Four months. That’s how long “Kissing The Wrong Brother” sat at number one on DramaBox, the vertical-video platform where attention spans are measured in seconds and most titles get buried in a week. Behind that run is Paula Iglesias, and if her name doesn’t ring a bell yet, the credit list catches up quickly.
What makes Iglesias worth paying attention to isn’t the credit list, even though it’s substantial. It’s the fact that she keeps showing up in the corners of the industry that other people overlook. Vertical drama, indie shorts, water-based film work, genre features. She moves between them without the usual ego friction, and the work keeps landing.
She came to the United States from Granada, Spain about five years ago. That’s a relatively short runway to build the kind of reputation she’s built, and it tracks with the way she operates. She brings an international perspective to American sets, which on vertical productions translates into the kind of adaptability the format demands.
Her 2025 has been the kind of year that should put her on more radars. A Silver Davey Award for “Sneak Me In Your Closet, My Prince,” which she line-produced for Good Shorts. Three Telly Bronzes for “Shark Warning,” “Prepare To Die,” and “Continental Split,” spread across action, adventure, and drama categories. Add in the 2023 Telly Silver she pulled for “An Aisle Be Home For Christmas” and you start to see a pattern. She’s not winning in one lane. She’s winning in several at once, which is rarer than it sounds.
Vertical drama is the part of her work that probably matters most for where the industry is heading. Platforms like DramaBox, Good Shorts, and Pocket FM are running on a content cycle that traditional film and TV producers can’t or won’t keep up with. The shoots are tight, the budgets are real but lean, and the stories have to work in 9:16 with no wasted seconds. The producers who treat the format like a craft are the ones whose titles actually break through.
Outside of the platform work, she’s building something quieter on the indie side. She recently released the short film “Our State,” which had a premiere event with a meet-and-greet between the team and the audience. Two more shorts, “Endless Death” and “The Night Hag,” are also part of her current slate. She also worked on an independent film shot in Kentucky, a shift from the production environments she’s typically working in. These are the independent passion projects she develops alongside the platform work, the kind that tend to reveal what a producer actually cares about.
The other piece of her work that often gets missed is her involvement with Mini Nation Pictures, a production company that specializes in water-based film and video, including underwater shoots and ocean cinematography. She works there as a Co-Producer, Line Producer, and Production Manager, which is the kind of multi-hat role that only works when someone genuinely understands every part of how a set runs.
Producers like Iglesias tend to spend years doing the unglamorous work before they get framed as the future of anything. The fact that she’s already winning awards across formats and platforms suggests she might not have to wait that long.
Her full credit list is on IMDb, and her water-based production work lives at Mini Nation Pictures.
