for director luciana baldovino, romanticizing reality has been as inevitable as it is liberating.

 

born and raised in lima, peru, she traded its vibrancy and beautiful roughness for the restless grit of new york, before settling under the perennial sun of los angeles. three wildly different cities shaped the way she sees the world. lima gave her color and an eye for beauty in the ordinary, new york an appetite for culture and the unexpected, and los angeles an unwavering belief in cinematic escapism. together, they taught her to find beauty in reality, then push it somewhere stranger.

 

her work lives in a heightened reality that is visceral, sensual and slightly surreal, where colors feel richer, shadows sharper and the familiar can slip into the whimsical and absurd. drawn to the collision of cultures, identities and influences, luciana builds worlds grounded in reality, then bends them just enough to take viewers somewhere unexpected. it helps that there has always been a soundtrack. give her good percussion, a little psychological unease and permission to escape reality, and suddenly the mundane feels a little more electric. music, unsurprisingly, finds its way into everything.

 

her collaborators include Becky G, Teezo Touchdown, CA7RIEL & Paco Amoroso, Maluma, Arcángel, Trueno, Elyanna, Samara Cyn, Nezza, Amelia Moore, Yahritza y Su Esencia and The Absolutely, among others.