Malpaso

Héctor M. Valdez

Hector M. Valdez (Santo Domingo, 1989) began making short films as a teenager and throughout his university years, at McGill University. His studies include courses in Film Directing, Acting and Performance in Film and an Overview of the Film Industry at UCLA. In 2015, he directed the documentary feature-length film República del Color: a film that explores how the depiction of Caribbean identity has evolved in the country’s rich history in visual arts.

His follow up film, Melocotones, was a Yellow Robin nominee at the IFFR-Curaçao and held its North American premiere at the Montreal World Film Festival in 2017. Melocotones was then selected as the ‘Film of the Festival’ at the Raindance Film Festival. This distinction granted him the opportunity to write and direct the official trailer for the ‘26th Raindance Film Festival’ in 2018 which received wide media exposure in the UK.

Malpaso is his most personal film to date; made to give a voice to the youth in the most neglected region of his country: the Haitian-Dominican border. During its post-production, the film was one of the five films featured in the work-in-progress lab Primera Mirada at the IFF Panama in 2019. Malpaso will hold its World Premiere as part of the Official Selection of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.