La Orquesta
A retired music teacher sets out to create a youth orchestra, the first of its kind for immigrant families in Georgia.
Over her 40-year teaching career, Juana Alzaga has maintained a tireless commitment to her students. She’s led many school orchestras, but this one is different. The majority of her students’ families are immigrants from Central and South America who’ve made new homes along Buford Highway, one of the most diverse corridors in the South. For most, this is their only opportunity for music education.
LA ORQUESTA follows Juana, an indomitable teacher and activist, and her orchestra over the course of one school year. Through cinéma vérité, intimate interviews and archival footage, the film tells the story of a community coming together to offer its children opportunities that should be accessible to all, even as they navigate health and financial challenges and increasing hostility toward immigrants. LA ORQUESTA offers a different kind of immigrant story, one that centers art, beauty and the transformative power of music.
Watch the trailer
Filmmaking Team
Monica Villavicencio - Co-Director, Producer, Editor
Monica Villavicencio is a documentary filmmaker in Atlanta and the co-founder of Xerophile Studios, a production company specializing in nonfiction storytelling. She is passionate about crafting narratives that expand our worlds and help us build intimacy with each other. In previous incarnations, she was an NPR Kroc Fellow and has written and produced for public media, an aviation-themed Filipino travel show, and the University of San Francisco, among others. She studied literature and anthropology and also writes fiction.
Stephanie Liu - Co-Director, Producer, Editor
Stephanie Liu is a Chinese-American filmmaker and the co-founder of Xerophile Studios, a production company dedicated to nonfiction storytelling. She’s fascinated by how stories shape our understanding of the world. Before making films, she worked at ABC News’ Washington bureau and the World Bank, where she produced videos from Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya and the Comoros. Born in Chengdu and raised in Mississippi and Tennessee, she now calls San Francisco home.
Kristian Melom - Director of Photography
Kristian Melom is an award-winning cinematographer of commercials, documentaries and branded content. He was born on the plains of Minnesota and graduated from San Francisco State University with an emphasis on documentary film. His work has screened at film festivals internationally and has been published by Short of the Week, BOOOOOOOM TV, Aeon, Canal 180, Directors Notes and The Bitter Southerner. He used to be a musician in his former career and is based in Atlanta, GA.
Diego Rojas - Composer
Diego Rojas is a Colombian/American film composer and screenwriter based in Québec City. Between 2013 and 2019, he toured and performed as a guitarist in Broadway musicals such as Mamma Mia, American Idiot, and School of Rock across the United States and Canada. Shifting his focus to film scoring since 2016, Diego has written music for short and feature-length films premiering at festivals such as Palm Springs International Film Festival, SXSW, and Visions du Réel, among others. He currently writes and composes music for film as he continues to develop his short and feature-length films.
Rachel Saldivar - Sound Mixer
Rachel Saldivar is a lifelong recording artist turned production and post-production sound mixer and editor. With over 10 years of experience in vocal recording and music mixing, she has tailored her audio production skills to suit a wide range of projects large and small. From running sound boards on large budget, multi-character feature films, to recording intimate, content sensitive, sit-down interviews, for independent and network documentaires, Rachel's passion for high quality audio keeps her on the forefront of new technologies and techniques to capture the highest quality recordings for production.
Robert Arnold - Colorist
Colorist Robert Arnold has been doing color grading and video finishing work for independent documentary and narrative filmmakers for over a decade out of his facility in San Francisco. Formerly working under the name of his production company, Lateral Films, he has recently rechristened his post-production business RDAcolor. His work as colorist can be seen in such films as My Name is Andrea (2022), Stray (2020), Freeland (2020), The Seer and the Unseen (2019), and The Gospel of Eureka (2018), among many others.
