Maggie Contreras
Juror
MAGGIE CONTRERAS is an award-winning director and producer whose filmmaking spans a wide range of worlds, yet is unified by a singular emotional core: joy with purpose and an insatiable curiosity about what drives the human spirit. She has a distinctive ability to connect with anyone in front of her camera with remarkable ease, creating sets grounded in vulnerability, trust, and heart.
Her directorial debut, MAESTRA won the Audience Award at both PTFF '23 and Tribeca Film Festival and was nominated for an IDA Award.
Most recently, she produced All The Walls Came Down, a powerful documentary chronicling the aftermath of the 2025 Eaton Fire in Altadena, California. Her camera was among the first documentary crews on the burn site of the fire that devastated the Altadena community. The film documents both blistering loss and communal resilience.
She produced Peacock's Good One: A Show About Jokes — featuring Mike Birbiglia — in partnership with Vulture, Universal Alternative TV, and Seth Meyers' Sethmaker Shoemeyers.
In her producing work, Jonathan Scott's Power Trip (PBS Independent Lens, 2020) follows the HGTV celebrity and activist on a cross-country journey to examine the utility monopoly system and how solar power could democratize energy. Earlier, her film Gilbert premiered at Tribeca in 2017 and was distributed via Gravitas Ventures with an SVOD release on Hulu. Her series work has been seen on Peacock, AMC, and the NFL.