A Conversation with Filmmaker Deborah S. Esquenazi, presented by Latino Media Arts & Studies

The Latino Media Arts and Studies program presents a Q&A with filmmaker and investigative journalist Deborah S. Esquenazi, moderated by Radio-Television-Film Assistant Professor Iliana Sosa. The event is co-sponsored by Mexican American and Latina/o Studies, LGBTQ Studies, and the Department of Radio-Television-Film.

Deborah S. Esquenazi is an award-winning film director, screenwriter, and investigative journalist, based in Austin, Texas. Her interest in upending the oftentimes sensationalist True Crime genre informs the neorealist approach she takes to her work and her films foreground issues of identity within queer, Latino, and other marginalized communities in the United States.​ Her latest documentary, El Vacío, which is part of the New York Times’s Op-Doc Series, is nominated for a 2020 Emmy award. Esquenazi’s first feature, Southwest of Salem: The Story of the San Antonio Four, was also nominated for an Emmy and earned a variety of other distinctions, including the Peabody Award (2016). Southwest of Salem played a key role in the exoneration of four Latina lesbians who spent over a decade in prison for a crime they did not commit. The film is currently being adapted for television.