Alumna Melina León '08 Wins Premios Wapa

Melina León '08, an alumna of the MFA Directing program, was chosen as the winner of the Premios Wapa, an award given by Wapa Magazine recognizing women who break stereotypes with their work. León was the first female filmmaker from Peru to present a film at the Cannes Film Festival. Song Without a Name (Cancion Sin Nombre), which León wrote and directed, screened at the Directors’ Fortnight in 2019.

Song Without a Name is shot in black and white and inspired by a real event. In the film, Georgina's newborn daughter is stolen at a fake health clinic. Her desperate search for the child leads her to the headquarters of a major newspaper, where she meets a lonely journalist who takes on the investigation. It was recorded in Quechua and is set in the 1980s.

Song Without a Name has already been screened in more than 80 international film festivals, and to date it has received more than thirty awards and recognition from different parts of the world including the CineVision Award for Best Film By An Emerging Filmmaker at the Munich Film Festival and the Public Award at FICUNAM International Cinema Festival in Mexico City in 2020. It is distributed by Film Movement. 

Melina León is a Peruvian director based in NYC and Lima. She was the recipient of a 2015 Jerome Foundation Emerging Artist Production Grant to direct this film. Her previous short film El Paraíso de Lili (Lili’s Paradise) is also set in 1980’s Lima. It officially premiered at the prestigious New York Film Festival and was selected at over 20 international film festivals, winning 11 awards, among them Best Latin American short film at the São Paulo International Short Film Festival. León grew up in Lima and moved to New York city in 2003 to study film directing at Columbia University. She currently works internationally as a director, producer, editor and teacher.