Guillermo Arriaga

An Academy Award nominated screenwriter, Mazatlan Prize winning novelist, teacher and director, Guillermo’s career in movies began as a screenwriter with his first film, Amores Perros. Originally inspired by his own real-life experience that Guillermo expanded upon and dramatically explored through his screenplay, the film went on to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Guillermo’s work continued with 21 Grams, for which he received a BAFTA nomination, and next Babel, for which Guillermo received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay. The three films formed more than a thematic trilogy exploring the subject of death and its repercussions; they introduced audiences to Guillermo’s own distinct novelistic approach to cinematic storytelling, following multiple characters in separate stories within a single film, intersecting and often unfolding across a non-linear narrative.

Guillermo’s original screenplay for The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada won the Best Screenplay Award at the Cannes Film Festival. Guillermo’s screen adaptation of his own novel for The Night Buffalo was nominated for the Sundance Grand Jury Prize. With The Burning Plain, starring Jennifer Lawrence and Charlize Theron, Guillermo made his directorial debut and was nominated for the prestigious Golden Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival.

Guillermo has also directed one of four installments in the anthology film Words with Gods, as well as one of the ten stories featured in the third installment of the Cities of Love series, Rio, I Love You, and the powerful short film, No One Left Behind, a dramatic requiem for the United States Military's complicated relationship with Mexico and its native sons who fight in uniform across its border. In branded content, Guillermo wrote “Powder Keg,” a film for BMW’s The Hire series, and wrote and directed “Broken Night” for Nikon, which premiered at The Sundance Film Festival, as well as commercials for Vodafone.

Guillermos latest work includes Upon Open Sky, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival and Um Lobo Entre Os Cisnes (A Wolf among the Swans), which tells the unexpected trajectory of a Brazilian boy who emerges from the suburbs suburbs of Rio, into the world of classical ballet and, ultimately, stardom as the principal dancer of the Royal Ballet London.