Ramona S. Diaz is a Filipino-American documentary film director and producer best known for creating "character-driven documentaries". Her notable works include the 2012 film Don't Stop Believin': Everyman's Journey, featuring the band Journey and its new lead vocalist Arnel Pineda, which won the Audience Award for the 2013–2014 season of PBS's Independent Lens; and the 2003 film Imelda, about the life of Imelda Marcos, former First Lady of the Philippines.'Imelda': Don't Cry for Her. The Washington Post. Published on July 16, 2004. Retrieved on January 8, 2014.For a Regal Pariah, Despite It All, the Shoe Is Never on the Other Foot. The New York Times. Published on June 9, 2004. Retrieved on January 8, 2014.
Three of Diaz's films have screened at the Sundance Film Festival: Imelda, a biographical documentary about Imelda's beginnings as a beauty contest winner to the wife of rising politician and eventual President of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos. Motherland, a documentary set at an overcrowded and under-resourced maternity hospital in Manila; and most recently A Thousand Cuts a profile of Nobel laureate Maria Ressa, a journalist working in the Philippines, released in 2020. Motherland received a Special Jury Award at Sundance in 2017 and premiered the same year at the Berlin International Film Festival. Diaz served as a Documentary Competition Juror at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.
Diaz's most recent feature documentary, And So It Begins, was selected to premiere at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and was chosen by the Film Academy of the Philippines as the Philippines' entry to the 97th Academy Awards.
In 2019 Diaz received a United States Artists (USA) Fellowship.
Filmography
1997 Spirits Rising 2003 Imelda 2011 Give Up Tomorrow (as Executive Producer) 2011 The Learning (episode in P.O.V.) 2013 Don't Stop Believin': Everyman's Journey (episode in Independent Lens) 2017 Motherland 2020 A Thousand Cuts 2024 And So It Begins
Awards +YearAwardFestivalFilm2013Audience AwardPalm Springs International Film FestivalDon't Stop Believin': Everyman's Journey2017Viktor AwardMunich International Documentary Festival (DOK.fest)Motherland2017Editing AwardSundance Film FestivalMotherland2020DocEdge AwardDocumentary Edge FestivalA Thousand Cuts
References