Franco de Peña
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Franco de Peña (born 1966) is a Polish-Venezuelan film director.
He was born and raised in Caracas by a family composed mostly of women. In 1981 he started studying economics at the local university, but two years afterwards he left Venezuela for Montreal, where he settled. He also spent some time in Paris, London and Berlin before moving to Poland in 1987.
Wanting to study at a faculty for future film directors, Franco de Peña passed his exams to the Łódź Film School, but had to abandon his plans due to financial problems. He moved to Warsaw and studied at the National Higher School of Theatre for two years. However, he was finally admitted to the Łódź school and graduated in 1997.
[edit] Filmography
- Może to grzech, że się modlę (Perhaps it's a sin I pray, 1993) - a document on a 33 year old prisoner suffering from AIDS
- Szepty wiatru (Wind whispers, 1995), on a friendship of an old Andean man with his donkey
- El Porvenir de una Ilusión (Future of an Illusion; 1997) - a poetic description of dreams of modern inhabitants of Havana
- Amor en concreto (Love in Urban Jungle, 2003) - a sketch of lives of several inhabitants of a modern city
- Masz na imię Justine (Your Name is Justine, 2005, on women of Central and Eastern Europe forced into prostitution in modern Germany.
Apart from his film career, Franco de Peña also played the role of a journalist seeking the alleged unknown Argentinean son of Witold Gombrowicz in a provocative para-documentary Letter of Argentina by Grzegorz Pacek. In addition, he was the author of pictures in the Brazilian documentary Bem-Vindo a São Paulo on Caetano Veloso.