Patricia Cardoso - Foreign Student from Colombia
Filmmaker
Host Institution: University of California, Los Angeles
Grant Dates: 1987-1990
Patricia Cardoso on the set of a film
Real Women Have Curves, directed by Patricia Cardoso, is a humorous and warmhearted look at a Mexican American teenage girl coming of age in a boiling cauldron of cultural expectations, class constrictions, family duty, and her own personal aspirations. In this auspicious feature-length debut, which received the Audience Award for Best Dramatic Film at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival, Cardoso crafts a cast of characters very rarely seen - working class Latina women - with refreshing human complexity. A graduate of the UCLA School of Film and Television who received her master's for movie direction, Cardoso's film credits include the award-winning short film The Water Carrier and The Air Globes. Subsequent to her film studies at UCLA, Cardoso received two awards from the Directors Guild of America, and has had her films screened at film festivals around the world.
"Although I grew up in a different country, in a different financial class, the issues are the same."
To the U.S.-Colombia Fulbright Program