Location: Mexico City / San Francisco, CA
Medium: Film (documentary, fiction, experimental)
Website: altamurafilms.com
Natalia Almada (b. 1974, Mexico City) is a Mexican-American filmmaker and photographer. Born to a Mexican father and an American-born mother, she is a dual citizen of Mexico and the United States and grew up between the two countries. She is the great-granddaughter of Plutarco Elías Calles, Mexico’s 40th president. She received her BFA from the College of Santa Fe (1995) and her MFA in photography from the Rhode Island School of Design (2001). She lives and works between Mexico City and San Francisco.
Her debut short documentary All Water Has a Perfect Memory (2001) won the Guggenheim Fellowship (2008) and the Creative Capital Award (2005) helped support her early career, and her feature El General (2009) won the Sundance Directing Award for Documentary. She was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2012 — the first Latina filmmaker to receive it — followed by a United States Artists Fellowship (2010), a MacDowell Colony Fellowship (2011), a Sundance Institute Art of Nonfiction Fellowship (2018), and the Alpert Award (2021). Her narrative feature Everything Else / Todo lo demás (2016) won the Golden Gate New Directors Prize at the San Francisco International Film Festival. Her film Users (2021) won the Sundance Directing Award for U.S. Documentary, making her a two-time recipient of that prize.
Almada’s films range from documentary to fiction to experimental narrative, and address Mexican history, politics, violence, and collective memory through intimate, non-linear forms that resist conventional documentary structures. She does not use expert interviews or linear timelines; instead her camera acts as a witness to lives shaped by power and violence.
- All Water Has a Perfect Memory (2001) — short documentary; winner, Best Documentary Short, inaugural Tribeca Film Festival (2002); official selection, Sundance 2002
- Al Otro Lado (2005) — documentary exploring illegal immigration and drug trafficking across the US–Mexico border; broadcast on PBS POV
- El General (2009) — documentary portrait of her great-grandfather, Mexican president Plutarco Elías Calles, drawn from inherited audio recordings; winner, Sundance Directing Award for Documentary
- El Velador (2011) — documentary following the night watchman of a cartel mausoleum in Sinaloa; premiered, Cannes Directors’ Fortnight; broadcast on PBS POV
- Everything Else / Todo lo demás (2016) — narrative feature starring Adriana Barraza as a Mexico City bureaucrat; premiered, New York Film Festival; winner, Golden Gate New Directors Prize, San Francisco International Film Festival; nominated, Mexican Academy Award (Ariel)
- Users (2021) — visual essay on technology, humanity, and the planet, with score by the Kronos Quartet; winner, Sundance Directing Award for U.S. Documentary
- 2002 — Sundance Film Festival, Park City, UT — All Water Has a Perfect Memory, short documentary competition
- 2002 — Tribeca Film Festival, New York, NY — All Water Has a Perfect Memory, winner Best Documentary Short
- 2008 — Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
- 2009 — Sundance Film Festival, Park City, UT — El General, U.S. Documentary Competition; winner, Directing Award
- 2010 — Creative Capital at MoMA, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY — El General
- 2011 — Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, Cannes, France — El Velador, official selection
- 2012 — dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Germany
- 2012 — El Velador / The Night Watchman, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
- 2021 — Sundance Film Festival, Park City, UT — Users, U.S. Documentary Competition; winner, Directing Award
- 2021 — Non/Fiction: 20 Years of Doc Fortnight, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY — Al Otro Lado
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