A Conversation with MFA Screenwriting Alum Inés de los Santos

NYFA MFA Screenwriting Alum Inés de los Santos is a writer, director, producer, and founder of the production company Camuy Films. Since graduating, Inés has founded her own company, written scripts for international and US productions, and created the web series ”Antología del Estado Natural”, which she wrote, directed, and produced. 

Inés spoke with NYFA about her career, web series and upcoming projects.

NYFA Alumni Network: Can you tell us a bit about yourself, where you're from, and what brought you to New York Film Academy?

Inés: I’m from the Dominican Republic. I didn’t grow up in an artistic family, but my parents really liked going to the movies or watching matinee during the weekend. So I was very into it from early ages. And even though filmmaking wasn’t “a career” (or at least that’s what my parents used to say), I was already creating short stories or doing homemade commercials since I was 7 years old. I heard about NYFA through a national Foundation called FUNGLODE. They do short courses and workshops with international schools, and once they had NYFA set up for applications. I had a friend that worked in the foundation and she guided me to go through the whole application of the Masters.

Ines de los Santos on set

NYFA Alumni Network: What projects have you worked on since graduating? Have you won any awards or been showcased in any festivals or competitions? 

Inés: After I finished my Master’s degree in Screenwriting, I started working as a freelance screenwriter. I’ve done scripts for Dominican producers and have worked for indie producers in the United States and other countries (last year, I did a feature script for a Brazilian producer so hopefully I’ll continue expanding to more places, hehe!).I’m a full-time producer for Space Command Studios LLC, which is based in LA. 

I do admin remote work from the DR with the agreement that I come over to the states when there are any shoots (June was my first shoot as an in-studio producer for the latest film “Space Command Forgiveness”). I started working for this company back in 2019 before I decided to move back to the DR, but the company decided to keep me remotely, especially because it was possible due to the COVID-19 spread, so I kept my position -in that time as an assistant to the co-producer they had in that time.

I started escalating to other positions throughout the years, and this past February the owner of the production company offered me to be the producer of their main series, which was a big responsibility, but loved the experience.

Back in the DR, I’m a producer as well and have launched my own production company called Camuy Films. We are focused on web content, such as YouTube and Vimeo (vlogs, podcasts, short films and web series), content for social media (ads, reels, tutorials and others), music videos and commercials for TV. 

Our biggest project right now is a web series called “Antología del Estado Natural” - project where I’m the producer, writer and director of most of its episodes; it’s a web series about micro male-chauvinism told through short stories (and inspired by true events) that take place in the Dominican Republic. You can check out the show here.

The third episode of season 1 (called Hombresplaining) was selected to represent the Dominican Republic in the FIACINE Mujeres 2022 México, and was showcased in the Monterrey Film Festival of 2022. 

For this year’s film festival submissions, we are applying to several film festivals with two episodes: Solita en la noche and Tú eres mía. Right now, we are working on the third season, focused on sexual assault, street harassment and teenage pregnancy. 

NYFA Alumni Network: Tell us more about your web series “Antología del Estado Natural” & how you got involved in the project?

Inés: “Antología del Estado Natural” is a web series I created back in 2021 with a colleague. We wanted to talk about female empowerment but when we started researching about that topic in the Dominican Republic, we found ourselves stock in a bunch of analysis and news reports about cases of gender violence that circled around micro male-chauvinism. Nobody was talking about it so we thought we had to do it. So I decided to write the episodes while she’ll be working with the preproduction and getting investors interested in the project. Once it was released on November 2021 (month that we commemorate the International day of non-violence against women) we got an audience interested in the story. So for the next year we decided to keep going with it, and now we are approaching for season 3.

From the shoot of "Antología del Estado Natural"

NYFA Alumni Network: What did you learn at NYFA that you applied directly to this project and others?

Inés: Everything I learned about screenwriting is thanks to NYFA. Thanks to every single class, I can say I’m a better writer, I pay way more attention to details on my scripts or the scripts for my clients. I’m also a better teacher thanks to the ones I had. Every advice or book they put in front of me, now I’m passing that to my students.

If you want to read and learn more about the show Antología del Estado Natural check out these articles:

Inés de los Santos nos habla de la serie ‘Antología del Estado Natural

Promueven “Antología del estado natural” serie de cortometrajes sobre el micromachismo en RD

Realizadoras presentan “Antología del Estado Natural”

Cineastas presentan “Antología del Estado Natural”