Miguel Angel Durán is an award-winning writer/director with a diverse body of work spanning documentaries, films, and branded content. Born and raised in the San Fernando Valley, he is committed to telling stories from the Latino and Indigenous perspective and has made it his mission to captivate his audiences with his compelling storytelling.
At the young age of 23, he directed his first feature-length documentary, "Unrest," which focuses on the tumultuous founding of the first Chicana/o Studies Department in the US. Miguel's talent for documentary filmmaking continued to shine through his next project, "The Valley in The Struggle," a powerful thirty-minute documentary that chronicles the UFW's fight for farmworker justice in the late 1960s, narrated by acclaimed actor Jacob Vargas.
In 2020, he released "Immigrant Voices of America," an award-winning eight-episode documentary series that won the Jury Award for Best Episodic Documentary at the 2020 Bentonville Film Festival.
After a decade in the documentary space, Miguel has expanded his portfolio to include narrative work. Miguel's pilot for "A Mother's Love" earned recognition as a semi-finalist in the 2021 ScreenCraft’s TV Pilot Script Competition, while his feature-length script, "Viva el Rock!," trended on The Black List in 2022.
In a pivotal career move, Miguel assumed the role of Head of Production at Avenida Studios in 2022, a groundbreaking Latino-owned movie studio challenging Hollywood norms by empowering independent filmmakers.
Also in 2022, Miguel was honored as a fellow for LALIFF's x Netflix Inclusion Fellowship, securing a production grant to bring his short film, Death in Training, to life. Premiering at the 2023 Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival, the film garnered the Honorable Mention Award at the 2023 New York Latino Film Festival and most recently won the Best Short Film at the Mexican-American Film Festival and won the Jury Award Grand Prize at the Sci-Fi & Fantasy Short Film Festival.
Aside from his filmmaking prowess, Miguel has also shared his knowledge and experience by participating in education and filmmaking panels across the US, from Los Angeles to Boston to Toronto, Canada. He has also taught documentary production courses at Cal State University Northridge, where he has inspired and trained the next generation of filmmakers.
Regardless of the genre or format, Miguel's ultimate goal is to create powerful stories that resonate with audiences and leave a lasting impact.
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