Gabriela Ortega is an award-winning writer/director and actor born and raised in the Dominican Republic. She is a graduate of the University of Southern California's BFA in acting program, a 2021-2022 Sundance Institute "Art of Practice" fellow and is currently based in Los Angeles.

Gabriela was selected as one of the ten writer/directors of the 2021 Rising Voices fellowship created in partnership by Lena Waithe's Hillman Grad productions and Indeed. The companies produced Gabriela's short film HUELLA which was an official selection of 2022 Sundance film festival and is being turned into a feature film. The feature version of Huella also won development funds in the inaugural NewNarratives grant cycle created by WarnerMedia OneFifty and NewFilmmakers LA. ​

She is a Sundance Lab, Nalip Latino Media Market, HBO Tomorrow’s filmmakers today and and IAMA under30 lab alum. She was also awarded Best Director of a live-action short at the 2021 LALIFF for her short film In Case I’m Next. Currently, she is a director-in-residence at Indeed/Hillman Grad for their new 2022 Development Lab. ​

As a screenwriter, she's been hired by Sony Pictures International to write a Spanish language script and was a staff writer for the second season Netflix's sketch show "Go Off with Jess and Julissa". Most recently, she's been hired to write on the highly anticipated Bioshock 4 game produced by 2K. 

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Gabriela is also developing a Dominican narrative feature, Piratas. The film won development funds in the Dominican Republic with the annual FONPROCINE contest and was part of the 2021 Latino Media Market. ​

Gabriela's work lives within the intersection of fiction and poetry. She writes flawed people with larger-than-life ambitions, driven women with sour senses of humor and families living between opposing cultures. She aims to draw cultural bridges that lead to the Caribbean and tell stories that represent the people she grew up with, authentically. ​

She is proud to say that Papi, the first short film she made (on her phone in the Dominican Republic) about her overlanding travels with her father, has been acquired by and is set to premiere on HBO in 2022 after a successful festival run. ​

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