SEBASTIÁN LASAOSA ROGERS

I am a Spanish-American documentary filmmaker and cinematographer based in Brooklyn, New York.
I recently finished directing my first feature documentary, Freeing Juanita, which premiered at the DocsMX Film Festival in Mexico City. The film is a vérité portrait of a Maya Chuj family from the highlands of Guatemala who must travel across Mexico to free their niece, Juanita, after she was interrogated without an interpreter and unjustly detained in northern Mexico for more than seven years.
As a cinematographer I have lensed multiple feature length documentaries including The Art of Making It, which won a SXSW 2022 Audience Award. I also regularly film for Art21, where projects I shot have received a Vimeo Staff pick and will be streaming on PBS.
My documentary short 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 obsefilm 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 East Coast or wherever there are good waves, enjoying the great outdoors, or planning themed parties and playing games with friends.