Maria Gabriela Cardenas is a director, producer, and writer from Caracas, Venezuela. Her directorial debut A Dark Foe, a psychological thriller, garnered twenty awards and sixteen nominations and was distributed by Vertical Entertainment. Cardenas has done a variety of music videos, short films, including the award-winning short "The Grand Guignol" (2015). At the age of 14, she already knew she wanted to become a film director and committed to several intensive film courses in Los Angeles, California. Later, she earned a Bachelor's degree in filmmaking and a Master's degree in Producing. As a devoted fan of the film noir and thriller genres, Cardenas, along with her father, Oscar Cardenas, established a film production company, Path of Thorns Entertainment (TM). In A Dark Foe, a guilt-ridden FBI agent, stranded in the painful memory of the abduction of his sister, suffers from a rare condition known as Nyctophobia, an irrational fear of the dark, and will have to face-off with the cunning serial killer who took her away.