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Maryse Systach is notable for her political, feminist films. While studying social anthropology, Systach became concerned with poverty, alienation, and the lack of communcation between diverse societies. She saw film as a way to address these issues, and so, in 1977, began formal training in the Centro De Capacitacion Cinematografic (CCC) in Mexico City where she won the Ariel (the Mexican Oscar) for her 1980 short thesis film Y si platicamos de Agosto, a chronicle of the sexual awakening of a teenage boy by a young woman who also raises his consciousness. Three years later, she made her feature length debut with her critically acclaimed but controversial film Conozco a las tres, which follows the lives of three rebellious middle-class Mexican women who break away from tradition following the 1968 student revolution. Systach went to Cuba in 1987 after she won a grant that allowed her to study scriptwriting with Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Since then she has written many scripts for television as a side career.