Marialy Rivas facts for kids

Rivas in 2012.

Marialy Rivas is a talented Chilean screenwriter and film director. She is well-known for her 2012 film Young and Wild, which won a special award for screenwriting at the famous Sundance Film Festival. Marialy grew up in Chile during a time when the country was led by a military government.

Early Life and Inspiration

Marialy Rivas knew she wanted to be a director from a very young age, even when she was just seven years old. When she was a child, she wasn't allowed to watch television. Instead, she went to the cinema about three times a week. This experience of watching many movies greatly influenced her decision to become a filmmaker.

She later started studying at the School of Cinema of Chile. However, she decided to leave her studies in her third year to pursue her passion for filmmaking directly.

Filmmaking Career

Marialy Rivas began her career by directing short films. In 1996, she directed a short film called Desde siempre. This film won an award at the Santiago Short Film Festival. It even received attention from a well-known film magazine called Cahiers du cinéma.

In 2000, she directed another short film titled Smog. She worked on this project with fellow filmmaker Sebastián Lelio.

Breakthrough with Blokes and Young & Wild

In 2010, Marialy Rivas directed the short film Blokes. This film was chosen to compete at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival for the Short Film Palme d'Or award. Blokes also won awards at the Lleida Latin-American Film Festival and more than 50 other film festivals around the world.

Her first full-length movie, Young and Wild, was shown for the first time on January 21, 2012, at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. At Sundance, the film won the World Cinema Screenwriting Award for Drama. In May 2012, she also received an award from Sundance's Directors and Screenwriters Lab, which helps filmmakers develop their projects.

Directing Princesita

In 2017, Rivas released her second full-length movie, Princesita. This film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. It later won the "Film of the Festival" award at the Raindance Film Festival.

Notable Films and Their Stories

Marialy Rivas often finds inspiration for her films from real-life events or stories.

• Desde Siempre (1996): This was her first short film. It explored the experiences of people in Chile during the 1990s. Marialy interviewed many people, including friends, to create the film. She would take parts of their stories and turn them into short scenes for the film.

• Young & Wild (2012): This was Marialy's first feature film. She was inspired to make it after finding a blog online. The blog shared personal stories about a young writer's life and her church experiences. Rivas contacted the writer and interviewed her. She then worked with Pedro Peirano to help structure the story for the movie. The blog writer, Gutiérrez, helped write the dialogue and voiceovers for the film.

• Princesita (2017): This is Marialy's second feature film. It tells the story of a 12-year-old girl named Tamara who lives in a cult. The leader of the cult believes Tamara is special. The idea for this film came from a news article Marialy read in 2012 about a girl in Chile who was part of a cult. For the main role, Rivas looked for young actors in schools and found Sara Caballero with her parents' permission. For the film's visual style, Rivas was inspired by the work of photographers Sally Mann and Bill Henson.

Awards and Recognition

Marialy Rivas's films have received several awards and nominations at various film festivals.

See also

In Spanish: Marialy Rivas para niños

• List of female film and television directors