Gianfranco Fernández-Ruiz

Gianfranco Fernández-Ruiz is an award winning, Los Angeles-based writer and director. His coming of age short film JEROME, a recipient of the inaugural Flip the Script Short Film Fund for emerging BIPOC filmmakers qualified for the Oscars and was a finalist for the HBO Short Film Award. More recently, his work was selected by the Latino Film Institute for their Inclusion Fellowship for his short film GRANADA (fka CACAO). He is a 2023 Quarterfinalist of the Nicholl Fellowship for his feature Summer of Mercedes. Gianfranco holds an MFA from the AFI Conservatory in Directing, and is currently finishing his thesis film When Big People Lie, set to release in 2024. His work on Dead Flesh, especially created for the Louisiana Film Prize, was awarded both Top Five and Founder’s Circle. In total, his shorts have premiered at over 50 film festivals globally, and placed at a dozen more including the Sundance Institute, Austin Film Festival, Screencraft, NALIP, and the Commercial Diversity Directing Program. He is currently working on his proof of concept, Anemoia, or Scenes from the Future. Gianfranco marks culture as integral to a character’s identity, but second always to a character’s story. Gianfranco is a proud Boston native.