She was one of the first Argentine female directors with a powerful presence both in the filmmaking and the intellectual world of Latin America, particularly during her most active period, from 1970 to 1990.

Her vast legacy extends to the 21st Century, with Bemberg being hailed as arguably Argentina’s foremost female director.

The daughter of Otto Eduardo Bemberg and Sofía Bengolea, she was born into one of the most powerful and wealthy families of Argentina.

Bemberg was inspired by French novelist and art theorist André Malraux, who visited her aunt's Villa Ocampo in 1959, and particularly his belief that "one must live what one believes".

After her film Señora de nadie was censored by the military regime, she went to New York to study acting from Lee Strasberg.

[citation needed] Bemberg's films were widely popular due to their melodramatic elements (such as Camila), and enjoyed much commercial success.

[6] Her longtime producer Lita Stantic brought her a copy of a novel by Enrique Molina based on the life of Argentine socialite Camila O'Gorman.

Bemberg was interested in showing Camila as the active pursuer in her relationship and spurning the pillars of family, church and state, freed from what she thought was a role that historians had confined her to.

Despite the romantic plot led by the Camila and Ladislao Gutierrez, the Jesuit priest, the film is distinct for its unromantic end in the midst of the dictatorship of Juan Manuel de Rosas.

At the end of her life, Bemberg was working on a script, based on the story El impostor by Silvina Ocampo, a distant relative of hers, which was made into a film in 1997 directed by her longtime collaborator Alejandro Maci.

[8] Scholar Bruce Williams has stated that all of Bemberg's films show female protagonists transgressing the boundaries and limits of their societies.

They speak of their sexual prowess, conquests but--excuse me, I'm going to be very crude--rarely do they mention their inadequacies, problems with erections, impotence.

"[11] In the book, Notable Twentieth-century Latin American Women: A Biographical Dictionary Bemberg explains the development of her character, Sor Juana in the film I, the Worst of All (Yo, la peor de todas).