chilean history. Her debut feature film, Thursday Till Sunday (2012), developed at the Cannes Cinéfondation Residence, won the Tiger Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. She achieved a major career milestone with her third feature, Too Late to Die Young (2018), for which she became the first woman ever to receive the Leopard for Best Direction at the Locarno Film Festival. She has also co-directed other projects, including the short film The Island (2013), which also won a Tiger Award at Rotterdam, and the collective feature film The Year of the Everlasting Storm (2021). Beyond filmmaking, Sotomayor co-founded the CCC, Centro de Cine y Creación, an arthouse cinema and cultural center in Santiago, and served as a Visiting Professor at Harvard University. Her work continues to explore the complexities of personal and national identity, and she is set to premiere her new film, Limpia, in 2025.
