Marialy Rivas

Marialy Rivas is a Chilean screenwriter and film director, best known for her 2012 film Young and Wild, which won the World Cinema Screenwriting Award at the Sundance Film Festival. She was raised in Chile during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Rivas is openly lesbian and has discussed the challenges of being open about her sexuality in Chile, where she noted that it is often considered impolite to publicly acknowledge being gay, even when it is widely known. Rivas says that she knew she wanted to be a director since she was seven. During her childhood, Rivas was not allowed to watch television so she went to the cinema three times a week and cites this as an influence in her decision to become a director. In May 2012 she obtained the Sundance's Directors and Screenwriters Lab award.

In 2017, Rivas released her second feature film, Princesita which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and won Film of the Festival at Raindance Film Festival.

Filmography Rivas’ first short film was Desde Siempre (1996) a documentary film about homosexuality in Chile during the 90s. At the time in Chile, the gay experience was unknown and censored from society and the film ended up resonating with people more than expected. Rivas would ask anyone to participate in the interviews and ended up using friends or friends of friends. Rivas says on the process of making the film that she would write down the interviews and pick the angle that interested her, generating one-minute texts based on their words but emphasizing the angle she was interested in for each character.

Princesita (2017) is Rivas’ second feature film and is about Tamara, a 12-year-old in a cult that its leader believes her to be the chosen one. Again, like Rivas’ previous work, the inspiration for the story was based on a news article from 2012 about a girl forced into carrying a baby by her grandfather who was part of a cult in Chile. In casting the role of the main character, Rivas went to schools and cast kids with the consent of the parents which is how she found Sara Caballero.

Awards and nominations