Guillermo Arriaga Jordán (b. in 1958) is an award-winning Mexican author, screenwriter and producer. He received the 2005 Cannes Film Festival Best Screenplay Award for The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.
Arriaga was born in Mexico City and spent his childhood in one of the most violent sectors of the metropolis. At the age of 13 he lost the sense of smell after a brutal street fight that would later serve as inspiration to some of his best screenplays.
He completed a B.A. in Communications and a M.A. in History at the Universidad Iberoamericana, where he taught several courses in media studies before joining the ITESM. Self-defined as “a hunter that works as a writer”, he authored Amores Perros (2000 BAFTA's Best Film not in the English Language), received a BAFTA's Best Screenplay nomination for 21 Grams and received the 2005 Cannes Best Screenplay Award for The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.
Guillermo Arriaga with director Alejandro González Iñárritu planned to make 11 shorts showing the contradictions of Mexico City but after three years and 36 drafts, they ended up expanding three stories into the feature length film, "Amores Perros" (1999). This gritty look at the underbelly of Mexican life won an Oscar® nomination for "Best Foreign Film" as well as a BAFTA Film Award for "Best Film not in the English Language," the "Critics Week Grand Prize" and "Young Critics Award" at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival as well as many other awards from festivals and societies around the world.
The success of "Amores perros" won Arriaga and Iñárritu an invitation to the U.S. to work on the Universal/Focus feature film 21 Grams, starring Benicio Del Toro, Naomi Watts and Sean Penn. They received Academy Award nominations for their performances.
Iñárritu and Arriaga are collaborating on a third movie to form a trilogy with his others two first pictures with a theme of death .
Filmography
- Babel (2006 - in post-production)
- The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005)
- 21 Grams (2004) ISBN 0-571-22266-8
- The Hire: Powder Keg (2001)
- Amores perros (2000) ISBN 0-571-21415-0
Novels
- El búfalo de la noche (1999)
- Un dulce olor a muerte (1994) ISBN 958-04-6169-4
- Escuadrón Guillotina (1991)
- Night Buffalo (23 May 2006), published by Atria Books (in English) ISBN 0-7432-8185-3
External links
- Please use a more specific IMDb template. See the documentation for available templates.
- Template:Es icon El Malpensante: Interview with Guillermo Arriaga.