Sofía Ayala, *1994 in Mexico City, studied Dramatic Literature and Theatre at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). In 2018 she moved to Germany to begin her Film Directing studies at the German Film and Television Academy of Berlin (DFFB). 

Her short film VOLVER AL SUR (2022) was selected to be part of the annual Next Generation Short Tiger program. The international premiere of the program took place at the 2023 Festival de Cannes. Ayala was the only Latinx director to be included in the selection of nine short films produced in Germany.

VOLVER AL SUR premiered at the 2022 Hofer Filmtage and was awarded the classification of “especially valuable” by the German Film Classification Agency (Deutsche Film- und Medienbewertung), that described the film as “an appeal against looking away, against enduring, against ignorance.” Ayala lives in Berlin and Mexico City.