Las Vegas Filmmaker Receives Oscar Nomination, Credits UNLV Professor for Career Path

A Las Vegas woman's journey from UNLV film classes to Hollywood's biggest night is a story of community, mentorship, and perseverance. Berenice Chavez, an editor on the Oscar-nominated documentary Come See Me in the Good Light, credits the city and a professor with setting her on that path.

"I finished high school, and I just didn't know what I was gonna do with my life, so I went to UNLV just to kind of do something like figure out what I was gonna do and, and from there I just slowly started exploring film classes and ended up loving it," Chavez said.

The mentorship she found at UNLV proved just as important as the coursework.

"Everyone was so helpful, and I think everyone, like I stayed in touch with one of the professors who has been pushing me since then, and her name's Brett Levner, and she's been amazing. They really want you to like move forward with what you want to do within this art department, and I think that's what really inspired me to like not give up on that dream and keep pushing," Chavez said.

That persistence led Chavez to director Ryan White and Come See Me in the Good Light, which follows poets Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley as they navigate Gibson's terminal cancer diagnosis with humor and love. The film premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival and was among five documentaries nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the Academy Awards.

"So many people have said they haven't watched it, and I saw that Stephen Colbert did a Q&A with them in a New York screening, and he was like, I didn't want to watch it cause I thought it was a sad film about cancer and then you watch it and you're just like, oh, it's not, it's about really loving life and this love story between these two people and their like unexpected humor," Chavez said.

Chavez learned of the nomination during a deeply personal moment. "I was actually with my parents when I found out. My dad got really sick, and so I was in Mexico with my parents, but my producer did text me, and she was like congratulations, we got nominated for the Academy Award and I told my dad, and he was like really happy," Chavez said.

The experience brought her full circle. "My heart is in Las Vegas because of that, because I was able to find the person that I am today there in that, in that community," Chavez said.