Profiles: Ximena Sotomayor | Proimágenes Colombia

Ximena Sotomayor Araújo was born in Bogota in 1977. She graduated from Santa Maria high school in 1995, and has a degree in journalism from the Universidad Javeriana. She also completed an Executive Production for Film Seminar at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia and did an internship in Production and Project Development at Tornasol Films in Madrid, thanks to a scholarship from Ibermedia. In 2007, Sotomayor and Jaime Escallón founded Lulo Films. The pair has produced numerous projects with their company, including El jefe, Escallón's debut film, which premiered in 2011.
 
Sotomayor has won eight incentive awards from the Film Development Fund (FDC) and two Ibermedia grants, and she has sat on the FDC jury on two occasions. She was Executive Producer of the Bogota International Documentary Screening (MIDBO) in 2015 and 2016, and was an advisor for graduate projects in production at the Visual Arts Department of the Universidad Javeriana from 2006 to 2015.
 
She has produced the series Chef a domicilio (2009) and Dulces momentos (2009) for Discovery Home and Health; Mi perro ideal (2009) by Havas Sports Argentina for Animal Planet; Huella Latente (2008); and Crímenes (2009). She has also been producer on the series Trabajos riesgosos (2008) for the History Channel; Reyes del vallenato for the Smithsonian Network (USA); PastPort (2010) for SiTV; and Inventos de guerra (2014) for Nat Geo. For Discovery, she produced Instinto asesino II (2010); Como lo resuelven (2010); Carolina Herrera: un viaje a través de los sentidos (2014); Gen H (2014); and Maravillas de Colombia, which won an India Catalina for best documentary series in 2014.
 
Much of Sotomayor’s work has been devoted to documentaries. In this genre, her roles have included field producer of Galán: la batalla de un gigante (2004), by Juana Uribe, produced by Televideo for Canal Caracol; producer of Cumbal: caminos de hielo y azufre (2005), by Handrey Correa; and producer of El equipo del sol (2007), by Jaime Escallón. For Discovery Channel, she has acted as executive producer of Fuga de las FARC (2008) and 47 horas sin Chávez (2009); general producer of El rescate perfecto (2009) and Los hermanos Castaño (2009); and producer of Colombia de sin cuartel (2010) and NarcoSubmarinos (2010). With Nat Geo, she has been general producer of Mineros de Chile: Enterrados Vivos (2010); Guerra Paranormal (2013); Oro Rojo (2015); and Operación Antártida (2016).
 
In the fiction genre, she has credits as producer of the short film Desayuno con el suicida (2006), by Jaime Escallón; associate producer of the feature film Colombianos, un acto de fe (2004), by Carlos Fernández de Soto; producer of Cuarenta (2007), also by Carlos Fernández de Soto; production coordinator of the feature film Tuna Heaven (2006), by Joshua Harris (USA, Spain); executive producer of El jefe (2011), winner of an Ibermedia co-production grant; and producer of the Colombian film El caso Watson, released on May 11, 2017.
 
Ximena works regularly with international producers such as Tornasol Films (Spain), Cuatro Cabezas (Argentina), Endemol (Argentina), Producción México (Mexico), Tomlinson De Onis Productions (USA), and Imagina US. She also serves as a producer on projects for the Turner networks, ZDF, Smithsonian Network, PBS, VIACOM, ABC, and HBO.
 
For over three years, she has been working on communications strategies and transmedia products that complement projects by her production company Lulofilms. Some of LuloFilms’s clients are History Channel, Turner, Discovery Networks, Invest In Bogota, and the Semana group.
 
Last updated: May 2017.