Valeria Contreras is an award-winning producer, writer, and director from the U.S.-Mexico Border. With experience in both filmmaking and political media, she specializes in cross-cultural storytelling, fundraising, festival strategy, and social-impact narratives. Contreras is a Producers Guild of America Create Fellow as well as a Film Independent Producing Lab and Fast Track Fellow.

As a producer, Contreras has championed numerous short films that have gone on to screen at festivals internationally, including NOT MY NAME, an acclaimed Colombian Spanish-language film that won the Focus Features Award for Social and Cultural Impact. Other credits include LITTLE BROKEN BIRD which was part of the Tyler Perry Studios Dream Collective, SIDE ROADS, and WOLF AT THE DOOR, which won Best Film at the Iberoamerican Film Festival in Miami.

Her directorial work includes HOMESICK, a story of two star-crossed lovers divided by the pandemic and the border, which screened at the Oscar-qualifying Atlanta Film Festival. Her upcoming short film, ORANGES, is a proof-of-concept for a feature film in development set in El Paso, Texas. The project was selected for the NALIP Director Incubator program sponsored by Netflix and further incubated through the El Paso Community Foundation Border Art Residency and Cine Qua Non Storylines Lab.

Through her company, Apis Mellifera Productions, Contreras has developed a producing slate of international feature films by emerging directors across the U.S., Colombia, Nigeria and Canada. She is a graduate of the University of Chicago and Columbia University’s MFA Film Program. She is an Adjunct Faculty at the University of Texas at El Paso in the Communication Department.