“Those awkward moments, they define a lot of who we become.“

Maria Victoria Ponce was born in her grandmother’s dirt-floored kitchen in rural Michoacan, Mexico. Ponce’s work navigates the complexities in the routine lives within poor and working-class neighborhoods: themes of immigration, sexuality, and coming of age tend to recur. Through film, she aims to highlight the breadth and depth of the Latine experience in the Bay Area. Ponce is a fellow at Sundance/WIF Financing Intensive, Film Independent Fast Track and an artist resident at SFFILM FilmHouse. She was a finalist for Tribeca/AT&T Untold Stories. She received grants from SFFILM Rainin, PBS – The Latino Experience and The Berkeley Film Foundation. Most recently she was named the Rainin Fellow in Film through the Kenneth Rainin Foundation and the LPB Digital Media Fund 2024.

Ponce was the Femme Frontera Film Lab Artist Development Manager: La Frontera Film Lab 2021-2024, a Justice for My Sister Collective BIPOC Sci-Fi Lab mentor, and a Brown Girls Doc Mafia Mastermind Program facilitator. She has given talks and workshops at SFFILM, Watsonville Film Festival and Women in Media UCSB.

Ponce’s short films have played on PBS and
Festival Internacional de Cine de Morelia
Aesthetica Shorts Film Festival
WIF Shorts Night
Chicago International Children’s Film Festival
Urbanworld
Setting Sun Film festival/Melbourne Australia
Children’s Film Festival Seattle
Femme Frontera
Native Crossroads Film Festival
San Diego Latino Film Festival
CineFestival San Antonio
Official Latino Film Festival
Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival
HBO/New York International Latino Film Festival
Cine+Mas San Francisco Latino Film Festival

She directed and produced the documentary Engage Her, interviewing, among others, civil rights leaders Dolores Huerta, Aileen Hernandez and Voto Latino founder Emmy-nominated and MSNBC contributor María Teresa Kumar.