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Violeta Ayala

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Violeta Ayala
Violeta Ayala.
Born
Violeta Michelle Ayala Grageda

(1978-02-16) 16 February 1978 (age 47)
Cochabamba, Bolivia
Occupation(s)Film director, producer, writer, artist
Spouse
​
(m. 2012)​
Children1

Violeta Ayala (born Violeta Michelle Ayala Grageda; 16 February 1978) is a Bolivian-Australian Quechua[1] filmmaker, artist[2] and technologist.[3] Her credits include Huk, The Jaguaress (2025),[4] Las Awichas (2024),[5][6] Prison X – The Devil & The Sun (2021)[7][8] and the documentaries La Lucha (2023),[9] Cocaine Prison (2017),[10] The Fight (2017),[11] The Bolivian Case (2015),[12] and Stolen (2009).[13]

Early life and education

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Ayala was born in Cochabamba, Bolivia in 1978, the daughter of Fanny Grageda and Efrain Ayala. Ayala's maternal grandfather was the political Quechua leader Vitaliano Grageda,[14][15] He was one of the founders and a former Secretary General of the Confederation of Peasant Workers of Bolivia.[16] Vitaliano Grageda was an active member of The Communist Party of Bolivia.

Her mother was a biochemist and had a pharmacy, her father immigrated to Sydney, Australia when Ayala was a child.[17] She has two half-brothers from her mother's subsequent relationship with doctor Roly Elias. She grew up in the south part of Cochabamba, one of the city's poorest areas.[18] Following her mother's death in 1995, Ayala immigrated to Australia.

Ayala is a graduate of Charles Sturt University where she majored in Broadcast Journalism.

Film career

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In 2006 Ayala began her collaboration with Dan Fallshaw on Between the Oil and the Deep Blue Sea, a documentary set in Mauritania, about corruption in the oil industry, that follows the investigations of mathematician Yahyia Ould Hamidoune against Woodside Petroleum. On the same subject Ayala co-wrote Slick Operator[19] an article published in the front page of The Sydney Morning Herald.

Ayala's feature directorial debut, the highly controversial documentary Stolen (2009),[20] premiered internationally at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2009.[21]

In 2015 Ayala made The Bolivian Case, a feature about a high profile case concerning three Norwegian teenage girls caught with 22 kg of cocaine in an airport in Bolivia. The film was shot in Cochabamba and Oslo, premiered in the Special Presentation Program[22] at Toronto's Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival in May 2015,[23] has won an audience award at the Sydney Film Festival[24] and was shortlisted for Platino Awards[25] and Premios Fénix.[26]

Ayala's short film The Fight (2017) focused on a protest by a group of people with disabilities that march across the Andes in wheelchairs and on foot for 35 days to the seat of the government in La Paz, asking to speak to President Evo Morales about a disability pension and were repressed by the police.[27][28][29] The film was released worldwide by The Guardian in May 2017[30] and has won a Walkley Award,[31] the Deutsche Welle Doc Dispatch Award at the Sheffield Doc/Fest,[32] as well as a nomination for an IDA Documentary Award[33] and was a finalist for the Rory Peck Sony Impact Award.[34]

Ayala is an alumnus of the Film Independent Documentary Lab,[35] the Berlinale Talent Campus, HotDocs Forum, Britdoc Good Pitch, IFP[36] and a Sundance[37] and Tribeca Film Institute fellow.[38]

Ayala's documentary Cocaine Prison was filmed inside San Sebastian prison in Cochabamba, by the inmates themselves,[39] giving a unique perspective on the foot soldiers of the drug trade.[40][41][42] Cocaine Prison premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2017[43] and has won the audience award at the Rencontres Cinémas d'Amérique Latine de Toulouse.[44]

In 2018, Ayala received a Jaime Escalante Medal in a ceremony organized by the Embassy of Bolivia in Washington, D.C.[45]

In 2020, Ayala was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.[46]

In 2021, Ayala's Prison X a virtual reality animated experience premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.[47][48][49][50]

In 2023, La Lucha, premiered at the Blackstar Film Festival[51] and SXSW Sydney.[52] The documentary follows La Caravana, a significant disability rights protest in Bolivia, and its role in establishing a monthly pension for people with disabilities[53] —earned Ayala the NYWIFT Award for Excellence in Documentary Directing.[54]

Art and technology projects

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Ayala created Las Awichas (Aymara for “grandmothers”), a series of AI‑generated digital portraits honouring her female ancestors. The exhibition opened on 21 September 2022 at the Martadero cultural centre in Cochabamba.[55][56][57]

