Filmmaker. Narrative Designer
Digital Explorer. Storyteller. AV artist.
María Laura Ruggiero
Professional Bio
María Laura Ruggiero is an Argentine filmmaker and narrative designer specializing in experiential, immersive, and transmedia storytelling. Her practice operates at the intersection of cinema, emerging technologies, and narrative research, with a focus on designing hybrid story systems and spatial experiences.
Her work has been featured in international programs and platforms dedicated to emerging media and narrative innovation, including Power to the Pixel, TransmediaNext, Forward Storytelling, La Fura dels Baus, MIT Reality Hack and FIPA. She is a frequent international speaker on immersive storytelling and narrative design, presenting at venues such as MUTEK, SXSW, MIT, ONA, Berlinale, TEDx, VR Fest, Congreso Quirino de Animación, and the Cultural Summit of the Americas.
Ruggiero is a Berlinale Talents alumna, a member of Werner Herzog’s Rogue Film School, a NATPE Diversity Fellow, a Jihlava Emerging Producer, and a recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the British Council (H2O), and the Alice Down the Rabbit Hole Award (Digital Jove, Spain). Since 2020, she has worked as a Creative Consultant for the World Bank’s Virtual Reality division.
Since 2023, she served as a Storytelling Tutor and Jury Member at MIT Reality Hack, and her project Wave 201: The Unwanted Atlantis was part of MIT’s Co-Creation Studio initiative Worlding. She is currently completing a PhD in Immersive Design at UBA-FADU, has completed MITx’s Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality program with Fox Harrell, Ph.D., and is part of the XR Design Virtual Reality Fellowship.
She leads StoryHackers, a narrative experimentation lab supported by the Organization of Ibero-American States (OEI) and Argentina’s Board of Culture, and directs SeirenFilms, a narrative design lab devoted to exploring new storytelling languages in emerging media. She is also part of Amplify, an international initiative supporting women and non-binary creators in digital media..
DomarHuracanes
María Laura, also known as Domar Huracanes (Taming Hurricanes), is an image and sound designer, virtual explorer, and field guide of #StoryHackers.
She is a lover of storms and extreme weather, a space geek fascinated by astronomy and space exploration, and a passionate advocate for design, architecture, sustainability, and wilderness. Surfing, open landscapes, and untamed environments are part of her natural habitat.
She is a yoga and meditation instructor, drawn to Borgesian labyrinths, Elvis Presley, and bioluminescent phenomena. Currently a freediving apprentice.
Mythologies, hybrid beings, cyberpunk, Bauhaus, California, and photographs of alpacas make her happy. Brit Marling enthusiast. Low-fi sci-fi fan.
Poetry and pixels coexist in her practice. She is the creator and narrative designer behind SeirenFilms.
To know more, send her an email — or a photo of the ocean.
She currently lives in Buenos Aires, though her mind often wanders between Californian sequoias and crystal-clear waters. She is always writing something..
Read Me
Children of the Storm No Film School
Women of Wearables Entrevista
Con Herzog en la montaña Rogue Film School