Writer / Director / Producer, MAN PUSH CART, CHOP SHOP, GOODBYE SOLO, 99 HOMES, THE WHITE TIGER; Director, 2ND CHANCE

Writer / Director, BROTHER TO BROTHER, VISION PORTRAITS, PORTAL

Director / Executive Producer, JESUS CAMP, THE BOYS OF BARAKA, 12TH & DELAWARE, DETROPIA, NORMAN LEAR: JUST ANOTHER VERSION OF YOU, ONE OF US, LOVE FRAUD, ENDANGERED; Executive Producer, QUAD GODS, BABY GODS, CARMAN FAMILY MYSTERY

Director / Co-Writer, WINTER’S BONE; Director, DOWN TO THE BONE, STRAY DOG, LEAVE NO TRACE; Director, CONBODY VS EVERYBODY

Project Synopsis:
UNTITLED: In the UK, surfers rip through sewage-filled waves, exposing water companies that are full of shit—literally. Dumping untreated waste into UK waterways has left only 14% of rivers in good health and fueled a surge in antibiotic-resistant E. coli. These surfers fight for the ocean they love and the coastal communities paying the price.

Project Synopsis:
UNTITLED ALAMO PROJECT: Reenactors and ghosts tell us the story of how the story of the Alamo came to be.

Project Synopsis:
NO LOVE LOST: In the thick of summer on a secluded flower farm in rural New York, the Betancourt sisters—Leticia, Jules, and Simone—see their idyllic lives unravel when their long-lost sister, Daisy, arrives late one night with her new husband, Hector. As troubling misfortunes begin to plague the farm, suspicion and paranoia rise, sparking a violent struggle for control as the sisters reveal how far they will go to protect one another—and their secrets.

Project Synopsis:
FOR LEASE: After a Miami artist suffers a head injury due to a neglectful landlord, the reality and absurdity of a city in the midst of climate crisis and a real estate gold rush blurs as she tries to fulfill a grant in order to afford rent. How do you survive a city trying to kill you?

Writer / Director / Producer, PREMATURE, GUN HILL ROAD

Producer, THE NAMESAKE, QUEEN OF KATWE, and THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST.

Director, A CALL TO SPY, RADIUM GIRLS, HOMING INSTINCT.

Writer / Director / Producer, DARK MONEY, PRODIGAL SONS

Creative Producer / Executive / Consultant / Co-chair of the PGA’s One Guild diversity initiative

Writer / Director / Producer, MUSIC BY PRUDENCE, CASSANDRO, STAMPED FROM THE BEGINNING

Pamela Yates is the Senior Creative Director and Film Director and Paco de Onís is the Executive Director and Film Producer at Skylight, a not-for-profit a human rights media organization that combines cinematic arts with the quest for justice to inspire the defense of human rights.

Project Synopsis:
Summer, 2004. Nestled in the shadow of Southern California’s San Gabriel Mountains, SANTA ANITA is a neighborhood where past and present bleed together. Over the course of one weekend, strange, interconnected events transform three generations of lives, each of them haunted by the dead.

Project Synopsis:
Inspired by the filmmaker’s personal experience, IVAN unfolds in 2004 Grand Cayman, charting the hurricane's impact on three resilient Caribbean women across three generations. Flora, Mia, and Callie confront personal storms amid Mia's historic bid for the Cayman Islands’ premiership against her corrupt father, Sammy. Callie navigates childhood trials, while Flora battles failing health and matriarchal duties. The hurricane's unexpected strike forces Mia to reconcile nature's fickleness with familial tensions. IVAN is an intimate political saga delving into themes of motherhood, sacrifice, and reclaiming power amidst adversity, encapsulating the enduring bond between family and nature in a tumultuous landscape.

Project Synopsis:
I'll primarily be focused on my feature documentary titled TIMETRACKER. Logline here: TIMETRACKER is a feature documentary film that follows Jack Powers, a brilliant 62-year-old man recently released from a 33-year federal prison stay, 22 of which were spent in extreme solitary confinement. The film accompanies Jack as he navigates reentry and travels the American West in a rehabbed RV, in search of a better life and a sense of peace with his past.

Project Synopsis:
THE FORESTS ARE OUR BROTHERS is a feature-length documentary about the rampant logging of old-growth forests in eastern Europe by an international corporation, and the people fighting to save them.

