Florencia Manóvil is a queer Latina fiction writer-director and a 2024 SFFILM FilmHouse Resident. Under Mynah Films, she creates work that centers on marginalized, underrepresented identities and perspectives.

 

Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Manóvil moved to the US at age 18 to pursue film studies at Emerson College on an Honors scholarship. She found home in Oakland, California, where she has been living since 2007.

Her debut indie feature, Fiona’s Script (89m, 2009), premiered at MethodFest, garnering a Best Supporting Actress Nomination, and was celebrated at more than a dozen festivals for its "charming and grounded" depiction of a group of queer women of color friends.

 

In 2015, she was voted “Best Filmmaker of the East Bay” for her web series Dyke Central (10 episodes, 220m), lauded by press and fans alike for the groundbreaking diversity of its representation of LGBTQ characters.

 

Other credits include the shorts:
Encuentro (16m, 2017), embraced by film festivals for its relevant juxtaposition of a young American-born Latina and a more mature traveler from Latin America;
Solstice (36m, 2020), which explores issues of parenting as well as of trauma, feminist community, and safe spaces;
and From X to Z (2022, 11m), a pandemic-made intergenerational slice-of-life.

Combined, these shorts were shown in more than 50 screens around the the US and abroad.

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Manóvil is currently procuring financing for “Queerly Beloved”, an ensemble queer wedding feature about the magic and power of queer community which she hopes to shoot in 2024.

 

She’s also developing a speculative fiction limited series, “TWELVE” (currently a Semi-Finalist on the road to the 2024 Writing Climate Pitchfest), and is also pitching “Star-Crossed”, a social justice-themed drama script that was a Finalist (and won the pitch contest) in the 2022 Cinequest Screenwriting Competition.

 

Manóvil is active in the Bay Area filmmaking community, and has taught, guest-lectured, or been a panelist at Bay Area Video Coalition, SF State University, University of San Francisco, Frameline, and the Bay Area Media Makers Summit. She also freelances as a translator and interpreter for social justice organizations, and lives in Oakland with her teen daughter, Kayen.

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