Gianfranco Fernández-Ruiz is an award winning writer and director. His coming of age short film JEROME, qualified for the 96th Academy Awards, was a finalist for the HBO Short Film Award, and won Best Boston Film at the Boston Short Film Festival. His film SABORRRR! was nominated by NewFilmmakers LA as Best Short Film Comedy for their 12th Annual Awards, and won Best Director at the 2024 Zepstone International Film Festival Awards. More recently, his work was selected by the Latino Film Institute for the 2024 Inclusion Fellowship for the short film GRANADA. 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. His thesis film and most personal film yet, WHEN BIG PEOPLE LIE premieres at AFI Fest 2024 and was recently placed as a finalist for Shore Scripts Short Film fund 2023, it’s available now on Coverfly’s The Red List. . His shorts have played at over 50 film festivals globally, and placed at a dozen more including the Urbanworld, Austin Film Festival, American Black Film Festival, Screencraft, NALIP, and the Commercial Diversity Directing Program. His film DEAD FLESH, especially created for the Louisiana Film Prize, won both the Top Five and Founder’s Circle Awards. More recently, Gianfranco was awarded a grant by the Interledger Foundation for his proof of concept Sci-fi short film, ANEMOIA, OR SCENES FROM THE FUTURE and is currently in post-production. Gianfranco marks culture as integral to a character’s identity, but second always to a character’s story.