In July 2023 it was announced that Las Awichas had been selected for the new GLOW exhibition in London.[58] The project was later presented, from March to April 2024, as a new commission on the Strand and inside King’s College London’s Bush House Arcade; the installation combined the digital portraits with augmented‑reality experiences, 3D‑printed Amazonian animals and hand‑woven textiles.[59][60][61] Las Awichas won Best Interactive Experience at AIDC 2025.[62][63]

In 2024 Ayala was selected for the inaugural Mila Quebec AI Art Residency,[64] where she developed Huk, The Jaguaress, an interactive installation that combines robotic vision, real‑time generative video and a multilingual synthetic voice to personify an Indigenous AI guardian of the Amazon. The work premiered on 5 March 2025 in the INTER:ACTIVE programme of CPH:DOX at Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen,[65][66] and was shown out of competition from 9 to 13 April 2025 at the 8th NewImages Festival[67] at the Forum Des Images in Paris.[68][69]

Personal life

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Ayala has lived in Australia and the United States and has dual Bolivian-Australian nationality.

She is married to filmmaker Dan Fallshaw, with whom she has a child, born in June 2016.[70]

Controversy

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In 2020, during the COVID-19 lockdown in Sydney, Ayala publicly supported the rent strike movement. Ayala's statement "People are losing their lives and livelihoods, we can’t see our loved ones, our five-year-old doesn’t go to school and the real estate agent says it’s business as usual?"[71]

In 2022, Ayala criticized the Sundance Festival for hosting the movie Jihad Rehab, which interviewed former Guantánamo Bay prisoners. Ayala wrote on twitter that "an entirely white team" was "behind a film about Yemeni and South Arabian men." However, the film had a Yemeni-American executive producer and a Saudi co-producer.[72]

Filmography

[edit]
  • Proyecto Vila-Vila (2005, Documentary)
  • Between The Oil and The Deep Blue Sea (2005, Documentary)
  • Stolen (2009, Documentary)
  • The Bolivian Case (2015, Documentary)
  • The Fight (2017, Short Documentary)
  • Cocaine Prison (2017, Documentary)
  • Prison X (2021, VR Animation)
  • La Lucha (2023, Documentary)
  • Las Awichas (2024, AR Animation)
  • Huk, The Jaguaress (2025, AI Animation)

Awards

[edit]
Year Award Category Work Result
2018 Toulouse Latin America Film Festival

(France)

Audience Award Cocaine Prison Winner
Artículo 31 Film Festival (Spain) Desalambre Award The Fight Winner
Tempo Documentary Festival (Sweden) Stefan Jarl International Documentary Award Cocaine Prison Nominated
2017 Ida Awards (United States) Best Short The Fight Nominated
Walkley Award (Australia) Best Cinematography The Fight Winner
Rory Peck Awards (United Kingdom) Sony Impact Award The Fight Finalist
Camden International Film Festival (United States) Best Documentary Feature Cocaine Prison Nominated
Festival Internacional De Cine De Oruro Diablo De Oro Best Documentary The Fight Winner
Festival Internacional De Cine De Oruro Diablo De Oro (Bolivia) Best Documentary The Bolivian Case Nominated
Sheffield Doc/Fest (United Kingdom) Doc Dispatch Award The Fight Winner
Festival Internacional De Cine De Los Derechos Humanos De Bolivia – El Séptimo Ojo Es Tuyo (Bolivia) Best Documentary The Fight Winner
2016 Ibermedia (Spain) Distribution Award The Bolivian Case Winner
Premios Platino (Uruguay) Best Documentary The Bolivian Case Shortlisted
Premios Fenix (Mexico) Best Documentary The Bolivian Case Shortlisted
2015 Sydney Film Festival (Australia) Audience Award The Bolivian Case 3rd Runner-up
2010 Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles (United States) Best Documentary Stolen Winner
Art of the Document Film Festival in Warsaw (Poland) Best Documentary Stolen Winner
Anchorage International Film Festival (United States) Golden Oosikar Best Documentary Stolen Winner
African Film Festival (Nigeria) Best Documentary Stolen Winner
Amnesty International Film Festival (Canada) Audience Award Stolen Winner
Festival Internacional De Cine De Cuenca (Ecuador) Best Film Stolen Winner
Rincon International Film Festival (Puerto Rico) Best International Feature Stolen Winner
Rivers Edge International Film Festival (United States) Best Film Stolen Winner
Documentary Edge Film Festival (New Zealand) Best Documentary Stolen Special Jury Mention
Documentary Edge Film Festival (New Zealand) Best Editing Stolen Winner
Xv International Tv Festival Bar (Montenegro) Silver Olive Stolen Winner
Ojai Film Festival (United States) Best Documentary Stolen Special Jury Mention
One World Human Rights Film Festival (Bratislava) Audience Award Stolen Winner
It's All True Film Festival (Brazil) Best International Documentary Stolen Nominated
2009 Sydney Film Festival Best Documentary Stolen Nominated

