Franco de Peña

Franco de Peña (born 1967) is a Polish-Venezuelan film director.

He was born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela by a family composed mostly of women. In 1981 he began studying economics at the local university, but after two years left Venezuela for Montreal, where he settled. He also spent some time in Paris, London and Berlin before relocating to Poland in 1987.

Wanting to study at a faculty for future film directors, Franco de Peña passed his entrance exams to the Łódź Film School, but had to put his plans on hold due to financial problems. He moved to Warsaw and studied at the Warsaw National Academy of Theatre for two years. He was finally admitted to the Łódź school and graduated in 1997.

Filmography

• Może to grzech, że się modlę (Maybe it's sinful to pray, 1993) - a document on a 33 year old prisoner suffering from AIDS
• Szepty wiatru (The Whispers of the Wind, 1995), on a friendship of an old Andean man with his donkey
• El Porvenir de una Ilusión (The Future of an Illusion; 1997) - a poetic description of dreams of modern inhabitants of Havana
• Amor en concreto (Love in Concrete, 2003) - a sketch of lives of several inhabitants of a modern city
• Masz na imię Justine (Your Name is Justine), 2005, about Mariola, a young polish woman who elopes with her boyfriend to Germany and finds herself enjailed(??) into prostitution.

Apart from his film career, Franco de Peña also played the role of a journalist seeking the alleged unknown Argentinian 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. De Peña has worked in Canal + in Poland for two years as Creative Director. On many occasions has been invited to give lectures and workshops in many universities and film schools (Munich-Mérida,Viadrina).