Daniel Chávez-Ontiveros

Daniel Chávez-Ontiveros is an award-winning Mexican filmmaker. He studied filmmaking at the National School of Cinematographic Arts (ENAC-UNAM) in Mexico City. Shortly after, with grants from FONCA/CONACYT for studies abroad and from the Jumex Foundation, he graduated in 2016 with an MFA in Documentary Film and Video at Stanford University. His thesis film ‘El Cisne’ (2016) was awarded the UNAFF Youth Vision Award (2017) and the Audience Award in the Program of Sexual Diversity at the Morelia International Film Festival FICM (2016). Daniel works as an editor in short and feature documentary films in the California Bay Area. He edited the films '499' and 'SANSÓN AND ME' by the Mexican-American director Rodrigo Reyes, these films won awards at HotDocs, Tribeca, and Sheffield DocFest. For his work on '499', Daniel was nominated for Best Editing in a Documentary Feature at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2020. He is also the editor of the documentary 'UNSEEN' (directed by Set Hernandez Rongkilyo) film which premiered at HotDocs in 2023 and in 2024 it was broadcast on POV. And he edited 'SI PUDIERA QUEDARME - IF I COULD STAY’' (directed by Theo Rigby and Florencia Krochink). The film premiered at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival a couple of months ago. Daniel is a fellow of the Karen Schmeer Editing Film Fellowship and in 2022 he was named to the 40 under 40 Documentary Filmmakers list, organized by DOC NYC and HBO Documentary Films. He's also the lead co-organizer of the Video Consortium Mexico City team (VCMX)