Cecilia Araneda is a Chilean-Canadian filmmaker and curator who came to Canada as a child, together with her family, as a refugee from Chile's right-wing military dictatorship. She currently lives in Winnipeg. She holds a BFA (hons) from York University and an MFA from UBC, and is also a three-time alumna of the fabled Film Farm.

Araneda's short films have been presented at film festivals, artist-run centres and art museums around the world, and have been recognized with various awards and distinctions nationally and internationally. Among the festivals that have presented her work are Visions du Reél, Ann Arbor, Images, RIDM and Festival du Nouveau Cinéma. Solo career surveys of her work have been presented in Ottawa (2010), Toronto (2017), Winnipeg (2018), and Buenos Aires (2018). She has been awarded art residencies by LIFT: The Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto as the inaugural recipient of the Roberto Ariganello Prize (2017) and by Q21 in Vienna's MuseumsQuartier (2019), and has been the recipient of several national and international prizes for her art practice. In 2021 she is in development with two feature-length film projects.

Araneda is also an internationally recognized media art curator. In 2019, she became the first-ever curator from the Prairies to be awarded the Joan Lowndes Prize from the Canada Council for the Arts, for independent curatorial practice in visual and media arts.