José Maria Cabral

Roles: Director

José María Cabral (b. Santo Domingo, July 24, 1988) is a Dominican film director, screenwriter, and producer. Cabral started making films when he was 16 years old, making private screenings of short films to family and friends in local movie theaters, one of them “Excexos” got national distribution in 2008. His first feature film, Jaque Mate (2011), was screened at a high number of film festivals and selected as the Dominican entry for the Best Foreign Language Oscar at the 85th Academy Awards, but it did not make the final shortlist. Arrobá and Despertar followed in 2013 and 2014, also making it into the festival circuits. In 2015 he released Detective Willy a comedy adventure film. Cabral premiered his last film, Carpinteros, in January at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, a story about the realities and relationships of prisoners in Dominican jails. He also represented the country’s Oscar submission with his following film The Projectionist (2019), Isla de Plastico, his first docuemntary premiered in 2019 and is now currently working in Hotel Coppelia (2020).