Oriol Estrada and Natalia Cabral film directors

Natalia & Uri

Natalia Cabral (Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic) and Oriol Estrada (Capellades, Barcelona)

Both are award-winning filmmakers whose work live on the borderlines of fiction and nonfiction. Graduates of the prestigious EICTV Cuban Film School, Natalia and Oriol found Faula Films in 2012 in order to provide a creative platform for the development and co-production of independent filmmaking in the Caribbean.

Their debut documentary feature film You and Me (2014) premiered at Visions du Réel and won several awards at Cartagena IFF, Trinidad & Tobago IFF, Havana IFF, Márgenes, Austin and Santo Domingo, among others. Their second documentary film Site of Sites (2016), supported by DOCTV Latinoamérica, premiered at IDFA – International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. The film was presented in the US at the Neighboring Scenes Showcase of the Film Society of Lincoln Center, was official selection at Biarritz, Cartagena and Lima, and was listed as one of the 25 best Latin American films of 2017 by Cinema Tropical.

Miriam Lies (2018) is the couple’s first fiction feature film, co-produced by the Catalan arthouse production company Mallerich Films Paco Poch, with support of Fonprocine, the Ibermedia programme and the Latin America Fund of the Tribeca Film Institute.

The film premiered in the official competition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, where it obtained a special mention from the jury. Later, it was awarded with the Golden Colon for Best Film at the Huelva Ibero-American Film Festival, the ALMA Award for Best Spanish Film Script at the Gijón International Film Festival, Best Director at the Punta del Este Festival, the SFCC Award from the French Critics at Cinélatino Toulouse, among others.

Miriam Miente is considered among the most notable films of Latin American cinema and is particularly outstanding within the showcase of Dominican Republic cinema, winning in 2020 the award for Best Film at the ADOCINE Awards of the Dominican film industry and the ADOPRESCI critics awards.

A Film About Couples (2021) is their latest work. The film was screened at the Locarno, Rome, Miami, Hamburg and Cartagena International Film Festivals. It won the best film award from the Syndicat Français de la Critique de Cinéma, and a special mention from the jury at the Biarritz Latin American Film Festival. It also won three awards at the Gijón International Film Festival, including Best Spanish Film and Best Director.