Valeria Contreras '23 Named Member of Netflix’s Director Incubator

Valeria Contreras '23 has been selected by The National Association of Latino Independent Producers to join Netflix's fifth cohort of its Director Incubator. This acclaimed program, formerly known as The Women of Color Incubator, amplifies global voices in film and television and serves as an entry point for storytellers whose visions challenge convention and reshape the narrative landscape. 

Contreras will receive a production grant of $35,000 to create a short film. Through this process, she will also receive mentorship from both Netflix and NALIP executives. The films will be showcased at the 2026 NALIP Media Summit. 

Contreras’s film is titled Oranges. It was produced by Soumya Singh '23. The story follows Lucia, a free-spirited girl, as she prepares to leave her border town home for Mexico City in 1972. Her responsible, older sister Griselda struggles to hold it together until a final moment at a streetcar stop cracks open the silence between them.

Oranges was a project that started growing back during Contreras’s Columbia education. "I wrote the short script for Oranges as I was graduating from Columbia in 2023 and continued to develop the project over the next two years in my hometown of El Paso, Texas," Contreras shared. "With the support of the NALIP Director Incubator, sponsored by Netflix, we were able to bring this story to life in ways I once could only dream of. I’m incredibly grateful to NALIP and Netflix, as well as to the many community partners and institutions that supported this work along the way. The short film is a proof of concept for a feature screenplay I developed through the El Paso Community Foundation Border Art Residency and the Cine Qua Non Storylines Lab. Throughout the process, I’ve kept my notebooks from my Columbia days close, as the lessons I learned in the MFA program have continued to guide me throughout my journey as a storyteller."

Contreras is an award-winning filmmaker from El Paso, Texas. She is a Producers Guild of America Create Fellow, Film Independent Producing Fellow, Cine Qua Non Storylines Lab Fellow, and El Paso Community Foundation Border Art Resident. Valeria’s work focuses on amplifying narratives from the US-Mexico border region. Her short film Homesick screened at festivals globally including the Oscar-qualifying Atlanta Film Festival. Valeria is in development on the Untitled Texas Latina Project, an anthology feature film exploring Latine identity in Texas through the lens of five award-winning Latina directors and writers. The Texas project has received support from the Austin Film Society, SFFilm, WarnerMedia, and The Gotham. She received the Michael Hausman Foundation Award and 3Pas Studios Award. She has served on the Young Mezcal Jury at the Guadalajara International Film Festival.