Iliana Sosa is a filmmaker currently based in Los Angeles. She was born and raised in El Paso, Texas along the U.S.-Mexico Border to Mexican immigrant parents. A first-generation college graduate and a former Bill Gates Millennium Scholar, she received a BA in Latin American Studies and a minor in French from Southwestern University. She studied documentary filmmaking at the University of Buenos Aires during her undergraduate career. Additionally, she holds an MFA in film directing and production from UCLA where she wrote and directed several shorts that have played at numerous festivals. Her thesis film, Child of the Desert, starring Film Independent Spirit Award winner, Dale Dickey, won Best Short Film and the Texas Award at the 2012 Oscar qualifying USA Film Festival. She recently adapted and directed the independent feature, Detained in the Desert, based on Josefina Lopez’s play by the same name. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Graduate Opportunity Fellowship from UCLA, a Steven Bochco Fellowship, the Edie and Lew Wasserman Fellowship, the Hollywood Foreign Press Award, the Carroll Sax Award, and the National Hispanic Foundation of the Arts Scholarship. She is currently working on developing her next feature, Wayward, where she will be pitching the project as part of the Transatlantic Talent Lab at the 2013 Reykjavik Film Festival.