Maria Belafonte is based in Los Angeles. She is a 2019 graduate of NYU Gallatin School for Individualized Study, where she created her own major, The Iconography of Selfhood and Celebrity in Visual Culture, focusing in film studies, gender studies and postcolonial theory. Through film Maria looks at ways to bring light to topics that are hard to discuss. She does this using character driven stories that question the society we live in and bring to light new ideas on old concepts.