DIRECTORS

Marly Hernández Cortés, grew up in Aguadilla, a small town on the west coast of Puerto Rico. In New York she studied acting at Circle in the Square and HB Studios. Marly received her M.F.A. in directing and film production at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Most recently she became a 2023 Panavision New Filmmaker Production Grant recipient for her first feature film, “stealing cars,” that she co-directed and co-produced. In 2021 and 2020, she was a Saul Zaentz Innovation Film Fellow and Production Grant recipient at Johns Hopkins. In 2021 she received a Mayor’s Individual Artist Award from the Creative Baltimore Fund on behalf of the Mayor and the City of Baltimore. She is the recipient of a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) scholarship, National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts (NHFA) grant/scholarship, and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation grant. Her thesis film "Mala" was made with the support of a Panavision New Filmmaker Production Grant and received an award grant from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, having its world premiere at the Austin Film Festival. In 2023, she became the assistant program director of the Johns Hopkins Film and Media graduate film program, where she is also a senior lecturer. When not being a filmmaker she is parenting a creative human, sewing, gardening, hiking, snorkeling, or watching endless amounts of PBS.