About her films
Independent filmmaker Marynell Maloney has defied categorization since embarking upon her unusual approach to cinema, although it has been suggested her work at times hints of a mix between Bunuel and Greenway, and one critic called her “a female cross between Wood Allen and Ingmar Bergman.” In fact, Marynell Maloney’s work stands alone in its originality and timelessness.

After winning a major prize in the Houston Film Fest for her first short film, Cures for Love, a farce embracing Ovid’s advice, Marynell Maloney has been writing and directing a series of interconnected philosophical comedies that are scheduled to start being released in reverse sequence in the near future. The latest, The Sunsetters, was filmed last summer in a nature preserve at a remote beach in Costa Rica.

Utilizing cast and crew from around the world, and filming in exotic locations ranging from Paris to Moscow to Costa Rica, Marynell Maloney’s films are as geographically elusive as her ideas are far ranging and offbeat. From anarchic to absurdist to provocative, Marynell Maloney’s films are laden with talented actors exploring ideas about the preposterousness of the human condition.

Personal History
Although Marynell Maloney grew up in the charming tropical lassitude of Costa Rica, her career since leaving her childhood home has been anything but calm. Graduating from Oberlin College in just three years, shortly after her twentieth birthday, Marynell hurried to New York City to pursue a passion she had delayed to complete her academic degree: ballet and jazz dance. A few months after commencing study at Joffrey’s, Harkness, Luigi’s, Alvin Ailey’s American Dance Center and others she landed her first job dancing professionally. Eventually, however, other interests re-emerged and, driving down one holiday to Costa Rica Marynell stopped by Austin’s University of Texas. On a whim, she applied to take some graduate courses and, after being accepted, she gave up a NYC show to return to academia.

At UT Austin Marynell met her future husband in an Existentialism class and followed him to his native San Antonio. She completed her masters degree at Trinity University and immediately thereafter attended law school. Again, after an accelerated course of study, she received her degree – this time a doctorate in jurisprudence. The firm Marynell started, Law Offices of Maloney and Maloney, has grown to be considered one of the premier personal injury litigation firms in the country. Her many verdicts and settlements in seven and eight figures for victims and the elderly are balanced by civil rights cases she’s handled (like defending for the ACLU the librarian who was fired for putting Howard Stern’s NY Times #1 best-seller book in a Texas public library) and a wide range of other political and social causes she champions.

Yet despite her high profile law practice, Marynell has consistently embraced her quiet, more private passion for literature and film. This fascination over the years has culminated in the writing and directing of a series of interconnected shorts and, most recently, features that are coming to completion in the near future.

Recently divorced, Marynell divides her time across interests and residences in France, Russia, Costa Rica and Texas. She has three children, one a senior at Sarah Lawrence, one a sophomore at Bowdoin, and one a senior in high school in Paris.