Biography
Paloma Zapata (Murcia, 1979) is a director and producer, founder of La Fábrica Naranja. She is a member of Dones Visuals and the European Women's Audiovisual Network (EWA).
Her career begins in music video direction, with over a hundred clips for labels including Warner, Universal and Polydor, a relationship with music that permeates her entire subsequent filmography.
Her music documentaries Casamance (Sheffield Doc/Fest), Peret: yo soy la rumba (BAFICI) y Juliette y Camille (Locarno Pro) trace a coherent body of work around identity, travel and music. International recognition comes in 2023 with La Singla (Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, San Sebastián, Hot Docs), which wins the Feroz Award 2024 and is distributed in more than fifteen countries, with broadcasts on ARTE, NHK and ZDF.
In 2025 she receives the GAC grant and the SGAE screenwriting grant for The Caprices, her first fiction project. In 2026 she is selected for Berlinale Talents and completes the edit of Juliette & Camille, her fourth music documentary.
Alongside her creative work, she is active as a teacher, mentor and speaker in film education and discussion. She has mentored the project Yma Sumac: The Last Inca Princess, by Pablo García-Vizcarra, within ESCAC's Ópera Prima programme, and served as an expert mentor in the Atenea Programme of the Biennal Internacional Dona i Cinema (Valencia, 2024). She has led screenwriting and directing workshops on the music documentary short at In-Edit Lab (IN-EDIT, Barcelona) and at the Territorio Sur workshop in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, and has taken part in panels such as "Desfolklorizando lo gitano en el cine" at the CA2M Image Studies Conference (Madrid, 2024), alongside Isaki Lacuesta and Pablo Vega.