Biography

Marilyn Flores is a Salvadoran filmmaker and cinematographer based in Los Angeles. Her artistic career began in childhood, when she worked as a child actor and presenter on El Salvador's TVE 10 educational program La Hora del Niño. By the age of 15, she was already coaching new talent and supporting producers with script development and production work as a P.A. Her passion for storytelling soon expanded into theater studies and eventually led her to San Francisco, where she pursued and graduated with honors from the San Francisco State University Cinema program. There, she honed her creative abilities by producing and shooting a wide range of short films, including collaborations with MFA filmmakers.

As a cinematographer, Marilyn's work consistently centers marginalized voices and stories. Many of the films she has shot as a DP focus on underrepresented communities, such as the Latino immigrant experience in the documentary Las Caravanas (The Caravans, 2018), or the LGBTQ+ community in the indie feature film Where in the Hell(2024). She has also collaborated on two additional LGBTQ+ stories, Unbreaking and Harbor. Although not part of the community herself, Marilyn's diasporic self has found a community to relate to here, and she firmly believes that on-screen representation matters.

Her broader body of work spans short films, music videos, and documentaries, often exploring themes of identity, belonging, and womanhood through a diasporic lens. She has shot projects for indie films, vérité documentaries, and has produced commercial work with companies such as Google and the Internet Archive.

She was a finalist/alternate for the highly selective AFI Cinematography Intensive for Women (CIW) program, which propelled her to continue developing her skills and believing in her dreams.

As an Associate Member of the Society of Camera Operators, Marilyn continues to explore the possibilities of cinematic language, often experimenting with vintage and specialty lenses to create distinct visual textures. Beyond her work on set, she is passionate about hiking, film photography, and discovering new places, always in search of light, both in the world and in the stories she tells.
- IMDb mini biography by: Marilyn Flores