Soraya Bayuelo Castellar

Soraya Bayuelo Castellar is a communications professional, cultural manager, and community leader, and co-founder of the Montes de María Línea 21 Collective Communications Corporation. For more than three decades, she has supported communication initiatives for social change in the Montes de María, weaving together a vision that combines film, memory, and education as pathways to peacebuilding in territories deeply affected by armed conflict.  

She has launched initiatives such as the Traveling Film Club, Cinema in Schools, Cinema in the Mountains, the Montes de María Audiovisual Festival (FAMMA), and the Traveling Museum of Memory and Identity of the Montes de María—El Mochuelo. These spaces have enabled communities—especially children, youth, rural communities, and women—to tell their own stories, strengthen the social fabric, and reframe their memories from a participatory and territorial perspective. 

Her organization has taken on the production and direction of the series Retratos y Relatos de la Memoria, an audiovisual project that collects voices and experiences of resistance, establishing itself as a living archive that honors local stories and contributes to the construction of collective memory through gender equity and inclusion.   

Her work has been recognized with the National Peace Prize and other awards that highlight the value of community communication and culture as pathways to social transformation.  Currently, she continues to lead training initiatives, audiovisual production, and the development of community film networks in Colombia.