Marité Ugás is a director, writer, editor, and producer. She was born in Lima, Peru. After obtaining a Degree in Communications from the University of Lima, she joins the first generation of EICTV, Cuba, where she directed
Belen Neighborhood, a documentary film about Havana’s harbor, awarded in Helsinki, Paris, and Rome. She created Sudaca Films in Caracas in the early 90’s, where she directed, edited, and produced several short films and documentaries.
Her first short films Something Falling Into Silence and Cotidiano were awarded in New York, Bilbao, Maryland, and Rome. Her first feature film, At Midnight and a Half (1999), co-directed with Mariana Rondón, was released at the Tokyo Film Festival and was shown in more than 40 international film festivals, receiving several Opera Prima Awards. During 2003 she wrote and directed 7 telefilms for Postdata, which screened at HBO Latino. Her second feature, The Kid Who Lies, premiered at Berlinale-Generation and received 10 international awards.
Later, she co-founded a long-standing creative partnership with Mariana Rondón at Sudaca Films, where she has produced, co-written, and edited several acclaimed works. Together they developed and produced Postcards from Leningrad and Bad Hair, the latter awarded the Golden Shell at the San Sebastián International Film Festival and widely recognized at festivals around the world. Continuing this collaboration, Ugás produced and co-wrote Zafari, a dystopian feature that explores contemporary Venezuela through a hybrid of genre and social realism.
As a director, she went on to make Contactado, a feature that follows an aging cult leader confronted with faith, memory, and the possibility of reinvention, consolidating her interest in intimate portraits against complex social backdrops. More recently, she has continued to develop new projects that extend her exploration of migration, fear, and belonging, maintaining an active role in Latin American independent cinema as a filmmaker and as a driving force behind Sudaca Films’ slate of socially engaged works.
