Speaker bio

Nicolasa Ruiz Mendoza is a transfronteriza filmmaker, screenwriter, and producer from Mexicali, Baja California, whose work emerges from lived experience in the Mexico–U.S. border region. Her artistic practice explores identity, belonging, and the political and emotional textures of border life, shaped by stories of migration, displacement, and constant cross-border movement. Through film, she examines how borders operate not only as geopolitical lines but as forces that shape bodies, relationships, and ways of imagining the future. She studied Audiovisual Media at the Autonomous University of Baja California. Her projects have received support from public cultural institutions in Mexico and have circulated internationally, though her primary focus remains the development of stories rooted in border communities.