About | Sebastian Lasaosa Rogers

I am a Spanish-American documentary filmmaker and cinematographer based in Brooklyn, New York. Currently, I am finishing my first feature film about a Chuj-Maya family from Guatemala on a journey across Mexico to free their niece, Juanita, who was arbitrarily detained in northern Mexico for over seven years after being coerced into signing a false confession in a language she didn't speak.

My first feature documentary film as director of photography, The Art of Making It (2021), won the SXSW 2022 Audience Award in the Festival Favorites category. A recent short documentary I filmed for Art21 received a Vimeo Staff Pick.

The last documentary short I directed, Esquilas en la montaña / Bells in the Mountains (2017), was officially selected for the New Orleans Film Festival and the San Francisco Documentary Festival. This film followed two hundred cows, from my Spanish cousins' hometown of Ulle, making the three-day journey up the foothills of the Pyrenees mountains for the start of summer.

I got my start in film while studying at Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, TN where I graduated magna cum laude in 2013 with a BA in Anthropology and in Film. Here in Nashville I made my first videos, supporting workers' rights organizing and activist and social justice campaigns, like the Fight for $15 Movement.

When I'm not behind the camera, you might find me surfing the coast of NY and NJ or wherever there are good waves, generally playing in the great outdoors, or planning themed parties and playing games with friends.