She is best known for her 2002 film Real Women Have Curves, which centers around the experiences of a young Mexican-American woman navigating the challenges of family, culture, and body image.
Additionally, she was the first Latin woman director to receive a Student Academy Award, an achievement she earned for her short film The Water Carrier.
Additionally, Cardoso has directed episodes for a variety of other popular shows, including Will Trent", The Society and Tales of the City on Netflix, All Rise, Emergence, Party of Five, and Diary of a Future President.
[6][7] Cardoso's directing credits include episodes of The Society, All Rise, and Tales of the City and the feature Teresa —the largest box office for a woman director in Colombia.
On the creation of Real Women Have Curves, Cardoso described struggling to find funding for the film with writers Josefina Lopez and George LaVoo[13]—many industry heads citing it as "having no market" despite its compelling script.
[6][7] Cardoso's Real Women Have Curves broke many conventions of traditional Hollywood filmmaking and became a landmark in American independent film.
Since her spouts of TV movies throughout the 2000s and 2010s, she has caught the attention of filmmaker Ava DuVernay, with whom she directed an episode of her drama Queen Sugar in 2016.
Written and produced by Dago García and directed by Cardoso, the film stars Cesar Mora, Ella Becerra, Javier Ramirez and Margalida Castro.
Directed and produced by Cardoso the documentary film is about Horst Damme, a blind German toymaker, who has lived in Bogotá since 1936 when he arrived with his family as refugees from Nazi-Germany.
Directed by Cardoso and written by Josefina Lopez the short film tells the story of a family faced with the mental illness of their daughter.
[18] Directed by Cardoso, written by Nina Weiman and produced by Frank Konigsberg and Patricia Clifford, Meddling Mom was the first Latino film ever made by Hallmark Channel.
The film stars Sonia Braga, as Carmen Vera, a ceramics art dealer and meddling mother pursued by a charming dance professor played by Tony Plana.
Written by Teena Booth based on Noa Greenberg's script the film stars Rosie Perez, Martha Higadera, Chad Michael Murray and Benito Martinez.
But the more she delves into Eva's life, questioning her past boyfriend's Ethan (Chad Michael Murray) and Christian (Christoph Sanders), the more Sofia realizes that their childhood was actually filled with dark, disturbing secrets.