Marianela Maldonado is a Latino American screenwriter and film director, born in Venezuela, who obtained a Master’s Degree in Screenwriting at the National Film & Television School in the United Kingdom. She has written and directed many fiction short films, among them Napkin, The Look of Happiness and Breaking Out which have been screened in prestigious film festivals including Cannes, London, Clermont-Ferrand, Edinburg and Sao Paulo. In 2008 the film Peter and the Wolf, which she co-wrote, won the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film. She also co-wrote The Flying Machine, an animation musical produced by Breakthru films, which was premiered in Beijing and Toronto in 2011. Her first short animated film, Paper Piano, about a young girl who belongs to the Venezuela Youth Orchestra, was premiered at Beijing and screened at the San Francisco Film Festival (2012) and the Hong Kong Art Festival (2014). As a part of the Project Chopin, she co-wrote Magic Piano, a 30 minute animated film, shortlisted for the Oscars in 2012.

Marianela studied at the Binger Institute in Amsterdam and, in 2006, she was selected to take part in the writing residence of the Cinéfondation in Paris, where she wrote In the Shadow of the Moon. She also co-wrote the feature film Unmade Beds which was part of the official selection in Sundance, Berlin and Rotterdam and which had a general theatrical release in Europe and USA. She also wrote the narrative documentary short film Barrel (El Galeón) in 2012, selected, among others, for HotDocs. She is the co-writer of the feature film Once Upon a Time in Venezuela, supported by the Tribeca Film Institute for Latin American Films, IDFA Bertha Fund and Catapult films, and premiered in January 2020 in Sundance. For the last 9 years, Marianela has been shooting her feature film documentary Children of Las Brisas, a story that follows several children from a Venezuelan poor neighborhood as they try to become musicians. This narrative documentary is supported by the IDFA Bertha Fund, ITVS and the Venezuelan Film Institute, and it’s now in postproduction. For Godart Studio in Los Angeles, Marianela is developing the TV series The Other Girl, as well as other stories for streaming television.