Daniel Chávez-Ontiveros

Daniel Chávez-Ontiveros is a multi-award-winning Mexican filmmaker. He studied for an MFA in Documentary Film and Video at Stanford University. His documentary thesis, 'EL CISNE' (2016) was awarded the UNAFF Youth Vision Award and the Audience Award in the Sexual Diversity Program at the Morelia International Film Festival (FICM). He works in the California Bay Area as an editor for documentary shorts and feature films. 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 that premiered at HotDocs in 2023. The film was recently awarded the Best Documentary Award at the Center for American Asian Media Fest (CAAM Fest) in San Francisco. In addition, he is finalizing the editing of 'SANCTUARY RISING' (directed by Theo Rigby and Florencia Krochink). Currently, 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. Daniel also runs a small production company named Think Films, where he produces branded content documentaries for commercial and non-profit organizations such as Stanford Seed, TE Connectivity, Pearson PLC, and KDFC. He's also co-director of Video Consortium México (VCMX), a non-profit organization that focuses on creating community in the documentary scene in Mexico and promoting the work of Mexican documentary filmmakers.