Milena Salazar is a documentary filmmaker interested in creating artistically driven, socially engaged work. Born and raised in Costa Rica, she is now based in Vancouver, BC where she works as a documentary director, editor, film festival programmer, and arts and cultural worker.

Her award-winning short films have screened in festivals across the globe. She an alumna of the Hot Docs Doc Accelerator, RIDM’s Talent Lab, and the European Film Market Toolbox Programme. Her work has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the BC Arts Council, the National Film Board of Canada, Creative BC, and TELUS originals.

As an editor and documentary cinematographer, Milena loves collaborating with filmmakers to capture and craft each film’s unique story, tone and rhythm. Recent editing credits include the feature documentaries Nechako (DOXA 2025), Back Home (VIFF 2022) and Between Pictures: The Lens of Tamio Wakayama (DOXA 2024), and the short films Violet Gave Willingly (IDFA and Hot Docs 2022, TIFF Canada’s Top 10) and the NFB production Highway to Heaven (TIFF 2019), among others. Her cinematography credits include the CBC Short Docs Koto: The Last Service (2019) and Biker Bob’s Posthumous Adventure (2017), and the film installation Sue Sada Was Here (2018), which is in the permanent collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Alongside her independent projects and freelance production work, Milena has held multiple roles in festival programming, festival production, and project management at organizations such as the DOXA Documentary Film Festival, the Vancouver International Film Festival, the BC Chapter of DOC (Documentary Organization of Canada), and the Gender Equity in Media Society (GEMS).

In 2022 she founded Norita Films, a production company dedicated to making films driven by reflective inquiry and creative expression. She is currently working on her first feature documentary, Significant Others, and continues to collaborate on various projects doing editing and camera work.

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Contact: milena [AT] noritafilms [DOT] com