Donate to Sanctuary Cinema today
Every sponsorship is a public act of helping sustain brave spaces where stories are honored, communities gather, and new possibilities can be imagined together.
Founded in 2025 by shiloh burton and Luis Peña-Alvarez, Sanctuary Cinema is a New Mexico–based nonfiction film and community dialogue project creating brave spaces for belonging, reflection, and transformative justice through film. Anchored in narrative sovereignty—the right of individuals and communities, especially those historically excluded or misrepresented, to shape and share their own stories on their own terms—Sanctuary Cinema centers lived experience as essential knowledge and honors those most impacted as authors of meaning, memory, and possibility.
Through free monthly gatherings across Albuquerque, Sanctuary Cinema turns film into a meeting ground. In accessible public spaces, screenings include shared meals, an excerpt of a film with narrative sovereignty, panels, audience conversations. These monthly community conversations among local filmmakers, cultural workers, nonprofit partners, artists, and neighbors builds belonging. Here, storytelling is not passive spectatorship—it is a communal act that sparks conversation, deepens relationships, inspires civic engagement and mutual aid, and bridges the silos that too often separate artistic, civic, and grassroots life. Each gathering is an invitation to practice collective care and imagine what becomes possible when people come together across difference.
This October, Sanctuary Cinema expands that work with the inaugural Sovereign Lens Film Festival, a three-day, community-centered short film festival rooted in the same belief that stories can shift culture and strengthen community. The festival uplifts films that reclaim, reframe, and celebrate historically excluded and self-determined storytellers, creating a space where filmmakers and communities can meet across difference, witness lived truth, and move toward collective action. Grounded in narrative sovereignty, the festival affirms authentic authorship, freedom from imposed narratives, self-determination in meaning, and agency over how stories are shared, held, and carried forward.
The Sovereign Lens Film Festival is more than a weekend of screenings. It is an extension of a year-round practice of building trust, connection, and community-led change. Every screening, conversation, and gathering helps sustain spaces where stories are held with care, where relationships can take root, and where art becomes a catalyst for belonging and action.
Mission Statement
Sanctuary Cinema uses narrative sovereignty in film to spark conversations that bring people together across Albuquerque and throughout New Mexico. By centering stories shaped by those most impacted, we create brave spaces for belonging, reflection, and transformative justice—building communities of care, inspiring civic engagement and mutual aid, and connecting artists, community organizations, nonprofits, and civic leaders across silos to strengthen relationships and move toward community-led change.
Vision Statement
We envision a future where storytelling is a shared civic practice—where narrative sovereignty is protected, communities are connected across difference, and film helps cultivate a culture of belonging, collective care, and action. Sanctuary Cinema imagines Albuquerque, New Mexico, and beyond as places where artists, organizers, nonprofits, and neighbors move in deeper relationship, and where stories become pathways to justice, mutual aid, and lasting community transformation.
Previous SC Events in 2026
1/20 Day or Racial Healing Viewing Party @ Albuquerque Museum
1/22 Day of Racial Healing in partnership with High Desert Playback Theater @ Explora
2/18 Celebrating Black History in partnership with Explora & FUSION
2/24 The Librarians @ the ID Library in partnership with NMPBS & Indie Lens
3/17 The Inquisitor @ FUSION in partnership with NMPBS & Indie Lens
3/26 The Body Politic @ FUSION
4/23 Climate Justice @ FUSION in partnership with NMPBS & WETA
Upcoming SC events
5/20 The Grocery List in partnership with NMPBS, Indie Lens & Es Que Market
5/28 Gather @ FUSION in partnership with Expora & W. K. Kellogg Foundation
6/18 Radical Queer Joy @ FUSION in partnership with CABQ and High Desert Playback Theater.
8/20 On the Divide @ FUSION in partnership with NMPBS
9/17 Driver location TBD
10/14–16 Sovereign Lens Film Festival @ FUSION in partnership with Expora & W.K. Kellogg Foundation
11/19 Manzanar, Diverted When Water Becomes Dust @ FUSION in partnership with Explora & the W.K. Kellogg Foundation
At Sanctuary Cinema, we believe film can do more than inform—it can gather us, move us, and make space for deeper belonging. Through narrative sovereignty, by honoring lived experience as essential knowledge, through community conversation and the simple, radical act of showing up, we create brave spaces across New Mexico where stories open pathways toward reflection, connection, and transformative justice.
Your donation helps bring these gatherings to life. It supports film licensing, artist honoraria, community dinners, documentation, outreach, and the quiet labor of building an enduring cultural home—one where voices too often pushed to the margins can be seen, heard, and held.
Every contribution helps sustain a living space for courageous conversation, collective learning/liberation, and communities of care—a place where stories do more than illuminate the world as it is; they help us imagine the world as it could be.
Suggested Giving Levels
$15 — Keep a Seat Open
Helps make screenings welcoming and accessible so more community members can gather, reflect, and participate.$35 — Bring Stories to the Screen
Supports screening materials and small event essentials that help each gathering come to life.$75 — Support Community Dialogue
Helps sustain post-film conversations, facilitation, and the brave spaces where connection deepens.$150 — Film Access Sponsor
Helps cover licensing fees that bring vital nonfiction films into community space.$300 — Story Access Sponsor
Fully sponsors a film license, making a screening possible.
Sponsorship Recognition
Beginning at the $500 level, sponsors become part of the circle of people helping Sanctuary Cinema create spaces for story, reflection, and belonging across New Mexico. We are honored to publicly recognize those whose support helps bring these gatherings to life.
$500 — Visibility Sponsor
Public acknowledgment at one screening, recognition in related Instagram posts and stories, and inclusion of your name or logo on select event materials.$1,000 — Community Table Sponsor
Includes all $500 benefits, plus acknowledgment during the evening’s program and thanks in post-screening community recaps.$1,500 — Space Sponsor
Includes all $1,000 benefits, plus logo placement on promotional materials and acknowledgment throughout the sponsored screening.$2,500 — Culture Builder Sponsor
Includes all $1,500 benefits, plus recurring recognition across multiple programs and the opportunity to align your support with a specific screening, community dinner, or special gathering.$5,000 — Sustaining Vision Sponsor
Includes all $2,500 benefits, plus prominent recognition throughout the season and a more tailored partnership presence that reflects your investment in the long-term life and growth of Sanctuary Cinema.
Every sponsorship is more than visibility—it is a public act of helping sustain brave spaces where stories are honored, communities gather, and new possibilities can be imagined together.
Learn more about Sanctuary Cinema in this conversation between Sanctuary Cinema founders, shiloh burton and Luis Peña-Álvarez, and FUSION staff writer, Rudolfo Carrillo, “Shelter from a Storm: Narrative Sovereignty at Sanctuary Cinema.”