Award winning Chilean screenwriter and film director Marialy Rivas is the winner of the 2012 World Cinema Screenwriting Award at the Sundance Film Festival. Known for her film ‘Young and Wild’ which was created after she was influenced by a blog that she found on the internet, she endured great success with her career.

Her work has been selected in different festivals worldwide, including Cannes, Sundance, Berlinale, Toronto International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, San Sebastian, Stockholm Film Festival, Havana, and Bafici, among others.

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Rivas grew up under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, which influenced her curiosity in social mobility and wealth disparity, leading to her documentary ‘Melody’ (2015) which follows a musical passion that serves as a vehicle out of poverty.

Rivas knew that she wanted to be a film director since she was 7 years old. As a child she was not allowed to watch television, but attended the cinema three times a week, which solidified her decision of becoming a film director. She went to the School of Cinema of Chile, but did not graduate and left her third year. Her direction of the film ‘Blokes’ was selected for the Short Film Palme d’Or competition at Cannes in 2010.

Her first short film ‘Desde Siempre’ (1996) won the Santiago Short Film Festival and was a documentary about homosexuality in Chile in the 1990s. Her film ‘Princesita’ (2017) is about a 12 year old cult leader who thinks she is the chosen one. The storyline was again based on Chilean news.

Rivas’ latest work includes a TV series entitled ‘La Jauria’ and a short film entitled ‘WOM Todo Cambia.’