Angelita Mendoza is a Mexican-American filmmaker and editor with nearly two decades of experience across narrative, documentary, and branded work. She grew up wandering the aisles of her family’s video stores, surrounded by VHS covers and horror quickly became her world. Her films have screened at Fantasia, Screamfest, Urbanworld, and the New York Film Festival. Her short The Blue Drum, developed through NALIP’s Women of Color Incubator, is now streaming on Netflix. She is also the founder of Blank State Collective, a group that brings filmmakers together to make ambitious independent work with shared resources. Its first project, Blank State: Volume 1, brought four directors together to shoot four genre shorts in one location over four days. Angelita uses horror to explore social issues, drawing audiences in through suspense and thrills instead of telling them what to think. She is especially interested in people who are often overlooked and giving them something they rarely get; justice, survival, and maybe even a happy ending.