References

[edit]
  1. ^ "Violeta Ayala". Brown Girls Doc Mafia. Retrieved 16 January 2021.
  2. ^ London, King's College. "Artists announced for major new GLow3 exhibition". King's College London. Retrieved 25 December 2023.
  3. ^ kentbye. "#1254: Using AI to Upskill Creative Sovereignty with XR Artist Violeta Ayala – Voices of VR Podcast". Retrieved 25 December 2023.
  4. ^ "Huk, The Jaguaress". CPH:DOX. Retrieved 3 May 2025.
  5. ^ London, King's College. "Las Awichas, 2024 © Violeta Ayala". King's College London. Retrieved 3 May 2025.
  6. ^ "Talento. La magia de Las Awichas triunfa en Australia". Los Tiempos (in Spanish). 6 March 2025. Retrieved 3 May 2025.
  7. ^ "2021 Sundance Film Festival". fpg.festival.sundance.org. Retrieved 21 December 2020.
  8. ^ Spangler, Todd (15 December 2020). "Sundance 2021: New Frontier Program Unveils 14 Selections, Presented (Of Course) in Virtual Spaces". Variety. Retrieved 21 December 2020.
  9. ^ "La Lucha (The Fight)". BlackStar. Retrieved 24 December 2023.
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  16. ^ "Violeta Ayala, con el cine como arma – Diario Pagina Siete" (in Spanish). Retrieved 22 May 2018.
  17. ^ "Violeta Ayala, la cineasta boliviana que ayuda a las personas con discapacidad". ANF. Agencia de Noticias Fides. Retrieved 29 March 2016.
  18. ^ MACFARLANE. "Meet Violeta Ayala, the Indigenous Director Who Gave Cameras to Bolivian Inmates for 'Cocaine Prison'". Remezcla. Remezcla. Retrieved 17 October 2017.
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  21. ^ Richard (18 August 2009). "TIFF Talk: Additional Documentaries Announced". TIFF Talk. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
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  26. ^ El caso boliviano (in Spanish), retrieved 16 May 2018
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  28. ^ Ayala, Violeta; Fallshaw, Dan; Phillips, Charlie; Poulton, Lindsay. "Fighting for a pension: disability rights protesters in Bolivia face police barricades – video". the Guardian. Retrieved 16 May 2018.
  29. ^ Why are these protesters hanging from a bridge? – CNN Video, retrieved 15 May 2018
  30. ^ Ayala, Violeta; Fallshaw, Dan; Phillips, Charlie; Poulton, Lindsay. "Fighting for a pension: disability rights protesters in Bolivia face police barricades – video". the Guardian. Retrieved 16 May 2018.
  31. ^ Meade, Amanda (29 November 2017). "Guardian wins Walkley for film on Bolivian disability rights campaign". the Guardian. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  32. ^ "'City of Ghosts' wins top prize at Sheffield Doc/Fest 2017". Screen. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  33. ^ "IDA Documentary Awards 2017". International Documentary Association. Retrieved 22 May 2018.
  34. ^ "Rory Peck Awards – Episode Guide – All 4". www.channel4.com. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  35. ^ Elnaz Toussi (16 March 2012). "Film Independent's second Documentary Lab begins in LA". Screen Daily. Retrieved 16 March 2012.
  36. ^ Wissot, Lauren. ""I'm Tired of this Appropriation of Stories by Filmmakers from the West:": Violeta Ayala and Dan Fallshaw on Cocaine Prison | Filmmaker Magazine". Filmmaker Magazine. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  37. ^ "EDN: Sundance Documentary Film Program announce grants". edn.network (in Ukrainian). Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  38. ^ Indiewire staff (28 April 2011). "TFI Names Winners & Grants for Tribeca All Access & More". IndieWire. Retrieved 28 April 2011.
  39. ^ "'Everything in this conflict is about control': Violeta Ayala Talks 'Cocaine Prison' – Point of View Magazine". povmagazine.com. Retrieved 22 May 2018.
