About

Sebastian Mantilla (born 1979) is a Spanish-Ecuadorian filmmaker and videographer who spent his formative years in Stockholm, Berlin, Bucharest, and Brussels. He completed his musical studies in Brussels and earned a Master’s degree in Creative Documentary from IDEC-Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. Mantilla has directed several films exploring themes of identity, belonging, and integration that have been screened at prestigious film festivals such as Cannes Critic’s Week, Sundance, Montreal, Malaga, IDFA, Zinebi, Cartagena, and DocumentaMadrid.

Mantilla’s first hybrid genre project, Looking for Marton, premiered in 2003 at L’Alternativa – Barcelona Independent Film Festival. His first super16mm live-action short film, Con Diva, was selected for Cannes Critic’s Week and the Sundance Film Festival. He has since produced, written and directed several other 35mm short films including White with Cary Fukunaga (Bond 25) as DoP and Ana Asensio (Most Beautiful Island) in the lead role and Barcelona Film Project with Diogo Costa Amarante (Golden Bear in Berlin with Small Town). The Captain is a tender story about the birth of Mantilla’s brother shot on super8mm family archives. La Guagua was streamed on Ridley Scott’s YouTube’s YourFilmFestival and Chunchi is a short documentary shot in Ecuador’s Andes.

In 2008, Mantilla shot the independent feature Next To Babilonia in Ouarzazate, Morocco. The film premiered at the Cartagena Film Festival in Colombia and won Best Director at The European Independent Film Festival 2009 in Paris and Best Picture at the Madrid International Film Festival. In 2018, he traveled to Xochimilco in Mexico City to film the commercial film Island of the Dolls starring Isela Vega (Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia by Sam Peckinpah). The film was distributed by Terror Films, premiered at Cardiff Film Festival and showed on Prime Video.

While living in London, Mantilla shot several fashion films for local brands and music videos for indie bands in Barcelona.

Mantilla’s latest project, Fragments of a Storm, is a creative documentary exploring identity, belonging, and memory through the lens of truth and deception.

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As a videographer, Mantilla excels in turning creative ideas into engaging video content. They have a strong history of overseeing video production tasks, from developing concepts to final edits, delivering high-quality results. They focus on storytelling that captures audiences and boosts engagement.