Maria Clara Escobar is a Brazilian-Portuguese film director, screenwriter, and poet. She wrote and directed the feature film Desterro, which premiered at the 49th Rotterdam International Film Festival and on Netflix worldwide in 2022; and The Days with Him, a documentary feature film awarded in DocLisboa (Portugal) and Havana Film Festival (Cuba), among others.
She also wrote and directed the four short films: Sunday, selected for the school session of San Sebastian Film Festival; Family Ride, awarded by Curta Cinema; and Onde Habito, made for Sesc ConVida. In addition to her film career, Maria Clara has published three books of poems: Fear, Fear, Fear (Nosotros, 2019), A New Sea Inside Me (Quelonio, 2021), and War Zones (Nosotros, 2022).
During her first residency at MacDowell in 2013, she developed the screenplay for Desterro, achieving the first draft just before leaving. While at MacDowell in 2022, she developed her second fiction feature screenplay called My Name is Not Enough. She revised some of her characters and restructured the script, making it “more profound.”
Portrait by Melle Meivogel