Project Synopsis:
When millennial Chinese-American insurance investigator Nancy is sent to Indonesian Borneo to audit the death of an ecologist on a palm oil plantation, all she cares about is finding a way to fly to Bali from there to get the frequent flyer miles on her credit card. But she, along with goofy Indonesian handler Aditya and suave British ESG expert James, are confronted with clues from the plantation and social media that force them to realize the death is no accident. They unravel a mystery that takes them across continents and forces her to question what is "sustainable".

Project Synopsis:
Set between the Bay Area and Philadelphia, JOY AND PAIN explores the personal histories, relationships, and things carried within two Black families, through a couple burying a parent and bearing their first child.

Project Synopsis:
HOLDER OF THE SKY is a modern-day American story of colonization that documents three Wisconsin Tribes' battle to reclaim the historic treaty promises made to them in the face of longstanding racism and lingering land lust.

Project Synopsis:
RIVER OF GRASS brings audiences adrift through the past, present, and precarious future of the Florida Everglades, an iconic and imperiled region of subtropical wetlands unlike any other on earth. Told through the late environmentalist Marjory Stoneman Douglas, and those who today call the region home, RIVER OF GRASS explores the entwinement of past colonial violences and present-day ecological urgency.

Project Synopsis:
NINE NIGHTS, inspired by a true story, follows an undocumented Indian-American widowed mother as she takes the relentless journey to reunite with her separated children and reclaim her American dream by smuggling herself through the US/Mexico border.

Project Synopsis:
PHANTOM ROOTS is an experiential road memoir honoring the Vietnamese diaspora, connecting elements of ancestral landscape with acts of remembrance. Serenaded by grandmother’s beloved folk songs, a first generation Vietnamese-American encounters self through her grandfather’s devotion to Buddhist performance. The project is a visual diary of the journey taken by a first generation Vietnamese-American who seeks connection with her heritage. The characters have since departed from this reality; elders who took up their own longing for home. But through the portraiture of places dear to them and lyrical folklore that captivated their imaginations, these ghosts can be known.

Project Synopsis:
EAST NEW YORK is a feature-length narrative film which chronicles the life of a Nigerian-American boy in his childhood, adolescence, and adulthood in the neighborhood of East New York, as he watches his community change. 

Project Synopsis:
OCEANIA is a documentary that spans opposite sides of the Pacific Ocean in search of what ties our seemingly fragmented histories, disparate experiences and fates—together. The story is centered on the island nation of Kiribati, which is predicted to be uninhabitable by the year 2030 due to rising sea levels brought by climate change. Intimate narrative threads woven together from both sides of the equator re-orient our relationship to climate science data and facts while inviting us to feel the emotional, social and psychological dimensions of the ecological crisis.

Project Synopsis:
Daba, a Muslim agronomist fighting a food shortage crisis in a troubled and volatile country, welcomes back her estranged son, a functioning alcoholic just deported from America. As the country increasingly gets on the cusp to explode into a full on civil war, the newly reunited family must work together to save themselves and the community Daba has grown to call family. But her son is more involved in the orchestrated chaos than she knows.

Project Synopsis:
UNSEEN is a multi-platform documentary project that follows the story of Pedro, an aspiring social worker who happens to be a blind, undocumented immigrant. Using diegetic sound and experimental cinematography, the “audio-based” film reimagines the accessibility of cinema for audience members that cannot see, while exploring the issues of immigration, disability, and mental health. Beyond the film, the project also has an “audio play” and immersive VR component, in order for it to be as accessible as possible to audiences with disabilities.

2024 Film Independent Spirit Awards
TRUER THAN FICTION AWARD Winner

Project Synopsis:
David Buckel strived to change the world through grassroots composting and created the largest hand-powered compost site in New York City. Nine years later, he committed political self-immolation in the name of climate change. SON OF THE SOIL explores what drove the former civil rights lawyer-turned-environmentalist to the edge, and the legacy he left behind.

Project Synopsis:
A fed-up tribal cop takes justice into her own hands when her cousin is killed by a pair of white supremacists. She teams up with an unlikely partner - her nerdy cousin. The pair set off to deliver a traditional indigenous sentence against the perpetrators by banishing them from the community. They decide to put the racists on a boat back to Europe, which takes them on a cross country odyssey through other Indigenous communities. But in the end, does she do it or have the idiots learned something, changed and can be forgiven?