Dear Dalyana is a collaborative documentary project created alongside Wayuu Indigenous leader Marinela Camargo, exploring the role of language as a bridge between generations, identity and belonging. Centred around a mother's promise to teach her daughter the ancestral Wayuunaiki language, the film offers an intimate reflection on what is at stake when a language begins to disappear.

As director and producer, I led the project from concept development and field production through to post-production and distribution. The documentary emerged from a relationship of trust built over six years of working alongside Wayuu communities, allowing the story to be shaped through a genuinely collaborative process rather than an external perspective.

In 2025, Dear Dalyana was longlisted for the One World Media Awards in the United Kingdom, selected for the imagineNATIVE Industry Médiathèque in Canada, and named a semi-finalist at the Mirada Corta Short Film Festival in Mexico. The project has also contributed to conversations around Indigenous language preservation with UNESCO representatives, academics and cultural organisations, while a four-minute excerpt of the film was acquired by DLA for educational use in the United Kingdom.

More than a film, Dear Dalyana demonstrates how storytelling can create spaces for cultural dialogue, learning and connection across communities and borders. At its heart, it is a reminder that language is more than a means of communication. It is a living archive of memory, culture and identity.

For those interested in learning more about the creative process behind the documentary, I was interviewed by For Creative Girls about the journey of bringing Dear Dalyana to life. Read the article here.