Juan José Campanella
Juan José Campanella (born 19 July 1959) is an Argentine television and film director, writer and producer. He achieved worldwide attention with the release of "The Secret in Their Eyes" (2009), for which he was awarded the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Early life. Campanella was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He started studying engineering, but dropped out in 1980 after four years at university. He would later remark that the decisive factor for this decision was watching "All That Jazz" on the very day he was going to apply for a fifth year. His  debut as director was in 1979, with the short "Prioridad nacional". Campanella traveled to the United States and entered the Tisch School of the Arts. Four years later, in 1984, his second film, "Victoria 392", which marked the first of five collaborations with actor friend Eduardo Blanco, as well as his first collaboration with screenwriter Fernando Castets, with whom he co-directed and co-wrote the film. Career. After graduating from NYU film school, Campanella went on to direct two American films: "The Boy Who Cried Bitch" in 1991 and "Love Walked In" in 1997. In 1999, Campanella reunited once  more with Castets to write "El Mismo Amor, la Misma Lluvia", which starred actor friend Ricardo Darín (who had met Campanella 15 years before, abroad) and Eduardo Blanco. The formula would be repeated with two other films, in "El Hijo de la Novia", 2001 (nominated for Oscar for best foreign language film in 2002) and in "Luna de Avellaneda", 2004, all of which teamed Campanella and Castests as screenwriters, and Darín and Blanco as leading and supporting actor, respectively. Darín reprised the role of Campanella's leading man in the mystery film "The Secret in Their Eyes" (2009), Campanella's  fourth feature-length film. It won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2010. Campanella has directed episodes of American TV series such as "House", "", "", "30 Rock", "Halt and Catch Fire" and "Colony". Campanella has worked 5 times with Blanco, 4 times with Ricardo Darín and 2 times with Héctor Alterio. Campanella has also directed a number of Argentine actors, including Norma Aleandro, Alfredo Alcón, Ulises Dumont, Natalia Verbeke, Adrián Suar, Mercedes Morán, Valeria Bertuccelli and Rodrigo de la Serna, as well as English-speaking actors Chris Meloni, Denis Leary, Adrien Brody, Moira Kelly, Justin Long, Vincent D'Onofrio , Alec Baldwin, Tina Fey, Tracy Morgan, Rachel Dratch, Hope Davis, Jay Hernandez, Bridget Moynahan, Stephen Colbert, and Hugh Laurie. Personal life. Campanella holds a Master in Fine Arts from New York University and is studying towards a Masters in Political Science from Universidad Torcuato di Tella. He has held Spanish citizenship since 2006.