La biografía de María

Maria Mealla was born and raised in La Paz, Bolivia,on a healthy balance of cultural folklore and Catholic superstition. She later moved to Austin, Texas, where she studied Theater Arts before landing in the Bay Area, where she taught herself filmmaking through work-trade.

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Her short film, LA MACANA, won HBO's 2023 Pa'lante Filmmaker Competition. BODY SHOP, her latest project in development, was selected to participate in the 2023 Tribeca Untold Stories competition and the 2024 NALIP Latino Media Market Accelerator. She is a Latino Public Broadcasting grantee for her short JUANA PELOS, which is now streaming on PBS platforms. In 2025 Maria was selected as one of three fellows for COLECTIVO, an inaugural Latinx filmmaker initiative created by Tribeca in partnership with the Miranda Family Fund to bring to life Las Hijas de Rosalía, which premiered at the 2025 Tribeca Festival and is now srtreaming on SundanceNow. 

 

Most recently, Maria was selected as an Austin Film Institute grantee to create a proof of concept for Body Shop which is currently in post production and will premiere in 2027.

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Maria’s stories come to life in the magical realism and coming-of-age genres. She strives to bring more films from a Latinx perspective to the big screen.