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. Her latest project Estelas (2019) won the Best Short Film Award at the Costa Rica International Film Festival and screened in competition at the Málaga Film Festival. Do I Have Boobs Now? (2017, co-directed with Joella Cabalu) was presented in over twenty festivals and won the Audience Award at the 2017 Vancouver Queer Film Festival. She was 1 of 8 emerging filmmakers from across Canada selected for the 2016 Hot Docs documentary Channel Doc Accelerator, is a fellow of the 2017 RIDM Talent Lab, and most recently participated in the DOC BC’s Breakthrough Program. 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 commissioned for CBC Arts.
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 Back Home (dir. Nisha Platzer, VIFF 2022) and Between Pictures: The Lens of Tamio Wakayama (dir. Cindy Mochizuki, DOXA 2024), and the short films Violet Gave Willingly (dir. Claire Sanford, IDFA and Hot Docs 2022, TIFF Canada’s Top 10) and the NFB production Highway to Heaven (dir. Sandra Ignagni, TIFF 2019), among others. Her cinematography credits include the CBC Short Docs Koto: The Last Service (dir. Joella Cabalu) and Biker Bob’s Posthumous Adventure (dir. Cat Mills), and the film installation Sue Sada Was Here (dir. Cindy Mochizuki), 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).
She is currently working on her first feature documentary, a film a about robotic pets, and continues to collaborate on various projects doing editing and camera work.
Contact: milenamsalazar [AT] gmail [DOT] com
Milena Salazar es una documentalista costarricense radicada en Canadá. Sus cortometrajes han sido exhibidos en festivales alrededor del mundo y han formado parte de los laboratorios Hot Docs Doc Accelerator (2016) y el RIDM Talent Lab (2017), entre otros. Ha cumplido diversos roles en organizaciones artísticas y festivales de cine en Vancouver, incluyendo el DOXA Documentary Film Festival y el Vancouver International Film Festival. Actualmente desarrolla nuevos proyectos en Vancouver y en San José, Costa Rica.