Carlos P. Beltran is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, producer and photo journalist originally from Caracas, Venezuela.

Recently Carlos completed a 12-year documentary project, It Suddenly Occurred to Me, serves as an experimental biography that explores the life and work of Yarida Silva, a woman who found peace and redemption writing from within some of the worst prisons in Latin America.

The book, documentary and photography exhibit are a collaboration between writer Yadira Silva and Carlos that offers an intimate view of a troubled, yet hopeful life.

In today’s episode Beltran tells the story of how he and Yarida connected, how she wrote her story while imprisoned, how she hid her writing from the Venezuelan authorities and the dramatic rescue of her handwritten drafts from an abandoned apartment in Venezuela.

Carlos’ documentary work focuses on socio-political issues, civil rights, migration, LGTBQ+ and human-interest stories in Latin America and the U.S. His work has been featured in leading news outlets including, NBC News, ABC News, National Geographic, Discovery Networks, Univision, The New York Post, Telemundo, Fusion, The Atlantic and AJ+ among others.