Juan Mejia Botero

Born in Bogotá on July 11, 1977, Juan Mejía Botero is a renowned film director with 25 years of experience in feature films and documentary series. Throughout his career, he has specialized mainly in community cinema and collaborative documentaries that address global social justice issues. His project “Igualada” had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2024. This film chronicles the journey of Francia Márquez, the current Vice President of Colombia, from her early days as an activist to her presidential campaign. Her documentary work has been shaped by her collaboration with community media and her long association with grassroots organizing throughout the region. She has directed numerous short and feature-length documentaries focusing on forced displacement, ethnic autonomy, state violence, and natural resources, which have been widely recognized at festivals and on television. He graduated in Anthropology and Sociology from Swarthmore College (USA) in 2000. The following year, as a recipient of the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, he traveled, lived, and worked as a community video facilitator and project coordinator in Colombia, Brazil, Peru, Chile, and Ecuador. These projects trained indigenous communities, peasant cooperatives, and street youth in basic audiovisual production techniques and the power of self-representation while questioning conventional and mainstream media. His feature documentary “Death by a Thousand Cuts” premiered at Hot Docs, winning the Grand Jury Prize at the Seattle International Film Festival and the Audience Award at DOC NYC. Most recently, he has produced series such as “Amend: The Fight for America” (Netflix), “Soul of a Nation” (ABC), and “Killing County” (Hulu). His short film “Houston United” premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival.