Alex Rivera
Adam D. Kamil Guest Lecture
May 11, 2022
6:00 - 7:30 p.m. PDT
Price Center Theater, UC San Diego
Alex Rivera is an award-winning filmmaker whose work explores themes of globalization, migration, and technology.
Rivera’s first feature film, Sleep Dealer, a cyberpunk thriller set on the U.S./Mexico border, won awards at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and the Berlin International Film Festival, was screened at the Museum of Modern Art, and had a commercial theatrical release in the U.S, France, Japan, and other countries. In The New York Times A.O. Scott described Rivera as “a brilliant young director” and Variety named him one of “Ten Directors to Watch.”
Rivera’s second feature, The Infiltrators, won the NEXT: Audience Award and the Innovator Award at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. The Infiltrators uses documentary and scripted forms to tell the true story of Dreamers who ‘infiltrate’ a detention center to get immigrants out. The Hollywood Reporter raved “watching it is a thrill” and The New Yorker Radio Hour called the film “extraordinary and important.” The Infiltrators is currently being developed by Blumhouse Television as a scripted series.
Alex Rivera is a 2021 MacArthur Fellow, Sundance Fellow, Creative Capital Grantee and was The Rothschild Lecturer at Harvard University. He studied at Hampshire College and lives in Los Angeles.
Adam Douglas Kamil was a UC San Diego, Visual Arts Media major with a passion for the power of media to connect people. To honor the memory of their son, who passed away in December 2009, the Kamil family established the Adam D. Kamil Media Awards and Lecture Series. The Adam D. Kamil Guest Lecture is intended to inspire undergraduate students and to provide insight into the career of an established artist working in media production.