Mariana Blanco is a filmmaker born in Costa Rica and based in Los Angeles. As a director, she has created films for Participant Films, Vice+, La Reyna, The Sundance Institute, American Express, No Kid Hungry and The Gates Foundation. Her short work has shown at Sundance and won a nomination for TED’s Ads Worth Spreading. As an editor, her feature length documentary work has won the audience awards at Austin Film Festival, Heartland Film Festival, Top 20 at Hot Docs, best edited at Salem Film Festival, as well as screened at IDFA, Seattle Film Festival, Human Rights Watch Film Festival, TIFF, Berlin Film Festival, and Los Angeles Film Festival, amongst others. She has creatively directed and produced content for middle-schoolers at the non-profit Deedly, was a Sundance Collab Advisor in 2021, and is in production on a documentary on clouds. Her first word was iguana.