Patricia Cardoso

Cardoso was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia. As a child she wrote and illustrated home-made picture-books. Only when she became a film student at UCLA she realized these books were story boards.^[7][8] Cardoso's first film was a humorous documentary titled Vacas Flacas y Vacas Gordas (Skinny Cows and Fat Cows) about the famine and feast periods her family endured. Due to the lack of technology in her household the film was made with toothpicks, paper, and cardboard.^[7][8]

She studied anthropology at Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia.

At UCLA film school she was at the top of her class earning all major directing awards at the school: the Colin Higgins Foundation Award in Film, the Lynn Weston Fellowship in Film, and the Verna Fields Award.^[7][8]

Cardoso's directing credits include episodes of The Society, All Rise, and Tales of the City and the feature Teresa —the largest box office for a woman director in Colombia.

Cardoso was the first Latin woman to win a Sundance Film Festival Dramatic Audience Award^[9] and to receive a Student Academy Award for Real Women Have Curves.^{[10][11][12][13]} She was also the first Latin woman to have a film in the Library of Congress National film Registry.

On the creation of Real Women Have Curves, Cardoso described struggling to find funding for the film with writers Josefina Lopez and George LaVoo^[14]—many industry heads citing it as "having no market" despite its compelling script. After the script was picked up, Cardoso was officially hired to direct. She completed the casting process as well as crew assembly herself, conducting one-on-one interviews with potential crew members.

Cardoso attributes her anthropological background to the respect she has for every character in her films, the depth and dimension of her character development, and for the rigorous research she does during pre-production to create reality and truthfulness in her movies.^[7][8]

Cardoso's Real Women Have Curves broke many conventions of traditional Hollywood filmmaking and became a landmark in American independent film. According to Entertainment Weekly, it is "one of the most influential movies of the 2000s," and cast "a wide shadow over the new generation of filmmakers to come." The movie is cited for showing "the impact a movie could have in the culture," and it is acclaimed for its nuanced portrayal of its characters and of Los Angeles.^[7][8]

According to an interview with The L.A. Times, Cardoso struggled to find work after the success of Real Women Have Curves. Since her spouts of TV movies throughout the 2000s and 2010s, she has caught the attention of filmmaker Ava DuVernay, with whom she directed an episode of her drama Queen Sugar in 2016.^[15]

In September 2021, Cardoso's Real Women earned the main spot at the Significant Movies and Movie Makers Gallery,^[16] held at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. Clips and stills from Real Women were the only ones depicted in color. According to an assistant curator of the gallery, Sophia Serrano, the museum wanted Real Women to "stand out as the hero of the gallery."^[17]

Cardoso also donated film's script notes, casting calls, storyboards, production stills, location scouting photos and design drawings to the academy's Margaret Herrick Library as part of the Patricia Cardoso Papers;^[18] making her work a public resource and allow the curators to resurface various parts of it in future exhibits.

Since 2018, Cardoso has been a distinguished professor at UC Riverside, teaching classes in the departments of Theater and Film and Digital Production.^[19]