Maria Finitzo is a photographer, screenwriter, director, and three-time Peabody Award–winning filmmaker who has won every major broadcast award, including the Alfred I. duPont Award. Her films explore different realms of storytelling by investigating important social issues of the day, and for 30-plus years, she was an associate of four-time Oscar-nominated Kartemquin Films, whose storytelling tradition follows the tenets of cinéma vérité filmmaking. In 2020, after completing her final film, The Dilemma of Desire, which premiered at SXSW and was screened at more than 80 festivals worldwide, Maria returned to photography to explore the power of visual narrative and metaphorical resonance.