Gala del Sol

Natalia Hermida, known professionally as Gala del Sol, is a Spanish-Colombian filmmaker. She was nominated for the Student Academy Awards for her Chapman University short film Transient Passengers, in 2018. She is the writer-director of the feature film Rains Over Babel, which had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2025 and was selected as the Colombian entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 99th Academy Awards.

Career Del Sol graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Film Production from Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts in Los Angeles, California. In 2025, she premiered her genre-blending debut feature film Rains Over Babel (Llueve sobre Babel), a reimagining of Dante's Inferno through a queer, tropical-punk lens. The film is set in the mythical City of Maya, a retrofuturistic version of Cali, Colombia, and follows a group of misfits who converge at Babel, a dive bar doubling as purgatory, where they gamble years of their lives with La Flaca, the city’s personified Grim Reaper. The film had its World Premiere at the Sundance Film Festival and its International Premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Manuel Betancourt, a film critic for Variety, covered the film’s premiere, writing, “With her Sundance debut, writer-director Gala del Sol announces herself as a fabulous off-kilter voice in contemporary cinema" and describing the film as a "maximalist triumph." The film had its Colombian premiere April 16th, 2026, and managed to run for 9 weeks in the commercial chain Cinecolombia, becoming the most watched Colombian film of 2026.

In June 2025, The Hollywood Reporter included Rains Over Babel as one of the "top 10 Hispanic Films of 2025".

The film won the Panorama España Grand Jury Award at Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival in April 2025. It went on to win the Jury Award for Best First Feature at the Inside Out Film and Video Festival in Canada, May 2025. On June 29, 2025, it won Best International Feature at the Pride Awards held at the Lincoln Center in New York City. The award was handed by TV personality and queer icon, Dominique Jackson.

In July 2025, Del Sol was named by Variety as one of the "10 Colombian filmmakers to watch".

Rains Over Babel was selected by the Colombian Academy of Motion Pictures as their 2027 entry for the Goya Awards and as the Colombian entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 99th Academy Awards.

Del Sol signed for management with M88, a Los Angeles-based talent representation firm, in February 2025. 2019

Brooklyn Film Festival Best Experimental Film 2025

Sundance Film Festival NEXT Innovator Award

2025

Premio Sebastiane Sebastiane Latino Award 2025

Guadalajara Film Festival Maguey Award 2025

Miami Film Festival Jordan Ressler First Feature Award 2025

San Francisco International Film Festival Golden Gate Award 2025

Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival White Raven Critic's Award 2025 Las Palmas de Gran Canaria International Film Festival Panorama España Award