Patricia Cardoso is a director, writer, and producer. Cardoso's feature film Real Women Have Curves was a box office and critical success and has become a landmark of Latino cinema.

Cardoso is a graduate of UCLA's film school, an anthropologist, and a Fulbright scholar; her anthropological approach to directing guides her film and television work. Cardoso was the first Hispanic woman director to receive a Sundance Audience Award and a Student Academy Award. In 2017, Cardoso was invited to join the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences in the Directors Branch. In 2019, her film Real Women Have Curves was selected by the Library of Congress for inclusion in the National Film Registry "as a cinematic treasure and worthy of preservation as part of America’s patrimony".