María Candelaria Palma Marcelino

María Candelaria Palma Marcelino is an Afro-Indigenous director, screenwriter, and producer originally from San Antonio, Guerrero, Mexico. A graduate of the Documentary program at the International Film and Television School (EICTV) in Cuba, she also has a background in communication and information systems. Her filmmaking focuses on the defense of territory, human rights, community memory, culture, and the experiences of women in rural and Indigenous communities. She is the founder of CREA, Perros Muertos Films, and the Itinerant Film Residency (Trashumantes), initiatives dedicated to training, exhibition, and audiovisual creation within these communities. She has directed the documentaries Rojo and Flores de mi tierra; the latter was selected for the 19th edition of DocsMX and won the award for Best Documentary Short Film at the 2025 Gaza International Festival for Women’s Cinema. In 2019, she received the Jenkins-Del Toro fellowship, which enabled her to advance her professional development. She is currently developing her debut feature-length documentary, El Arreglo, a project that won the Silver Deer award from the Mira sin Tiempo program of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH). The film has also participated in the Film Project Development Lab for Indigenous and Afro-descendant Filmmakers from Latin America at the Morelia International Film Festival, the Talent Project Market at the Guadalajara International Film Festival, and DocsMX’s Plataforma MX. Her filmmaking practice seeks to construct intimate and collaborative narratives that allow communities to see themselves represented with dignity, creating spaces for dialogue and reflection from a perspective rooted in the territories she inhabits.