Luis Antonio Aldana & Miguel Angel Caballero are an award-winning, Mexican-American/Chicano, queer writing and filmmaking team whose partnership began at UCLA. Coming from working-class immigrant communities in Southern California deeply informs their storytelling, allowing them to center perspectives and narratives that are often rendered invisible in television and film.   

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Luis first experienced storytelling in quiet moments as his mom’s “Colonel of Grime” to her “General of Clean,” waging war against dust and dirt in affluent homes across Brentwood and Beverly Hills. He found himself drawn to the studies lined with bookshelves, where he disappeared into worlds far beyond his own, nurturing the first sparks of his imagination through novels, photography books, and rare comic collections. Miguel’s storytelling roots were planted through movies. His father, a consummate entrepreneur when not working in the fields, built a backyard community cinema in Mexico, complete with a white wall, salvaged theater benches, two 35mm projectors, decent sound, and a concession stand run by Miguel’s mother. Every movie night, Miguel parted his bedroom curtains and stepped into worlds beyond his own, experiences that profoundly shaped him as a storyteller.

 

Early in their careers, they co-created the play “Melancholia," which was nominated for an Amnesty International Award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland. Their poignant short film, “Acuitzeramo," a lyrical drama exploring LGBTQ elders, premiered at the Morelia International Film Festival, was acquired by HBO Max, and won over 21 awards, including the Imagen Award for Best Short Film. Their feature screenplay "Angel in Retrograde," an emotional exploration of memory, queerness and redemption, was a finalist at Tribeca’s AT&T Untold Stories and has been supported by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences Accelerator Program.

 

Their latest Oscar®-qualified sci-fi short, "The Ballad of Tita and the Machines," executive produced by Lena Waithe, premiered at the Tribeca Festival, screened at TIFF (Rising Voices), and has won numerous awards, including the Audience Award at Outfest and the Latinx Award at HollyShorts. This acclaimed short has now been developed into a feature film and has received support from prominent industry programs such as Tribeca Creators Market, Film Independent’s Fast Track, and the Frontières Market by the Marché du Film - Festival de Cannes. Most recently, Luis and Miguel were hired by Oscar-winning company Ley Line Entertainment (Everything Everywhere All At Once) to adapt Simon Jimenez’s acclaimed sci-fi novel "The Vanished Birds" into a television series. 

 

The Library of Congress has officially recognized their three short films (Broken Sunflower Hearts, Acuitzeramo, The Ballad of Tita and the Machines), listing them in its "Latinx Representation in Film" in the Library of Congress Film Research Guide, cementing their cultural and historical significance in Latinx cinema.

 

Their projects have garnered more than 40 awards, including the Humanitas Prize, the Brand Storytelling Award at Sundance, and 5 Telly Awards. Their screenplay was praised by Variety as a “social sci-fi film where the hero isn’t a superhero or a tech mogul but a strawberry picker” and lauded by the Los Angeles Times for bringing perspective and nuance to the sci-fi genre. The International Screenwriters Association (ISA) included them in their “Top 25 screenwriters to watch” list.  

 

Luis and Miguel continue to create immersive, groundbreaking stories that center voices and perspectives traditionally overlooked, offering new lenses through which audiences can experience nuanced stories that challenge, question but that ultimately forge connections.