Mariana Blanco is a filmmaker born in Costa Rica, based in California. As a director, she has created films for Participant Films, Vice+, Target, The Sundance Institute, Trust for Public Land and No Kid Hungry — with a nomination for TED’s Ads Worth Spreading. As an editor, her documentary work has won the audience awards at Austin Film Festival, Heartland Film Festival, received a Top 20 at Hot Docs, an Emmy nomination, and best edited at Salem Film Festival. Her work has screened at IDFA, Tribeca Film Festival, Human Rights Watch Film Festival, DMZ Film Festival, and Los Angeles Film Festival, amongst others.  She 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.