
Yoel Morales
Directing
Biography
Yoel Morales (born December 22, 1989) is a Dominican film director, editor and screenwriter. He made his directorial debut with Azul Magia (2017). His film La Bachata de Biónico (2024) premiered at the SXSW Film & TV Festival, winning the Audience Award, and was later selected for the Locarno Film Festival and the BFI London Film Festival. He also directed Carlota la Más Barrial (2025) and Medias Hermanas (2025). He is co-founder of the Caribbean creative collective Mentes Fritas.
Known For

Two feuding half-sisters will have to spend New Year's Eve together at their late father's beach house.
Medias Hermanas

Documentary short film based on the private diary of Nayibe Tavares-Abel's great-grandmother from 1919. Includes stopmotion animation and a silent fiction film in 16mm.
Carmencita

After the sudden death of Maria Paz, her husband Marco discovers that she has a lover, Frédéric. He decides to embark on a journey to meet him. Through this man and this journey to Brittany, he will discover how much his wife ultimately remained unknown to him and will learn to discover himself.
Au revoir

Carlota, a fierce woman with a unibrow, a quick tongue and a fearless heart, leads her neighborhood in resisting a gang trying to take over with violence and fear.
Carlota la Más Barrial

Young girl from the Dominican slums, parents drug addicts; she dreams about living somewhere else. She becomes the leader of a criminal gang; bullied for being a woman they consider transgender; Mario, a drug dealer, tries to force her to work for him. When he wins her confidence, leaves her pregnant and steals her loot, things change very quickly for Rafaela. Betrayed, she'll do whatever it takes to get revenge, avoid the police and get away before her baby is born.
Rafaela

Bionico is a hopeless romantic, and also addicted to crack, who must take control of his life before his fiancée leaves a rehabilitation center. It's a raw vision of love in a hostile Caribbean city.
Bionico's Bachata

A young couple decides to go to a river avoiding city chaos, because that day the end of the world has been announced.
Ha sido un placer

After years of absence, a man returns to his village in seeks of redemption, but he must win the forgiveness of his family members, especially, his brother's.
La familia Reyna

Moises goes to the forest in search of a fruit that will heal his sick mother. During his search he encounters a strange girl who promises to help in exchange of protection from an evil monster haunting her.
Azul Magia

In a desolate town in the Cibao region, two brothers and their mother live in the midst of a crisis. Their father, a perico ripiao musician, has been murdered for speaking out against the Trujillo dictatorship. This prevents Luis, the older brother, from obtaining his mother's approval to accept a long-awaited scholarship to a polytechnic school in the capital. Patria gradually changes her mind, while Chico, her younger brother, can't understand why Luis wants to leave.