Maria Maggenti

MARIA MAGGENTI is a filmmaker and screenwriter who lives in New York and Los Angeles. She owns a pug who follows her everywhere and a falling down farmhouse that requires constant renovation. Because she was the worst temp in history and preferred to read, draw and listen to music than get a proper job, she naturally went into filmmaking.

Maggenti began her career in 1995 as writer/director of The Incredibly True Adventures of Girls in Love. It was released in June 1995 by Fine Line Features and became both a critical and popular success. Her second feature film, Puccini for Beginners, premiered in competition at Sundance in January 2006 and was released by Strand Releasing in February 2007.

Maggenti wrote the screenplay for the 1999 DreamWorks release The Love Letter starring Kate Capshaw, Tom Selleck, Ellen DeGeneres and directed by Peter Chan. In 1999, Maggenti finished He’s a Woman, She’s a Man for New Line Cinema, also with Peter Chan.

Maggenti also wrote screenplay for two projects for Fox 2000: the screen adaptation of Before I Fall based on Lauren Oliver’s bestselling novel and My Name is Memory for Fox 2000/New Regency/Chernin Productions.

From 2002-2005 Maggenti spent three seasons as a writer on the hit CBS/Bruckheimer drama Without a Trace. From 2006-2009, she wrote and sold pilots to NBC and Showtime.

Maggenti was an adjunct professor of feature screenwriting at the NYU Graduate Film Institute. She has also taught writing and directing workshops at One on One Productions in New York, the Hamptons Film Festival, Inner-City Filmmakers and as directing mentor at Maisha Film Lab in Kampala, Uganda. Maggenti received her MFA in filmmaking from the NYU Graduate Film Institute and received her undergraduate degree in Philosophy & Classics from Smith College. She was born in Washington, D.C. and spent her adolescence in Europe and Lagos, Nigeria. She loves Red Vines licorice.

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