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Filmmaker Maria Novaro, though relatively young, has created an impressive body of work that is outstanding for its often political portrayals of women living within two realities -- those of their daily lives, and those of their internal lives, which contain their secret hopes and dreams. Novaro graduated from the University Center for Cinematographic Studies in Mexico City. Her first films, Lavaderos, Sobre las olas, and De encje y azucar, were made in 1981 with a super-8mm camera. Later that year she also became part of Cine Mujer, a Mexican film collective, where she directed Es premera vez. Her portrayal of the duality of female realities can be seen in films such as her 1983 film Querida Carmen, in which a young professional woman imagines herself to be Calamity Jane in her daydreams. Her best known film is Una isla rodeada de agua (1985), which chronicles an orphaned teenage girl's quest for her mother along the lovely Costa Grande.