5 Female Hispanic Directors To Watch

By: Olivea Herrera

When cinema and producing movies first became an enterprise, many women were not allowed to do anything other than edit. Through centuries of hard work and determination, women have made a mark in film history by providing some of the most well-known movies to date. However, society has created an environment that makes it very hard for people of color to be successful, let alone females of color, and directing careers have been no exception. This discrimination, which can include not hiring people because of their race and workplace harassment by higher-ups, keeps minorities in less powerful roles. 

People of different races provide audiences with unique life perspectives and bring up ideas and questions to ponder that we may have never thought of before. It is integral to have stories such as these from people of color so that we may make a more tolerant world. For these reasons, it is important to uplift underheard voices and support the art they make. These five female Hispanic directors spotlighted below have proven the power of their voices through their art.

1. Patricia Cardoso

   

Patricia Cardoso is a Colombian American director who is most known for the movie Real Women Have Curves. Cardoso originally planned on becoming a writer, despite earning a master’s degree in anthropology and archaeology. She changed her direction to film when she had conversations with Koji Indians, heard their amazing stories, and wanted to tell similar ones to a large audience. She knew that not many people would read her research papers, so she thought that the music, images, and writing that come along with movie-making would make for a perfect platform for her art. She went to UCLA to study film after that and gained a degree. From there, she directed movies such as Real Women Have Curves, El Regalo, and The Toymaker. 

Real Women Have Curves, Cardoso’s most famous movie, promotes female empowerment by highlighting body positivity, self-confidence, and independence in women of all shapes and ages. The goal of her movies is to tell stories about her culture and make women feel more comfortable in their bodies and with who they are. She was so successful in portraying this message in Real Women Have Curves that in 2019, the movie was selected by the Library of Congress for inclusion in the National Film Registry. This made her the first Latin American woman director to receive this honor. 

Cardoso is currently a professor at the University of California, Riverside, and has been elected to the directors branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Board of Governors. Patricia Cardoso will always be remembered as one of the first female Hispanic directors to make a memorable movie in film history. 

2. Nancy C. Mejia

   

Though born and raised in Los Angeles, Nancy Mejia is a first-generation Salvadoran-American writer and director. She was the first of her family to go to college, during which she got a degree from UCLA. Mejia has written episodes of The L Word: Generation Q and produced episodes of The Chi. Her contribution to writing those episodes of The L Word: Generation Q is valuable because her perspective is coming from a queer woman herself. 

Finding queer representation in media is hard enough; it becomes even harder when it is a queer person of color. It is crucial to highlight talents like Mejia to show that it is possible to break into an already difficult business while being a minority in more ways than one. Currently, Mejia is an AFI Directing Workshop for Women Fellow as well as a recipient of the inaugural Outfest Fusion Spotlight Award, and she lives in Los Angeles with her wife.

3. Patricia Riggen

   

Patricia Riggen was born in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, and started her career with experience in journalism and writing for documentaries. She obtained a degree in communication sciences and, through working on her thesis “Female Directors,” gained a love for directing. Her first major film released, Under the Same Moon, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2007. This film was well-received and even won the 2008 ALMA Outstanding Spanish Language Motion Picture award. It depicts a Hispanic mother, Rosario, leaving her son, Carlitos, in the care of his grandmother while trying to cross the border to create a better life for them. When his grandma dies, Carlitos embarks on a dangerous journey to join Rosario. This story parallels many of those experienced by real-life people—stories that often go untold, leaving others unaware of their struggles. This is what makes the movie so powerful and important to watch. 

After that hit film, Riggen garnered even more success when she directed the Disney smash Lemonade Mouth. This movie became a Disney Channel Original Movie classic, not only because it has stood the test of time but because it received 7 million views the night it was released. Through her work on this film, she was nominated for the Directors Guild of America Awards category of Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Children's Programs. Riggen has had a lustrous career directing film and television, and for her most recent project, she teamed up with Danny Strong to direct the limited series Dopesick. Looking at her filmography, Patricia Riggen has seemed to contribute immensely to extremely famous movies and television shows with her directorial influence, marking her place as a noteworthy Hispanic female director.

4. Lucrecia Martel

   

Born in Argentina, Lucrecia Martel is one of Latin America's most awarded auteurs. An auteur is a director whose style is consistent throughout their films and recognizable through cinematic elements such as editing, camera tricks, or themes. Before becoming an auteur, Martel explored multiple career options but ended up going to film school at Instituto de Arte Cinematografico de Avellaneda. Martel developed a few small movies during her education, but nothing much came out of it. Just when she thought that she needed to get a “real job” and quit the film industry, she entered a contest organized by the Argentine National Film Board, in which the grand prize was the budget to produce a short film. She won, securing the funds to produce her breakout film, Rey Muerto, which won Best Short Film at the 1995 Havana Film Festival. 

The film depicts an Argentinian woman living in the fictional village of Rey Muerto, where she tries to escape from her abusive husband with her three kids, showing a realistic representation of the struggles of leaving an abusive relationship with kids to worry about. What makes this film more impressive is that Martel was able to fit this emotional and impactful storyline into a twelve minute movie. From then on, she has released many more films and maintained a steady flow of work that has earned her much acclaim. Up until 2018, Martel was filmmaker-in-residence at the University of Cambridge, where she offered a sequence of seminars on her filmmaking practice to students, staff, and the university community. 

She is still making movies currently and has been approached by Marvel to direct one of their movies—an offer she denied because she wanted to direct her action sequences. Martel’s story is a message to all dreamers out there to never give up on their passion because an opportunity can be just around the corner.

5. Aurora Guerrero

   

While Aurora Guerrero was not born in a Latin country, she is an indigenous Chicana. She was born in San Francisco to Mexican immigrant parents and later grew up on the border of the cities of Richmond and El Cerrito. Originally, she completed her degree in psychology and Chicano studies at Berkeley, next earning her Master of Fine Arts at California Institute of the Arts. She directed a short film that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and also assistant directed with Patricia Cardoso on the film Real Women Have Curves. 

Guerrero went on to solely direct Mosquita y Mari, which made her the first Chicana filmmaker to debut a feature-length film who was also previously a Sundance Institute and Ford Foundation Fellow. This film shows the struggles that many poor people of color go through while also exploring LGBTQ+ relations between two young women. Guerrero then shifted her focus from directing films to exclusively directing TV. She directed her first episode of television on Ava Duvernay’s show Queen Sugar. Some other well-known shows she has directed herself or contributed to as part of the directorial team include 13 Reasons Why, The Wilds, and Gentified. Her accomplishments are made that much greater because she also happens to be a queer person of color. Non-White people and queer people tend to not get as many opportunities as straight cisgendered people do and that is why Guerrero’s directorial contributions are a story of inspiration. 

The Impact of Female Hispanic Directors

While these women have won many awards for their achievements, they have gained even more through the movies they have directed, such as inspiring women everywhere and portraying LGBTQ+ relationships to help audiences who may be going through similar struggles. They have a passion for storytelling, portraying narratives from a woman’s point of view, and making the audiences that view their films more socially aware of the problems that women face every day. 

Some innovative and groundbreaking work provided by women throughout history has been overlooked or men have taken credit for it, their contributions being lost to time. In the modern age, women have more of a voice now than ever. However, they are still not viewed on the same level as men and even less so if they are queer or a person of color. These unsung Hispanic directors have paved the way for underappreciated minorities everywhere and are success stories that show that no matter what way society tries to put you down because of your differences, you can overcome it and make your dreams come true.