Meet the 2024 US Breakthroughs
Meet
Nava Mau
Performer
Nava Mau is an Emmy-nominated trans Latina filmmaker, actress, and cultural worker from Mexico City and San Antonio, Texas. Nava wrote, produced, directed, and starred in Waking Hour (2019), a short film that screened in festivals around the world and won the NewFest Audience Award. She was a Production Fellow for the Netflix documentary Disclosure (Sundance 2020), and worked as a producer on the short film Work (Tribeca 2022). She has also appeared as a series regular in the HBO Max series Generation (2021) and the Netflix limited series Baby Reindeer (2024).
For eight years, Nava worked in the fields of healing justice and culture change with community-based service providers, student organizations, and survivors of violence. She first worked with immigrant survivors as a legal assistant, and then as a peer counselor and advocate for LGBTQ survivors of violence in the San Francisco Bay Area. Nava has been recognized by awards from the Hispanic Heritage Foundation, PFLAG National, and the Critics Choice Association.
Photo by Pablo Costanzo.