Mariana Machado is a Brazilian filmmaker and researcher based in Brussels, currently pursuing a Master’s Degree in Film Directing at Luca School of Arts. She graduated in Media Studies with an emphasis on Film Studies at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil (UFMG), having been awarded a scholarship to pursue part of her Bachelor’s at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain), where she specialized in Film Directing. She has been working with independent productions since 2015 and has directed over ten audiovisual works, such as short films, video arts, music videos, and audiovisual campaigns. In addition, Mariana has also accumulated some years of experience as a film educator, film critic, screenwriter, performer, and photographer. 

 

She is currently working on her first feature film “The Earth Eaters”, which portrays two of the most important indigenous leaders and intellectuals in Brazil, the shaman Davi Kopenawa Yanomami and Ailton Krenak, and it is in the post-production stage. Besides, she is developing the fiction short film “CANDELA”  in Brussels, which is in the research and pre-production stage. Mariana wholeheartedly believes in cinema as a powerful political and poetic force to imagine existences from future places and worlds.

 

Concerning previous works, she was the director, photographer, and editor of the film “Ângelo”, which has been exhibited in several national and international festivals and has been released at the 9th Mostra Ecofalante de Cinema, one of the most prestigious film festivals in Latin America, where it received the 2nd place award in the Best Film by the Audience category. In 2020, she was awarded an Audiovisual Artist Prize for her film "I'll take just what's Needed" by Itaú Cultural, a Brazilian non-profit cultural institution. In the same year, she won the Aldir Blanc Law Award due to her feats as a director in her home state, Minas Gerais. Over the years, she has participated in artistic residencies, such as Buitenkunst (Netherlands) and American Arts Incubator (USA-embassy and Brazil); and in some art exhibitions, such as in the Art Gallery Godarc (Brazil), where she was invited to expose some of the visual art she developed in the project “Maps of Absences”. She has further experience as a film critic, being selected for the Jury Bench of the 20th Tiradentes Film Festival, one of the most important Film Festivals in Brazil.  In 2015 when she took part in the group “MUTUM: education, pedagogy, and Cinema” (UFMG) as a researcher and film educator. There, she held different filmmaking workshops for young people in vulnerable conditions from 15 to 25 years old, teaching and stimulating them to tell stories through their own films. This experience was registered through the film “Arpilleras”, directed by Mariana along with other directors and which premiered at the 12th CINEOP Festival. During her trajectory, Mariana also took part in some artistic collectives. She is a member of a collective of artists, filmmakers, and art activists called Cine Fronteira; and the feminist collective Plataforma Doras where she worked as a performer along with other women. In 2021, she was one of the founders and coordinators of the artistic residency named SELVVA, in Brazil, where she lived and worked for 2 years along with other artists.