  40. ^ "Meet Violeta Ayala, the Indigenous Director Who Gave Cameras to Bolivian Inmates for 'Cocaine Prison'". Remezcla. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  41. ^ "Bolivian Director Violeta Ayala on COCAINE PRISON and Demystifying the Narco Representation". Cinema Tropical. Retrieved 16 May 2018.
  42. ^ "'Cocaine Prison' Aims to Humanize the Drug Trade by Giving Inmates Video Cameras". Video. Archived from the original on 14 September 2017. Retrieved 22 May 2018.
  43. ^ "Cocaine Prison". www.tiff.net. Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  44. ^ "Palmarès (2018) | Cinelatino". www.cinelatino.fr (in French). Retrieved 15 May 2018.
  45. ^ "Violeta Ayala recibe medalla Jaime Escalante y pide respeto al 21F". El Deber. Retrieved 22 May 2018.
  46. ^ "ACADEMY INVITES 819 TO MEMBERSHIP". Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. 30 June 2020. Retrieved 10 July 2020.
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  50. ^ Lucca, Violet (4 February 2021). "Prison, Mall, Web Ring". ARTnews.com. Retrieved 25 December 2023.
  51. ^ "La Lucha (The Fight)". BlackStar. Retrieved 25 December 2023.
  52. ^ "La Lucha". SXSW Sydney. Retrieved 25 December 2023.
  53. ^ "'La Lucha', un documental sobre la resistencia y dignidad de las personas discapacitadas en Bolivia". Voz de América (in Spanish). 18 September 2023. Retrieved 25 December 2023.
  54. ^ "NYWIFT Presents 11 Film Festival Awards throughout 2024". New York Women in Film & Television. Retrieved 3 May 2025.
  55. ^ Machicado, Giannina (22 September 2022). "Un festival de arte digital expone obras creadas con inteligencia artificial". La Razón (in Spanish).
  56. ^ Prensa (19 September 2022). ""BIDA FAIR", el festival de arte digital que presentará una serie de piezas artísticas desarrolladas desde una perspectiva virtual » mARTadero". mARTadero (in Spanish). Retrieved 25 December 2023.
  57. ^ Bolivia, Opinión (21 September 2022). "Usan técnicas digitales para hacer piezas de arte". Opinión Bolivia (in Spanish). Retrieved 25 December 2023.
  58. ^ London, King's College. "Artists announced for major new GLow3 exhibition". King's College London. Retrieved 25 December 2023.
  59. ^ London, King's College. "Las Awichas, 2024 © Violeta Ayala". King's College London. Retrieved 29 May 2024.
  60. ^ London, King's College. "Groundbreaking digital art by women in tech showcased at King's". King's College London. Retrieved 29 May 2024.
  61. ^ "GLOW: Spotlight on VR". XRMust. Retrieved 29 May 2024.
  62. ^ "AIDC 2025 Award Winners Announced". AIDC. 6 March 2025. Retrieved 3 May 2025.
  63. ^ "AIDC Reveal 2025 Awards Nominees and $5,000 AIDC Southern Light Award Winner". FilmInk. Retrieved 3 May 2025.
  64. ^ "Co‑Creating Art – MILA AI Art Residency Projects". cocreating.art. Retrieved 2 May 2025.
  65. ^ "CPH:DOX unveils INTER:ACTIVE 2025 exhibition line‑up under the theme "Untamed: Humanity Rewilded"". cphdox.dk. 4 March 2025. Retrieved 2 May 2025.
  66. ^ "Huk, The Jaguaress". cphdox.dk. Retrieved 2 May 2025.
  67. ^ Raynault, Maxime (1 April 2025). "Out-of-competition 2025: Immersive exploration of otherness". NewImages Festival. Retrieved 3 May 2025.
  68. ^ "NewImages Festival 2025 – Out‑of‑Competition press kit" (PDF). forumdesimages.fr. Forum des images. 1 April 2025. Retrieved 2 May 2025.
  69. ^ "Violeta Ayala – Huk, The Jaguaress". XRMust. 6 March 2025. Retrieved 2 May 2025.
  70. ^ Wissot. ""I'm Tired of this Appropriation of Stories by Filmmakers from the West:": Violeta Ayala and Dan Fallshaw on Cocaine Prison". Filmmaker Magazine. Filmmaker Magazine. Retrieved 11 September 2017.
  71. ^ "Australia's coronavirus lockdown has renters and landlords in a bind". SBS News. Retrieved 25 December 2023.
  72. ^ Powell, Michael (25 September 2022). "Sundance Liked Her Documentary on Terrorism, Until Muslim Critics Didn't". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 25 September 2022.
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