Lucía Gajá Ferrer
“My Life Inside” and “Lives on the Border”
My intention is to present through images and an exposition, the case study of the film My Life Iinside, México, 2007, that portraits the story of a Mexican woman Rosa Estela Olvera, in the United States, who was sentenced to 99 years in prison in 2005, being innocent. The filmed raised a huge awareness and was able to get the attention of the Innocence Project, who advocated for her freedom. She was finally freed in January 2021, after spending 18 years in prison.
The director followed her story and made a sequel of this film, which is premiering this year and follows several years of Rosa´s imprisonment, the lives of her son and daughter living in the U.S with foster parents, and Rosa´s release, following her efforts to reconstruct her life.
My interest is to inspire as I share this experience as a filmmaker and teacher of documentary filmmaking, how as teachers and future filmmakers (our students), we can help to understand how through films, committed to their protagonists’ stories and its ethics, we can make and take social impact not only in the spectators but in people that can make a difference to change their situation.
Lucía Gajá Ferrer is a filmmaker and a teacher in documentary filmmaking. Her debut documentary, My Life Inside won multiple national and international awards. Her work has had strong social impact and has been exhibited and screened at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Cartier Foundation. She is a member of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte. She was awarded the National University Prize for Young Academics, as well as the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize, granted by the UNAM. She is currently in post-production of her next two films, and writing her first fiction feature film.