Javier Fuentes-León

Javier Fuentes-León is a Peruvian film director based in Los Angeles, best known for his feature debut Undertow (Contracorriente), a co-production between Peru, Colombia, France and Germany. The film was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize in the dramatic world cinema category at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and won that festival's World Cinema Audience Award, as well as the Sebastiane Award at San Sebastian. He trained as a physician in Peru before moving to Los Angeles in 1994 to take a Master of Fine Arts at CalArts. His thesis short Espacios won a Peruvian national short film award in 1997. His later work as director includes The Vanished Elephant (2014) and The Best Families (2020), and he has also written, produced and edited his own projects.