Gabriela Ortega
She/They
​
Gabriela is a writer/director and actor born and raised in the Dominican Republic. She is a graduate of the University of Southern California and is currently based between Los Angeles and Santo Domingo.
Gabriela was selected as one of the ten writer/directors of the 2021 Rising Voices fellowship created in partnership by Lena Waithe's Hillman Grad productions and Indeed. The companies will produce Gabriela's short film HUELLA with an allocated budget of 100k.
She was the recipient of the Best director of a live action short at the 2021 LALIFF film festival. She is an Alum of the Sundance Institute Playwrights Intensive and HBO's Tomorrows Filmmakers Today Class of 2019 & 2020 and Semifinalist for the NBC Nosotros Monologue Slam.
As a writer and performer, Gabriela has toured her one-woman show, Las Garcia, across sold-out venues in L.A., including the LATC, GoogleLA, The Bootleg Theatre, and the Hollywood Fringe.
Her work in film seeks to deconstruct Neocolonialism through ancestral personal stories and alternative forms of documentation and lives within the intersection of docufiction and poetry.
Her first feature film, MORENITA, won the 2020 FEST pitching forum in Portugal and is a finalist for the Sundance Institute 2021 Documentary grant. The film is supported by Women Make Movies in NYC and deals with themes of displacement, womanhood and modern-day immigration.
She is also developing her second narrative feature, Piratas, under the 2020 Cinema Femme mentorship. The film won funds in Dominican Republic with the annual FONPROCINE contest and is currently in the works to be shot on the island under her production company: JEVITA FILMS.
​
Gabriela is also writing a feature film for SONY PICTURES INTERNATIONAL and has a half-hour comedy tv show in development.