Born in Santo Domingo, 1985. He studied cinematography in Buenos Aires then later at Edinburgh College of Art where he started making experimental work. He has received his MFA in Film/Video at CalArts. During this period, he made an observational documentary which has been shown in festivals in the U.S., Europe, and Latin America, including Tropical Uncanny at the Guggenheim, New York. His thesis, a feature-length essay Santa Teresa y otras historias (2015) had its World Premiere at FID Marseille, where it won Georges de Beauregard’s Prize, after which it was selected for the TIFF, the New York International Film Festival, Viennale, the Mar del Plata International Film Festival, winning Best Latin American Film, also the First Film Award at Cinema Tropical Award 2016.

I have always been interested in the origin of the violence in my country – a strange violence, which is almost silent, always lurking. To talk about violence, to talk about a crime, it is impossible not to mention morality. I feel the need to ask what are the sources of morality at the present time? From what point do we constitute morality then? What is it that we are confronting every day?

To face a country whose majority has struggled to conceive itself through social sciences such as anthropology and sociology, among others, I find it necessary to explore the sources of the values that are driving my society at the present time by analyzing our religions – fundamental institutions in the production of morality and values that are always in conflict with each other and themselves. Cocote becomes a platform for the confrontation of these systems of faith and their attempt to defend themselves, with the expectation that answers will arise.